Garrison Keillor is steamed—Fries frenchman’s book

Garrison Keillor reviews 'American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville,' by Bernard-Henri Lévy in today’s NY Times Books section, and doesn’t like what he reads. Specifically, he dislikes Levy‘s choice of things to observe in his travels through America, and accuses the French, in general, of having a warped sense of what America is all about.
I have read only one of the Atlantic Monthly pieces upon which Levy has based his book. It was interesting and inventive, and focused upon the peculiarities of America, not the norms. His article did precisely what the travel genre has always done.
Keillor’s touchy response is an indication of America’s current insecurity. Like an adolescent, America is unsure of who it is and of what its role is in the world. It has serious doubts about its own normalcy and serious fears that it is somehow weird.
The best Keillor can do is raise objections to details in the book and accuse Levy of being a “Frenchman.”
American Vertigo is available at Amazon.

Technorati Tags: books, commentary, culture, Europe, France, United States, writing

Frey and Oprah continue their partnership

Author James Frey appeared on Oprah today, supposedly to face the music. His publisher, Nan Talese sat at his side through most of the show. The show was, perhaps, a cathartic experience for Oprah, who proclaimed loudly that she had been mistaken in defending Frey against charges of lying. A chorus of talking heads reminded him that he was a bad boy.
Really, though. It’s all about the Benjamins. Frey and his publisher surely knew that the appearance would drive up sales figures. And Oprah surely knew that this hyped confrontation would lift her ratings. Their hypocritical game of victim and penitent victimizer made them both a bundle.

Technorati Tags: books, Frey, Oprah, puppy

Will newspapers survive in the future?

BuzzMachine has a very interesting article titled “New News: Deconstructing the newspaper” that looks at the traditional newspaper and its need to change to survive. Online publishing, along with the huge growth of national and transnational media, have created a serious decline in dedicated readers of local papers. What are they to do? Pare down and move online are the main suggestions. A thoughtful article with some excellent comments from readers. The latter sort of prove the main thesis of the piece.

Technorati Tags: blogging, business, commentary, news, newspaper, online culture

Web site lists bounties for bin Laden and others

Rewards For Justice is a US government web site which lists the bounties on the heads of various terrorists and other enemies of America. At the top of the list are Usama bin Laden and Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, who are going for $25 million US each. Al-Zarqawi’s bounty has been recently increased.
I don’t quite know what to make of it. The photos of all those Middle Eastern faces set off thoughts of racial profiling. Who would make use of this site? Is somebody sitting at home looking for a get rich quick scheme? Will somebody who stumbles across it think, “isn’t that Mr. Jones who moved in down the street?”

Technorati Tags: capital punishment, George W. Bush, bin Laden, terrorism, United States

Dr. Suess vs Hitler

The University of California in San Diego has an online feature on Dr. Suess’s WWII political cartoons. It’s quite strange to see the good Dr.’s familiar style adapted to harsher purposes.

Technorati Tags: cartoon, Dr. Suess, hitler, holocaust

Homer, Juvenal, South Africa, and the mall

Yesterday I found myself reading Chapman’s translation of the Odyssey, in the mall, for the first time. My first look into Chapman’s Homer came about because I was killing time waiting for my partner, Christine, and wandered into a Cole’s bookstore and saw the volume on sale for $4.99. After purchasing it, I took the book into the mall, sat on one of their cheesegrater benches, and began reading. The mall disappeared and I was back in some amalgam of ancient Greece and Renaissance England.
Peter Stothard, in his blog, observes that Juvenal’s Satires have a lot to say to disaffected, contemporary, upper middle class Afrikaaners who, like Juvenal, feel unhappy with their changed lot in life. I only really know two Afrikaaners, transplanted to frozen northern Canada, so I can’t say if what Stothard says is accurate, but his observation strikes me as yet again proof that the classics still have relevance today and that there are certain uses we can make of them today. They put our world into perspective, they tell us we are not alone, that someone has felt this before us, and that we are normal in our unhappiness, our alienation, our desire to be somewhere else.
Links to books: Juvenal, Chapman’s Homer

Technorati Tags: books, classics, Homer, Juvenal, South Africa

Pole Dancing as a university course; with a minor in economics?

According to this article in The Tyee, the University of British Columbia, one of the largest universities in the Canada, has classes on pole dancing. The place sure has changed since I taught there in the late seventies. I guess it’s to be expected: a result of the increasing stress to make university grads “employment ready.”

Technorati Tags: Canada, education

Most emailed NY Times article of 2005

The New York Times has released its list of the top 10 most emailed articles of 2005. Maureen Dowd has the top spot with “What’s a modern girl to do?,” a rueful acknowledgement that feminism has lost its way.
“It took only a few decades to create a brazen new world where the highest ideal is to acknowledge your inner slut,” she laments.

link

Get out of that smelly cab and walk

British researchers have found that riders in taxi cabs are exposed to more pollution than pedestrians are. Apparently the taxis' continual exposure to street level pollution allows contaminants to build up in higher concentrations than in the streets. Personal passenger cars have the lowest level of pollution. I don't think the Scientific American article makes reference to public transit.

Canadian health care triumphs again

About a month ago I wrote about a Canadian doctor who had published on male refrigerator blindness. Now another Canadian doctor has published an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, our nation’s most prestigious medical journal, on how he used a super soaker to remove somebody’s earwax.
Isn’t anybody doing any significant medical research in the Great White North?

Technorati Tags: Canada, health, medicine

Long time foe advocates for holocaust denier’s release from jail

American historian Deborah Lipstadt suggests that holocaust denier David Irving should be released from an Austrian prison. In Austria it is illegal to minimize the Holocaust. Irving once sued her for libel, and lost.
Link

Technorati Tags: Europe, history, holocaust

$11 Billion Dollar Fine for Spammer

This story in Yahoo! News reports that a spammer in Florida has been fined $11 billion (US) as the result of a suit filed by an internet service provider.
I'm sure the spammer doesn't have that kind of money, but the judgement assures that his funds will be garnisheed unto the seventh generation. Time to move off shore and start another email campaign to pay the fine.