With all this talk of the NSA and its activities, espionage has stormed back onto the front pages. Perfect time to publish a spy novel set in China, the USA and Germany, one should think, and cometh the hour, cometh the man in the form of Olen Steinhauer. That surname suggests another Nordic star but [...]
Cuba is striving to renew and broaden its horizons
“Dear friends, I am convinced that Cuba, at this moment of particular importance in its history, is already looking to the future, and thus is striving to renew and broaden its horizons.” Thus spoke Pope Benedict XVI yesterday following his arrival at Antonio Maceo International Airport in Santiago de Cuba. The diplomatic skill that went [...]
The real Gisele Bündchen is so fickle
Back in 2007, the world’s top-earning model, Gisele Bündchen, reportedly responded to the falling value of the US dollar by refusing to be paid in the currency of Uncle Sam. Her sister and manager told the Bloomberg news agency that Gisele preferred to be paid in euros. Five years ago, the euro was seen as [...]
Room with a view
“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling [...]
Anais Mitchell
From her new album, Young Man in America, the very talented and very wry Anais Mitchell displays her poignant side as she combines whispers of Joanna Newsom and Gillian Welch in Coming Down.
Send to KindleVerbal Edge: Borges & Buckley
There’s a plethora of fine words in Up in the Air by Walter Kirn. The main character, Ryan Bingham, expands his vocabulary with words from the Verbal Edge cassette tapes as he flies around the US. Lots of great words, too, in Buckley: The Right Word. The late William F. Buckley was a marvellous interviewer [...]
Unexpected FT headline: “Beijing on edge amid coup rumours”
“Adding to the air of intrigue in the capital, a report of a fatal car crash on Sunday involving the son of a top leader and a Ferrari appeared on the internet but was quickly removed by official censors. Netizens and one source with close ties to China’s top leaders said the illegitimate son of [...]
For the people, by the people
Politicians are, in general, a shoddy lot. Busy stuffing their pockets from the public purse and and stuffing all levels of the bureaucracy with their incompetent relations and clients, they are deserving of the abuse that’s poured upon them. The Danes, however, are different and the current government in Copenhagen has taken remarkable steps to make itself accountable to the people using the full range of communication channels that are available to all. Exemplary.
Send to KindleThe most magnificent pencil, ever
Published in 1972, Transparent Things is a short novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It tells the story of Hugh Person, a young American editor, who makes four trips to a small village in Switzerland. His third trip involves murder and madness. At one point, in the drawer of the desk in his hotel room, Person finds… [...]
Fiddling with finance and violins
Greg Smith, the Goldman Sachs director who dropped the bomb on Wall Street last week in a public resignation letter, said he was leaving the firm after 12 years because it was “morally bankrupt”. Indignation and outrage, especially in Europe, followed Smith’s condemnation of his ex-employer, but this was tempered by the recognition of the [...]
The Church of Rome
“Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where [...]
The Low Anthem play Carnegie Hall for Paddy (Moloney’s) Night
The Low Anthem opened for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Moody Theatre in Austin, Texas, on Thursday night. For the show’s finale, they joined the Boss, Jimmy Cliff, Eric Burdon, Tom Morello, Joe Ely and Alejandro Escovedo in singing Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land. To celebrate St Patrick’s Day, [...]
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