June 2011

The End of Memoir II: Allison Benedikt and Life before Thinking

June 28, 2011

(Yesterday: The End of Memoir, part I) Though he did it not well, Jose Antonio Vargas, in “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” had a compelling reason to write. He is not merely affected by illegal immigration: he is, individually, a story of illegal immigration. He has lived the subterfuge, the fiction, and the uncertain [...]

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The End of Memoir: Allison Benedikt and Jose Antonio Vargas

June 27, 2011

Well, no, not really. But Fukuyama got a lot of mileage out of “The End of History,” and we’re still living it. People will keep on writing memoirs, long and short, and they’ve written bad ones before. This latest acme in the genre may not even have been reached yet. Still, there is a point [...]

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CineFile – Manhattan

June 26, 2011

I’m home in New York for awhile – Manhattan to be precise. Film by Woody Allen. City a joint project. The clip ends with the night of my arrival. Manhattan (1979) from circeo59 on Vimeo. Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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The Dream of the “Uncontacted”

June 24, 2011

According to Al Jazeera, Government researchers in Brazil say they have found one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest. Aerial pictures revealed by the Brazilian government’s agency of indigenous affairs (Funai) showed four large thatched huts fully surrounded by various crops in the Vale do Javari region. [...]

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NY State Senate Gay Marriage Debate

June 23, 2011

It ain’t the Constitutional Convention. The National Review Online today offers a truly bizarre joint op-ed by New York Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long and Democratic State Senator Ruben Diaz. It is bizarre because it can only be a testament to the depth of Diaz’s opposition to gay marriage that he would sign on to [...]

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The Moral Pathology of the UN Human Rights Council

June 17, 2011

There may be statements of this demopathy that will equal it, but no statement will ever be more essential or better and more illustratively timed. It is, of course, a pathology that afflicts many beyond the bad offices of the UNHRC. Hillel Neuer at the UN (H/T CiFWatch): Mr. President, History will record that the [...]

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Circumcision Cuts Both Ways (Ay, there’s the rub)

June 16, 2011

Circumcision has been in the news lately. (What makes it “news.”) More precisely, it is anti-circumcision sentiment that has been in the news. The issue is going to be on the ballot in San Francisco in November and was due to be considered in Santa Monica, California until the measure was withdrawn due to controversy. [...]

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A Lesson in Slanting on Israel & the Palestinians

June 12, 2011

Matthew Yglesias posted the briefest of responses to the just released Pew poll on various international and Mideast matters, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a pearl of a primer in slanted language and presentation – all in two sentences. I commented on it at Yglesisas’s blog. I told him he packed as much slanting [...]

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How We Lived on It (37) – “Knoxville: Summer of 1915″

June 9, 2011

I was explaining to a friend the other day why I think James Agee to be, if not a great writer, a writer of great distinction. While Agee’s life was too short (he died at 45) to provide the scope necessary for considerations of greatness, he certainly possessed the sheer talent – the prose chops. [...]

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Eating Poetry (XXVI) – “Whole”

June 6, 2011

Does serendipity tell us anything about the world? I suppose that question matters if one is seeking, like a physicist, to understand the world as something separate and independent of those who live in it. In that case we can make various claims, including that serendipity is only the happier among coincidences. If what concerns [...]

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