Fifty Shades of Grey thrusts erotica into the mainstream
Fastest-selling book of the year has publishers rushing to embrace erotic fiction, but is it really liberating women?
No it's not
No it's not
Link to article here
Friday, 27 April 2012
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
18.04.12 (iiii)
'I thought I'd be an underground artist. I was not ready'- Tricky
Guardian interview and article here
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Saturday, 31 March 2012
31.03.12
Lavinia Greenlaw wins Ted Hughes award 2011 for new work in poetry
Article here
A drama documentary by Simon Armitage, an orchestral piece by Christopher Reid set in the first world war, and a sequence of dramatic war poems by Andrew Motion were all in the running for this year's award. Greenlaw's work gave its audience headphones and led them through the bustle of London St Pancras and Manchester Piccadilly train stations, listening to individual narratives. It was felt by judges to "fully capture the spirit" of the Ted Hughes award.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
29.03.12
Picture captures a billion stars
Interactive tool allows users to zoom into specific areas
here
here
Scientists have produced a colossal picture of our Milky Way Galaxy, to reveal the detail of a billion stars.
It is built from thousands of individual images acquired by two UK-developed telescopes operating in Hawaii and in Chile.
Archived data from the project, known as the Vista Data Flow System, will be mined by astronomers to make new discoveries about the local cosmos.
But more simply, it represents a fabulous portrait of the night sky.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
20.03.12
China's Renewable Energy Boom
Video here
Jonathan Watts reports from the Chinese desert province of Gansu, which is undergoing a stunning transformation. It is becoming the frontline of China's efforts to reinvent its economy with a massive investment in renewable energy, involving the erection of wind turbines at the rate of more than one an hour and experiments with solar energy on a large scale
Monday, 12 March 2012
12.03.12 (iii)
Level artist Mark Ziemak
"Finding the balance between flexibility and direction is an evergreen role-playing dilemma. Give players too little room, and you choke all the significance out of Big Decisions, but the larger your field of action, the harder it is to portray the consequences convincingly" on level design,
article here
article here
12.03.12 (ii)
Artists come together in a Crisis for homeless exhibition
The Crisis Commission at London's Somerset House will feature new works by artists including Gillian Wearing, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin
Thursday, 8 March 2012
08.03.12 (ii)
David Hockney takes Andrew Marr on a guided tour of his exhibition at the Royal Academy
Video here
Video here
"There's no such thing as bad weather in England", John Ruskin
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
07.03.12
Kony 2012
Articles here and here
Articles here and here
Kony 2012 video here
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.
Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services, with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited.
The idea of “stopping Kony”, of course plays into the narrative created by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign where what actually happens to Kony and the LRA is irrelevant. The unspecific aim of “stopping” him is sufficient. Who, after all, doesn’t want Kony “stopped”? But then what? If Kony is killed or captured, then what? What happens to the other members of the LRA? ‘Kony 2012′ offers no answers here.
In this context, it is worthwhile remembering that massive regional military solutions (Operations Iron Fist and Lightning Thunder most recently), with support from the US, have thus far failed to dismantle or “stop” the LRA. These failures have created serious and legitimate doubts that the ‘LRA question’ is one that can be resolved by military means.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.
Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services, with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited.
The idea of “stopping Kony”, of course plays into the narrative created by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign where what actually happens to Kony and the LRA is irrelevant. The unspecific aim of “stopping” him is sufficient. Who, after all, doesn’t want Kony “stopped”? But then what? If Kony is killed or captured, then what? What happens to the other members of the LRA? ‘Kony 2012′ offers no answers here.
In this context, it is worthwhile remembering that massive regional military solutions (Operations Iron Fist and Lightning Thunder most recently), with support from the US, have thus far failed to dismantle or “stop” the LRA. These failures have created serious and legitimate doubts that the ‘LRA question’ is one that can be resolved by military means.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Monday, 13 February 2012
13.02.12 (ii)
Thankyou Note, Wislawa Szymborska
I owe a lot to those I don't love.
Relief, with which I approve
that they are closer to someone else.
Joy that it's not me who the wolf
among their sheeps.
I have peace with them
and I am free with them,
and this is what love can
neither give nor take.
I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Patient
almost like a solar clock,
I understand
what love doesn't,
I forgive,
what love would never forgive.
Between a meeting and a letter
there is not an eternity,
but simply a few days or weeks.
My journeys with them are always successful,
concerts heard,
cathedrals visited,
landscapes clear.
And when we're separated
by seven mountains and rivers,
they are mountains and rivers
well known from the maps.
It's only thanks to them,
that I live in three dimensions,
in space unlyrical and unrhetorical,
with real since stable horizon.
They don't know themselves,
how much they carry in their empty hands.
'I don't owe them anything' -
love would say
about this open topic.
I owe a lot to those I don't love.
Relief, with which I approve
that they are closer to someone else.
Joy that it's not me who the wolf
among their sheeps.
I have peace with them
and I am free with them,
and this is what love can
neither give nor take.
I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Patient
almost like a solar clock,
I understand
what love doesn't,
I forgive,
what love would never forgive.
Between a meeting and a letter
there is not an eternity,
but simply a few days or weeks.
My journeys with them are always successful,
concerts heard,
cathedrals visited,
landscapes clear.
And when we're separated
by seven mountains and rivers,
they are mountains and rivers
well known from the maps.
It's only thanks to them,
that I live in three dimensions,
in space unlyrical and unrhetorical,
with real since stable horizon.
They don't know themselves,
how much they carry in their empty hands.
