Have a look at this eye-popping stuff from the Hubble Telescope. It may take a short while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The combination of the moving images and the music by Australian Web designer Richard Pree evinces a feeling of otherworldliness rivaling anything by Stanley Kubrick. Some people say the images resemble abstract paintings. […]
Archives for December 2003
91 YEARS YOUNG
Leave it to Studs Terkel to put things in perspective. “Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster,” he tells Salon in an interview about his latest book, “Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times.” Here’s the full quotation and the context: You notice I dedicate the book to a […]
THE WEAK STUFF
What’s wrong with this picture? Roy Disney’s resignation from the board of the Walt Disney Company was big news yesterday. Today, Sharon Waxman, in a follow-up in The New York Times, reports: “Roy Disney’s parting words to the company his uncle built were harsh, but few resonated more painfully than the charge that the Walt […]
DER GROPE MEETS
THE UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR
The time was 1991. The place was the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. Der Gropenfuhrer helicoptered in from the set of the first “Terminator” sequel. The Unindicted Co-Conspirator was star struck. It was a meeting of minds. “I’m a Republican because of Richard Nixon,” Der Grope proclaimed. Is he “a Nixon Republican at heart?” Sandy […]
JUST SO WE DON’T FORGET
It yesterday’s news, I know, but worth a reminder: Donald Rumsfeld won < EM>“Foot in Mouth” honors from Britain’s Plain English Campaign for most baffling comment by a public figure, defeating Der Grope for the booby prize. In case you don’t recall, here’s Rumsfeld’s winning remark: “Reports that say something hasn’t happened are always interesting […]
MUGS’ PRIMER
No movies for me over the big L-tryptophanic weekend. I spent it luxuriating in the novels of Eric Ambler, the daddy of all thriller writers. Never a huge fan of genre fiction, I’d read some of the mystery and spy classics by the usual suspects — Hammett, Chandler, le Carré, Forsythe, Leonard and a few others — […]