24 August 2010

PJ O'Rourke returns to form with a piece on Afghanistan

Traditionalism being one of the things that makes Afghanistan so hard for Americans to understand. We Americans have so many traditions. For instance our political traditions date back to the 12th-century English Parliament if not to the Roman Senate. Afghans, on the other hand, have had the representative democracy kind of politics for only six years. Afghanistan’s political traditions are just beginning to develop. A Pashtun tribal leader told me that a “problem among Afghan politicians is that they do not tell the truth.” It’s a political system so new that that needed to be said out loud. [ The 72-Hour Expert ]

Uncensored and off-the-record

The rise and fall of Confidential magazine

Why taxes are low in the Middle East

Brian Whitaker

As a rule of thumb, high taxes can act as a spur towards democracy and accountable government. Conversely, where taxes are low the pressure for democracy and accountability is usually less.

TIME announces new magazine aimed at grown-ups

TIME Advanced is to be produced for readers who already know where Pakistan is

17 August 2010

The slow whiny death of British Christianity

Johann Hari

Carey and the CofE demand Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public – and that any case where a Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court of “sensitive” Christians. If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975, the Mormon Church said black people didn’t have souls. (They only changed their mind the day the (US) Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be “Mormonophobia” to object?

An interactive post on the Guerilla War waged by hippies 1965-1970

This fascinating interactive graphic that shows the low-level guerilla war that the ‘hippies’ waged against the ‘system’ between 1965 and 1970. Over 716 police stations, schools, and military installations in the US were subjected to bombs, Molotov cocktails, or general destruction. Nobody talks of this any longer.

The graphic originated from a 1971 edition of Scanlan’s Monthly, which featured writers like Hunter S Thompson and illustrators like a young Robert Crumb.

12 August 2010

The Last Days of Disco

Gerard Cosloy, co-founder of the independent Matador Records

Record labels aren’t nearly as fucking smart as they think they are, otherwise they’d have found a way to have done away with these pesky artists. Conversely, who is actually thriving without the benefit of a trad record label?

10 August 2010

The best magazine article ever is about Amway

I came across this article today, the Best Magazine Articles Ever, and was pleased at the quality of the list and, indeed, how many I have read over the years.

But there is a glaring omission. In 1997, the Baffler published in its tenth edition a feature article by Matt Roth entitled Dreams Incorporated: Living the Delayed Life with Amway.

Roth uses his anthropology background to follow the lives of some people who believe that Amway will fill the void, spiritual as well as financial, in their lives. Like the Amway system, he follows the levels from the sad sacks at the bottom to the high-rollers at the top. It’s a sad and angry piece and, 13 years later, I can still recall the elegance of Roth’s writing.

I’m not sure when this happened, but the Baffler has started giving away the first volume, all 17 editions, for free as PDFs. You can find them here.

I don’t yet have an iPad, but this is the perfect thing to read in iBooks. I’ve put them on my iPhone book reader and it’s great bedtime reading.

Dreams Incorporated can be found in Number 10. [PDF] The story begins on page 39.

07 July 2010

Vancouver FC aka The Whitecaps

Brand New has an insightful article on the evolution of the logo of Vancouver’s soccer/football team

Love the Avenir typeface. But it is hard to take the nickname ‘Whitecaps’ referring to the mountaintops rather than the waves.

05 July 2010

Copyright termination

It’s obviously based on the American experience, but this audio discussion of copyright termination is fascinating.

In it, copyright guru David Nimmer, UC Berkeley Professor Peter Menell and UCLA Professor Doug Lichtman discuss copyright disputes of Superman, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Lassie, and Winnie the Pooh.

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