Gatsby anticipation is in the house. We’ve got a ticket for this evening’s 7 pm screening and great are the expectations. Meanwhile, the spin-off industry rumbles on and no (precious) stone is left unturned as it seeks to cash in on the film of the book. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a customer of Tiffany, the [...]
Archive for July, 2012
Breece D’J Pancake and Pinckney Benedict are for real
When people grow up with names such as Breece D’J Pancake and Pinckney Benedict, you can be sure that they’ll have stories to tell. In each case, the stories are of Appalachia as both gentlemen grew up in West Virginia. Pinckney Benedict reverently namechecks Breece D’J Pancake in his foreword to Give Us a Kiss [...]
The UI, UX and DQ of #London2012
A great event demands great respect and that’s what the great Dane, Jakob Nielsen, brought to the table before writing his latest column, “Official Olympic Website: UI Silver — but UX DQ“. The godfather of website usability applies his trained eye to the official site for the 2012 London games and gives Lord Coe & [...]
Metal gecko
Geckos are lizards belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from 1.6 cm to 60 cm. Geckos cannot blink. They have a fixed lens within each iris that enlarges in darkness. A gecko uses its long tongue to clean its eye and keep it dust-free. Send to Kindle
More than money
The 2012 Olympic Games are upon us and there’s no better way to wake up to the first day of competition in London than with an English song by and English singer: Seth Lakeman. More than Money is the opening track on his sixth solo album, Tales from the Barrel House. Despite many of the [...]
Let the Games begin!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle covered the 1908 London Olympics for The Daily Mail. “I do not often do journalistic work, but I was tempted chiefly by the offer of an excellent seat,” he recalled in his autobiography. Upon seeing the fatigued Italian marathon runner, Dorando Pietri, entering the stadium at White City, Doyle wrote: “It [...]
Evan Robertson creates posters inspired by his love of literature
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places [...]
A performing Seale among the Syrian butchers
“When the matter of human rights is raised with Syrian officials — particularly the jailing under harsh conditions of civil rights activists and political opponents — they point to far greater abuses by the United States and Israel. Western actions, they claim, have damaged the cause of democracy and human rights. Nevertheless, Syria’s record on [...]
The depraved architects of death
Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War by the French architectural historian and architect Jean-Louis Cohen establishes “one big, awful, inescapable truth”, writes Martin Filler in the New York Review of Books. According to Filler: “the full potential of twentieth-century architecture, engineering, and design was realized not in the social-welfare and [...]
“A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best”
“The fiction I’m most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. None of my stories really happened, of course. But there’s always something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may be the starting place. Here’s an example: ‘That’s the last Christmas you’ll ever ruin for us!’ I [...]
Godard as the spiritual father of Palestinian terror in Munich
In this clip from 1969, the French film director Jean-Luc Godard orders a cheque to be made out to his account by ZDF, the German public broadcaster, to buy weapons for use against Israel. And it is duly done. He brandishes a six-pointed Swastika as the German narrator declares that Godard believes “America has become [...]
The Milan-Sicily axis is part of the Italian opera
From the theatre of the absurd that Italy has become, there’s this snippet from the weekend: “Sicily has now been dubbed ‘Italy’s Greece’, an island awash with misspent EU funds, state jobs traded for votes and a €5bn debt pile that some fear could push Italy’s delicate economy into the abyss. Union and business leaders [...]
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