-
THE FACE OF THE FRIEND
In my last, I mentioned Facebook 'friends'. With some French people I was discussing this, as it is of course translated 'amis' over there, and many people find that, well, weird. Why? Because, quite simply, Europeans instinctively, or rather culturally, don't define 'friend' the way North Americans do.
One of my favourite anecdotes on the subject ( Read more... ) -
THE FACE OF THE BOOK; THE BOOK OF THE FACE
I have said it before and I'll say it again: a) Facebook is admirable and enjoyable; b) Facebook is the enemy of blogs.
To a): I'm hearing a slow but growing murmur against Facebook, similar to the increasing hostility among the young to Starbucks. In both cases, this means that it has grown too successful to be exciting in a countercultural way ( Read more... ) -
THE MESS WE ARE IN (3)
The New York Times's reaction to the Euro-Mess is similiar to David Cameron's initial one, but hasn't (yet) evolved with his. The initial reaction of what the French call 'les Anglo-Saxons' is that the Euro-Zone should solve its own problems, and should do it damned fast as they are in danger of spreading. The implication is that the Euro- ( Read more... ) -
THE MESS WE ARE IN (2)
Are there ways out of the mess? That is what virtually all the Western (and not only the Western) world's politicians are wondering and working on. Scandals and the media (a scary synergy) have together created such a degree of public cynicism vis-à-vis all politics that the easy answer would be 'In any case not through you guys'. And yet, pace the ( Read more... ) -
THE MESS WE ARE IN
The charts put up by 'Business Insider' to explain the conditions that provoked 'Occupy Wall Street' and similar movements are devastating and convincing. What they do not do is either explain how and why things got that way or suggest ways out.
It is difficult for a non-economist (and even for some economists) to understand exactly what happened ( Read more... ) -
A DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
Your Excellency Mr President, Mr President of the Parliament, Madam Chancellor, Mr President of the Council, Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament,
It is an honour and a joy for me to address this important House -- before the parliament of my German motherland which meets here as a democratically elected representative of the people, in ( Read more... ) -
A POST-CIVILIZED LOVE-STORY
Palme d'Or at Cannes 1990, David Lynch's Wild At Heart is on my short list of perfect films -- films that, whatever their genre, are without flaw. WAH is based on a fairly awful short novel by Barry Gifford, which Lynch has turned into a passionate love-story in a post-civilized world. As someone wrote about Emily Brontë's scene of Heathcliff's ( Read more... ) -
WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION
Always drawn to those who go the whole way, in anything from rock-climbing to religion, I began looking at the Carthusians, the one order that has never needed to be reformed because it is as absolute now as it was when it was founded. Philip Gröning's wonderful film Into Great Silence thrilled me, and I have to taken to reading -- in between ( Read more... ) -
THE ACHE OF THE KNOWN
Nostalgia, said someone, isn't what it used to be. The word 'nostalgic', like 'sentimental', has a bad press. It's one of those things it's at best useless, at worst unhealthy, to be. It is also nearly universal.
All of us, as we get older (and it doesn't have to be very much older), have objects, or landscapes, or scenes, of nostalgia. Since ( Read more... )
