&ldquoW is for Women” reads one of the slogans for George W. Bush's re-election campaign. It reminds me of a badge that was very popular when I was a student: &ldquoThe earth is flat. Pigs can fly. Nuclear energy is safe.” While following the US election campaign, many European observers have commented on how much […]
Much has been made recently of the contrasting decisional styles of American presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. According to the consensus of insider books and press interviews, Bush is a leader of the “C.E.O.” type who dwells on the “big picture,” chooses the side that conforms with that moralized picture and then […]
A screen adaptation of the novel by Andre Dubus III, starring Ben Kingsley, Jennifer Connelly, and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Directed by Vadim Perelman.
The two Italian aid workers, Simona Toretta and Simona Pari, along with their two Iraqi colleagues have been freed. Journalists on the Italian State television RAI have openly spoken of a ransom payment, and while officially the Government have denied this, various senior figures from both the Government and Opposition have suggested that it was […]
Faced with a situation in which beheadings are being streamed over the Internet and satellite television covers the collateral damage caused by “precision” bombing, the most improbable connections between technology and terror start to make sense.My example: last week I was working through an interesting title called “Object Thinking” by David West. West is a […]
In an attempt to create my own rickety bridge between the “Two Cultures” described by CP Snow, I occasionally try to bring my liberal arts-trained mind to grapple with science. (I think this erratic urge was initially prompted by that thought experiment that tries to envision how you would get on if you were sent […]
While France implements its ban on the wearing of the hijab in schools, an Italian Mayor in the North of the country has fined an Italian Muslim woman, twice, for leaving her house wearing the Burqa [A veil that covers the face and entire head but with a place cut out for the eyes]. Cristian […]
The ManBooker shortlist is unusual this year, at least for me, in that there�s more than one title listed that I could be bothered to buy.Actually, I�ve already consumed one of those that made the cut, Alan Hollinghurst�s The Line of Beauty, which was praised to the sky when it was released earlier this year. […]
The other day a friend of mine described a book as Rabelaisian. Taking the opportunity to be a smart-arse, I asked whether he had actually read Rabelais. He quickly assured me he had read Gargantua and Pantagruel, but was suggestively non-specific about how it ended.It’s something we rarely challenge: bandying eponymic references about, usually in […]