I have been meaning to visit the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral since it appeared in October. Yesterday morning I went via St Paul’s on my way to work and shot a few slices of video of the camp, while its denizens were still sleeping. Its a snapshot of the eclectic mix of ideas being discussed at the camp.
Category: Diary (Page 126 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
Following the death of Christopher Hitchens last weekend, there has been much discussion on how to speak of the dead, and whether you should criticise them while their family is still mourning. Hitchens himself was famous for slagging off Mother Theresa after she died (“a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud”) and for being very rude about the Evangelical preacher Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Glenn Greenwald, in an article eviscerating Hitchens’ unwavering support for the Iraq War, makes a distinction between the lives of political figures, who are famous precisely because of the policies they enacted while in power, and ordinary individuals. The death of such a person (Greenwald cites Ronald Reagan) is precisely the right time to evaluate a person’s achievements and actions, both good and bad.
This week on Liberal Conspiracy, Sunny linked to a petition demanding that Margaret Thatcher’s funeral be privatised. This is an odd request, as I don’t believe Prime Ministers are routinely offered State funerals. Yes, Winston Churchill had one, and the Duke of Wellington had one, but these were leaders during a time of existential war. Margaret Thatcher, transformational though she was, does not qualify on by this metric. Any suggestion that a State Funeral will be given to Mrs Thatcher is wishful thinking on the part of Tory fanboys – Not even the Queen Mother had a State funeral!
Rumours regularly circulate that Mrs Thatcher has died, and left-wingers speculate about how they will celebrate. As Glenn Greewald reminds us, this would be to miss the point. When Margaret Thatcher dies, the policies she enacted will still have happened, and the consequences will still be present. Her death would be nothing like as symbolic as the demise of a leader in power (Kim Jong-Il and Colonel Gaddafi both died this year) or someone who is politicially active, like Jerry Falwell, where the negative effects of their politics and policies do actually dissipate as they pass away.
‘The Death of Mrs Thatcher’ discussion is a hardy perennial, and every time it is discussed it makes Left Wingers and Liberals look bad, and allows Tories to take on a sanctimonious air. I wish we would learn not to take the bait.
Writing in Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen asks whether we are in a decades long design rut. During the twentieth century, design and style evolved at a predictable pace – so much so that images from any given decade are instantly distinguishable as being from that era. The styles of the 1950s, say, would never be mistaken for those of the 1930s or the 1970s. This holds, says Andersen, across the art forms – fashion, design, architecture, cinema, and music from most of the twentieth century are all very much of their moment. However, in the past two or three decades, this evolution has stopped. The 1990s look very much like the 2010s, give or take a collar and quiff. Our big cultural events are all repeats, reboots and revivals.
(See also, by the way, Jason Kottke’s Timeline Twins for a stark illustration of Andersen’s observations). Continue reading
Apparently, the megalomaniac tendencies that many perceive in Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich are inspired by Iassac Asimov:
If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Newt Gingrich is from the planet Trantor, a fictional world created by Isaac Asimov in his classic Foundation series about galactic empire. Newt’s master plan for America does not come from a Republican Party playbook. It comes from the science fiction that he read in high school. He is playing out, on a national and global scale, dreams he had as a teenager with his nose buried in pulp fiction.
I haven’t read the Foundation series, but I gather it involves grand master plans for the whole galaxy, put into practice by a dedicated bunch of benevolent intellectuals. I know this, because series has been cited as influential on another ideologue – Osama Bin Laden. The phrase ‘Al Qaida’ literally means The Base, or Foundation…
On the surface, the most improbable explanation of the name is that Bin Laden was somehow inspired by a Russian-born writer who lived most of his life in the US and was once the world’s most prolific sci-fi novelist (born in 1920 in Smolensk, Asimov died in New York in 1992). But the deeper you dig, the more plausible it seems that al-Qaida’s founders may have borrowed some rhetoric from Foundation and its successors (it became a series) and possibly from other science fiction material.
Now, I am not for one moment suggesting that there is an intellectual link between Osama Bin Laden and Newt Gingrich. To make that connection would be to unfairly libel Issac Asimov. However, the fanatical American Right are usually happy to make tenuous links for political smears (Sarah Palin’s quip that Obama was “palling around with terrorists” the most high profile example). So part of me would love to see Gingrich hoisted by that petard!
The folk at my alma mater Fifty Nine Productions have produced this stunning short film, with Yes Prime Minister actors David Haig and Henry Goodman taking the two main parts.
Super Shorts 2011: The Half-Light (11-0327SS ) by THEHALFLIGHT
It has been beautifully shot by Feilx Wiedemann, who creates a melancholy mood from the outset. This is what great short films should do – introduce a single idea, a single character, a pivotal point in their lives… and then use the tools of film-making to conjure the mood of the moment.
Well worth 12 minutes of your time… and definitely worth voting for on the Super Shorts Audience Choice Awards (with a chance to win an iPad for your trouble).