Ich lerne sehen.
While on the subject of people I admire, the Guardian ran an article on David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker a few days ago.
“For better or for worse, by the way. AJ Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I’m one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.”
The man puts out a mean magazine.
Ok all, thanks for being so patient. After bumming around in Paris and the south of France for a while, I’ll be back to my day job soon enough. (Though I still have a quick jaunt to Croatia coming up, stay tuned for photos and an exciting reportage.)
In the meantime, I’m going to be making my first foray into non-fiction reviewing in August, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. I’ve been reading his writing in the New Yorker for a while now, after having met his son in London through my girlfriend. Looks like it should be excellent.
You can see the Wright talking about his book here.
In a stupefying example of bureaucratic doublespeak, US officials have deemed the simultaneous suicides of three inmates at Guantánamo bay as an act of "asymmetrical warfare".
"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
Though suicide attempts and hunger strikes have been ongoing since 2003, these are the first successful suicides at the facility. Apparently, lawyers for the prisoners had been warning of possible attempts for quite sometime.
Officials at the prison have begun reading to prisoners relevant passages from the Koran condemning suicide. However, suicides are no longer really considered to be suicides, but acts of "manipulative, self-injurious behavior:
In late 2003, military officials at Guantánamo began to re-classify many of the suicide attempts as "manipulative, self-injurious behavior" that was intended to bring pressure for better conditions or for release.
Public broadcasting in the US is set to take another giant budget hit, if something isn't done soon.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.
I suppose the Republicans have to do something to shore up the national debt, but this seems to be a drastically silly way to go about it, considering the general popularity of the threatened programs: do they really want to be taking on Big Bird during an election campaign that could put Democrats back into the majority? Didn't they already fail to do it once already? Do we have to keep fighting this fight? <br>
See also: freepress.net, though I'm sure there are a million indy media sites that are up in arms already.
Citing "important evidence of serious scientific negligence or misconduct in the investigations, reports and testimony of Texas state fire marshals", a panel of private forensic experts has just concluded that Cameron Todd Willingham was falsely convicted and executed in a trial using evidence that has since been scientifically discredited.
I've always considered it a matter of time before someone executed in the United States is exonerated post factum, there have probably been more. The best case for ending capital punishment? The possibility of executing an innocent person. As long as that possibility exists – and it always will – the state must not be allowed to carry out capital punishments.
