a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Friday, May 07, 2004 Gone to Indonesia
Back in June. Visit the Richard Mitchell pages or even Politics and Prose, if you're bored. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:36 PM Thursday, May 06, 2004 Abu GhraibLast year I argued to a bunch of friends that if Bush honestly believed he had the moral stature to wage a war of democracy in the Middle East then he was in for a bitter surprise. (I think I said he was showing "too much hubris and not enough self-awareness.") Abu Ghraib is where the surprise begins.UPDATE: Josh Marshall has "another example of how a war for liberal democracy can't be run by the most illiberal people in our society." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:55 PM Wednesday, May 05, 2004 Apotik Komik in San Francisco
These are details from two murals built by Indonesian artists from the former Apotik Komik. They have a taste for comic-book-inspired nightmare scenes, and they don't stick strictly to paint: Notice the Potato Heads on the back of Rainbow Grocery (above), and a handful of winged men on the side of Le Beau Nob Hill Market (below), have plywood bodies. These murals belong to a cultural-exchange project. You can look at what American muralists painted on Yogyakarta walls here. 
Thanks to Steven Jones for the photos. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:09 PM Tuesday, May 04, 2004 The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street ShuffleGreg McIlvaine introduces his son to a great rock 'n' roll album. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:55 PMWhat a CrockLast fall, a poet named Jan Richman lost her job over a violent story one of her fiction students wrote for a class at the San Francisco Academy of Art. The Academy asked her not to come back for another term when certain authorities learned she'd assigned her class a violent story by David Foster Wallace ("The Girl With the Curious Hair"), which supposedly encouraged the student. Except that these authorities called him "George Foster Wallce." Why are the skittish idiots who want to blame everything on books always the ones who don't read?Anyway, Michael Chabon sprang to Richman's defense. Here's his opinion on the matter from the New York Times, as blogged by 3Jake. ... and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it. It's not quite as neat as that: Some art does inspire mayhem and murder. The Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, various songs by Ozzy or Judas Priest -- even the Bible has inspired it. The point is not that art never plants unhealthy ideas in impressionable heads. The point is that banning worrisome books will never help because the first job of a school, even an Art Academy, is to educate kids, meaning literally to free them, so they won't be so impressionable. There's also a strong but not-airtight case that anti-depressants, more than movies or books, drive kids to violent fantasies and violence. The FDA says anti-depressants might implode the psyches of certain people -- not just teenagers -- and turn them suicidal. If that's true, then the case may be closed, since the rage of Eric Harris and Kip Kinkel (both on anti-depressants) was basically suicidal rage turned outward. C. Max Magee at The Millions thinks this Art Academy controversy will be good for the kid's writing career, which depresses me. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:12 PM Monday, May 03, 2004 Hang OnLA Observed blogs about a California survey in the new Economist, and points out that our state has the sixth-largest economy in the world (ahead of China). That's common knowledge, I think. For a while we were neck-and-neck with France for number five. But Kevin at LA Observed adds:(Los Angeles County is 10th, ahead of Russia.) I did not know that. UPDATE: The Economist text says L.A. County would be the 16th-largest economy in the world, just ahead of Russia, if it were a country by itself. But the Economist graphic puts it at number ten. This LookSmart article might explain the discrepancy, but the facts are a few years old. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:39 PM Sunday, May 02, 2004 CuriouserNow that Abu Bakar Ba'ashir is under arrest on terrorism charges, it's worth pointing out that he may have opposed the Bali bombings, at least according to the International Crisis Group. Not that this lets him off the hook; he likes to deny Jemaah Islamiyah 1) exists or 2) resorts to terrorism, when in fact 1) he helped organize it, and 2) he approved a string of Jemaah-orchestrated church bombings in 2000 across Indonesia.However, according to the International Crisis Group: The hardliners within JI and the strategists of its bombing campaigns have reportedly fallen out with Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, whom they consider insufficiently radical. He and some of his closest followers were reportedly opposed to the Bali bombings for tactical reasons. Last night I mentioned to another critic here that I was leaving for Indonesia, and he said, "Oh no." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:47 PM | |
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