Pupil Barrister
Reviews etc…
English PEN have produced a briefing document on the proposed new Criminal Memoirs law.
A new scheme will seize assets from ex-offenders who write about their crimes. All types of art and media will be affected, and there are few safeguards to prevent abuse.
English PEN is calling on the Government to withdraw the proposed new law from the Coroners & Justice Bill, and to consult with prisoner groups and rehabilitation charities.
There’s a great little project happening in Regents Park at the moment. The Treehouse Gallery is an ever growing collective of artists, designers, musicians and educators, who have constructed their own public space in which to hold exhibitions and events.
I’ve been following the development of the events schedule for a few weeks now, which is steadily filling up with workshops and other events, but I don’t see much in the way of debates programmed. Surely some LibCon readers and writers could get together to argue about something? Localism is a live debate at the moment, and would seem a perfect topic to discuss in a community-made space. CSJ? Fabians? Demos? SMF?
Via Robert Wright, here’s an interesting map of what Europe would look like, should all the current Independence movements in Europe get their way:
Conjecture of Europe 2020, by Chirol at ComingAnarchy.com
I’ve been reading the Creative Commons licenced New Liberal Arts over lunch. I underlined this quote from Diana Kimball:
Languages are everywhere, and everywhere they are crucial. By expanding the scope of “foreign languages” to include unspoken languages (such as Perl, Ruby, and HTML) and hyperverbal tongues (such as the vocabularies of science, slang, and religion), that scope begins to include tools not just of communication, but of invention.
I think ‘hyperverbal’ was precisely the word I wanted to use to describe the work of David Foster Wallace and Neal Stephenson. Instead, I came up with “a lustre of geekyness… peppered with idioms and slang.”
Its been a bit quiet on the blog this week. That’s because I’ve been at the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression in Oslo. I’ve been using Twitter to log noteworthy nuggets from the seminars and speeches, and may add some more substantial thoughts later.
In the meantime, here’s a compelling cartoon from the artist Magnus Bard. It features in the International Cartoon Exhibition, currently on show until 26th July at the Oscarsborg fortress in Oslo fjord.
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