A Good Weekend Read
I am not saying I won't be blogging during the entire weekend – chances are I cannot resist the temptation– but I do have another agenda that will take most of my time. I invite you instead to have a look at some good reading I have collected from Arts & Daily, always a good resource on sunny days when we're too cautious about our colors to head outdoors.
The Tyranny of Design by the Guardian is asking why dictators have poor taste when they are anything but poor themselves. Saddam’s tacky palaces are included in the round-up. I also learned that Ghadafy’s bodyguards are virgin females. Didn’t know that. I wonder for what purpose and for how long they remain virgins.
I have nothing against Christopher Hitchens, I should read him more often, and this article about him; ‘The Purest Neo Con,’ will be at the top of my reading list.
Interesting and occasionally amusing is The Atlantic’s inquiry into samizdat – The Greatest Stories Never Told.
The Nation is asking Why is Africa Still Poor – is it the chicken or the egg, e.g. poverty or dictators.
On another continent, The Moscow Times is looking at the newly translated Memoirs of Catherine the Great, apparently there are things we would never think about her, or at least things the censors wouldn’t want us to think about her.
Although Nietzsche-an, this article that is defining what marriage is today is not hard to get at all: The ties that do not bind, the decline of marriage and loyalty.
Francis Fukuyama was featured in Al-Ahram as far back as in August in an attempt to show that democracy is perhaps not that necessary after all. How the writer can quote him extensively and still miss the essentials of “The End of History” – the driving force of democracy and capitalism that make other ideologies obsolete – is a mystery to me.
In this week’s Weekly, a feature about pop-style preacher Amr Khaled would be informative if you’re not familiar with him and if the current edition is available on the site http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ from where you are – from my position I’m taken to a page where I’m asked to dial-in to their own ISP. Who would have thought that their former editor-in-chief’s running away with hundreds of millions in USD would make this media tycoon so strapped for cash?
Finally, I have a few treasures in my sidebar: a link to a Russian site with a lot of George Orwell’s writings; and two collections of historic images from Egypt and the Levant. And if you haven’t been to Webdonkey yet, now is the time to go.
The Tyranny of Design by the Guardian is asking why dictators have poor taste when they are anything but poor themselves. Saddam’s tacky palaces are included in the round-up. I also learned that Ghadafy’s bodyguards are virgin females. Didn’t know that. I wonder for what purpose and for how long they remain virgins.
I have nothing against Christopher Hitchens, I should read him more often, and this article about him; ‘The Purest Neo Con,’ will be at the top of my reading list.
Interesting and occasionally amusing is The Atlantic’s inquiry into samizdat – The Greatest Stories Never Told.
The Nation is asking Why is Africa Still Poor – is it the chicken or the egg, e.g. poverty or dictators.
On another continent, The Moscow Times is looking at the newly translated Memoirs of Catherine the Great, apparently there are things we would never think about her, or at least things the censors wouldn’t want us to think about her.
Although Nietzsche-an, this article that is defining what marriage is today is not hard to get at all: The ties that do not bind, the decline of marriage and loyalty.
Francis Fukuyama was featured in Al-Ahram as far back as in August in an attempt to show that democracy is perhaps not that necessary after all. How the writer can quote him extensively and still miss the essentials of “The End of History” – the driving force of democracy and capitalism that make other ideologies obsolete – is a mystery to me.
In this week’s Weekly, a feature about pop-style preacher Amr Khaled would be informative if you’re not familiar with him and if the current edition is available on the site http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ from where you are – from my position I’m taken to a page where I’m asked to dial-in to their own ISP. Who would have thought that their former editor-in-chief’s running away with hundreds of millions in USD would make this media tycoon so strapped for cash?
Finally, I have a few treasures in my sidebar: a link to a Russian site with a lot of George Orwell’s writings; and two collections of historic images from Egypt and the Levant. And if you haven’t been to Webdonkey yet, now is the time to go.
posted by ritzy @ 11:43 am
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