'I don't owe them anything' -
love would say
about this open topic.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Monday, 6 February 2012
06.02.12 (ii)
Eilat, Israel based artist Yell Saccani combines digital manipulation with traditional photography and blends both the gentile and the somber aspects of portraiture.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Monday, 30 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
24.01.12
Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'
Illustrations by Anna and Elena Balbusso
Slideshow here
"My nakedness is strange to me already. My body seems outdated. Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without a thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest."
Sunday, 22 January 2012
22.01.12
The First Sexual Revolution
Article here
We believe in sexual freedom. We take it for granted that consenting men and women have the right to do what they like with their bodies. Sex is everywhere in our culture. We love to think and talk about it; we devour news about celebrities' affairs; we produce and consume pornography on an unprecedented scale. We think it wrong that in other cultures its discussion is censured, people suffer for their sexual orientation, women are treated as second-class citizens, or adulterers are put to death.
Yet a few centuries ago, our own society was like this too. In the 1600s people were still being executed for adultery in England, Scotland and north America, and across Europe. Everywhere in the west, sex outside marriage was illegal, and the church, the state and ordinary people devoted huge efforts to hunting it down and punishing it. This was a central feature of Christian society, one that had grown steadily in importance since late antiquity. So how and when did our culture change so strikingly? Where does our current outlook come from? The answers lie in one of the great untold stories about the creation of our modern condition.
Rembrandt, Detail from the Bed, 1646
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Friday, 13 January 2012
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
11.01.12
Guantánamo
Video and Article
Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned as chief prosecutor of the Guantánamo military commissions in October 2007 in protest at the use of evidence obtained through torture, the damage lives on. "Guantánamo is a stain on our reputation," he said. "The only way we can end that chapter is to close it."
The numbers, pulled together by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), speak for themselves. Of 779 detainees imprisoned at Guantánamo over the past decade, only six have been convicted. That's one less than the number of military prosecutors who resigned over the system's unfairness. Some 600 have been released, most under President Bush, raising the question of why they were there in the first place.
Video and Article
Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned as chief prosecutor of the Guantánamo military commissions in October 2007 in protest at the use of evidence obtained through torture, the damage lives on. "Guantánamo is a stain on our reputation," he said. "The only way we can end that chapter is to close it."
The numbers, pulled together by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), speak for themselves. Of 779 detainees imprisoned at Guantánamo over the past decade, only six have been convicted. That's one less than the number of military prosecutors who resigned over the system's unfairness. Some 600 have been released, most under President Bush, raising the question of why they were there in the first place.
Friday, 6 January 2012
07.01.12 (iiiiiii)
New Worlds, the seminal science fiction magazine edited for many years by Michael Moorcock is back. SF Signal reports: The magazine will appear in both electronic and traditional print on paper formats and be backed up by an extensive website that will feature exclusive editorial features free to all interested readers.
Warren Ellis writes that it is "the most groundbreaking sf magazine of the last half of the 20th Century, if not one of the most groundbreaking magazines of any kind in the way it reshaped fiction and captured invention in the culture at large."
07.01.12 (iiiiii)
Guardian Books Podcast: Science Fiction now and tomorrow
Link here
In this week's new year books podcast, we look to the future. Science fiction has never been bigger, and publishers are falling over themselves to sign the next Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. We talk to some of the genre's biggest names about the state of SF in 2012, and where they think the genre is heading.
Link here
In this week's new year books podcast, we look to the future. Science fiction has never been bigger, and publishers are falling over themselves to sign the next Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. We talk to some of the genre's biggest names about the state of SF in 2012, and where they think the genre is heading.
07.01.12 (iiiii)
Hoto Fudo is a restaurant designed by Takeshi Hosaka Architects. The igloo-like building is located on the base of Mt. Fuji in the Yamanashi Prefecture of Japan. Interestingly, with the moutain’s natural surrounding, Hoto Fudo allows air from the outdoors to circulate through the openings of the wall.
7.01.12 (iiii)
Jim Sanborn is a visual artist based out of Washington DC. His series are topographic lights that are projected on natural landforms. All of the pieces were photographed at night using long exposures. On moonless nights, the landscape was lit with searchlights. The landforms themselves are quite large, requiring the projector and camera to be, on average, 1/2 mile away from the subject landscape.
07.01.12 (iii)
Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany. Baselitz's style is interpreted by the Northern American as Neo-Expressionist, but from a European perspective, it is more seen as postmodern.
His career was kick-started in the 1960s after police action against one of his paintings, (Die große Nacht im Eimer), because of its provocative, offending sexual nature.
>
Baselitz is one of the world's best-selling living artists. He is a professor at the Hochschule der Künste art academy in Berlin.
Dresdner Frauen. Temporary exhibition at Palais De Tokyo, Paris
His career was kick-started in the 1960s after police action against one of his paintings, (Die große Nacht im Eimer), because of its provocative, offending sexual nature.
>
Baselitz is one of the world's best-selling living artists. He is a professor at the Hochschule der Künste art academy in Berlin.
Dresdner Frauen. Temporary exhibition at Palais De Tokyo, Paris
06.01.12
Hourglass Figure
A perfect waist is what men consider the most attractive feature in women, say scientists who calculated the ratio for the ideal figure in a female body.
"They calculated that a “waist-to-hip ratio” of 0.7, or a waist measuring 70 per cent of the hip circumference, was the “perfect” size".
A perfect waist is what men consider the most attractive feature in women, say scientists who calculated the ratio for the ideal figure in a female body.
"They calculated that a “waist-to-hip ratio” of 0.7, or a waist measuring 70 per cent of the hip circumference, was the “perfect” size".
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