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Monthly Archives: March 2011

· First ask: what would Mr Rogers do?

Thursday, 31 March 2011

Whatever we think of the politics and prohibitions of modern morality, there is little draw to them. We lie dumb and desensitized in a picturesque moral landscape and dream in browns and grays.

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· Elitists, anarchists, progressives, and their views of ‘sclerotic’ democracy.

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Principle plays a part in motivating elites who hoist the flag of social reform: the free-market ideal, they argue, is a source of misery when pursued too unrestrainedly. But Henry James pointed to another, suppressed motive.

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· Islam, Caesar and the simple problem in the Middle East.

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

There is a very simple problem in the Middle East: simple, that is, conceptually, not simple from the point of view of finding a practical solution to it. Islam has not found a doctrinal way of rendering unto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s.

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· Remember when there was a French Left? Neither does France.

Monday, 28 March 2011

If the French vote tracks a slow shift in the national electorate toward middle-class conservatism, the German vote appears to be shaped more by immediate dynamics.

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Elizabeth Taylor, a Welsh Cleopatra in ‘Under Milk Wood’.

Saturday, 26 March 2011

Andrew Sinclair: I put down a costly gold Egyptian serpent bracelet as a peace offering from my pocket. Unfortunately, she was making herself up as Cleopatra, all kohl and rouge and peacock eyelids. “That won’t do,” I heard myself daring to say. “You’re a Welsh sailor’s whore of the ‘fifties. You can’t look like that.”

“I always look like Cleopatra,” she said, and dismissed me.

Filed in Film, Television, Video & Theatre, Principal Articles, The Fortnightly Review of Films and Video | Tagged | Comments (1)

Sarah Bernhardt in London, best of all possible Samaritans.

Saturday, 26 March 2011

Arthur Croxton: IN 1913 SARAH BERNHARDT reached the apex of her theatrical career in this country. Her wonderful success in the previous season naturally lead Oswald Stoll to engage her once more for the autumn of the following year.

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· Is ‘fear of failure’ a bad thing for students, teachers, or schools?

Friday, 25 March 2011

France’s decline in the international rankings has focused minds. A book by the Paris-based British academic Peter Gumbel published last year titled On achève bien les écoliers? (They shoot schoolchildren, don’t they?) sharpened attention further. In it he argued that the education system was systematically undermining children’s confidence.

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New York in the ’70s: the pioneers head downtown.

Friday, 25 March 2011

Michelene Wandor: From the very beginning there is a stark contrast between materials, form and content: the process which makes art history is ironically very visible. Videos and sound, recreation, give a flavour of the original chaos and vigour, out of which a genuinely new ‘found’ and ‘made’ series of artistic experiments developed.

Filed in Art & Architecture, Dance & Performance, Principal Articles | Tagged | Comments (0)

· ‘Victorian sex’: Not your great-great-grandfather’s oxymoron.

Thursday, 24 March 2011

All the protagonists are male, with the women reduced to mere quickly potted biographies. The book leaves the “new eroticism” as a masculine invention. It’s one tryst after another, one flagellation after the next.

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Prince Andrew or President Adams?

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Anthony O’Hear: Rulers and public figures will always be open to the very real temptations and to the flattery which they bring, whatever political system we have. The remedy is not improved regulation or a new political system, but rather to convince public figures that – contrary to Machiavellian pragmatism and the pleasures of swanning on the boats of oligarchs and consorting with tyrants – they remain subject to the natural law of God and the common decencies of mankind.

Filed in Notes & Comment, Principal Articles | Tagged | Comments (0)

· The Tripoli school of driving: take the wheel or crash and burn.

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Diplomatic sources told The Cable that the United States has communicated to its European partners that it wants to hand off command of the Libya war by the end of this week. But the White House hasn’t said whether it supports the French plan.

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· Civility: Truth plus respect plus offense equals offense?

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

In the type of censorship that Collini is concerned with, the power equation is typically reversed. When, in contemporary society, a particular view is labelled “offensive”, it is usually on the basis that the offended party is in some way at a disadvantage in relation to the person who has expressed the offending view.

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· How mystics enter into mystery.

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

We’ve become too analytical. Our approach is about law: Do good, avoid evil. But the mystic is one who, through prayer, enters into the mystery of God as love. Christian life is first of all a mystery, the mystery that the incredible, incomprehensible love of God is the source of all that we are.

Filed in Chronicle & Notices, Noted elsewhere, Psychology, Philosophy & Education | | Comments (0)

· Googling the phenakistoscope and other dead media.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

If we can somehow convince the current digital media community-at-large that DEAD MEDIA is a worthwhile project, we believe that we may be able to compile a useful public-access net archive on this subject.

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· Event: How the light gets in Hay.

Monday, 21 March 2011

Among the 2011 guests will be Susan Greenfield, Colin Blakemore, Zygmunt Bauman, Bonnie Greer, Ted Honderich, Gideon Rachman, Rana Mitter, Mary Ann Sieghart, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Angie Hobbs, Polly Toynbee, Simon Armitage, Lauren Booth, Leela Ghandi, Tessa Jowell, Mary Midgley, Mary Warnock, Bryan Appleyard, David Aaronovitch and many more.

Filed in Chronicle & Notices, Events, Noted elsewhere, Psychology, Philosophy & Education | | Comments (0)
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