Oct 232011
 

India Knight India Knight: They call it TV news footage; I call it a sickening snuff movieOne of the best Brit­ish colum­nists is India Knight who today sums up not just my feel­ings, but cer­tainly those of many oth­ers. Here is some of her article:

Some­times I think that this column shouldn’t have my name as a byline, but rather “a granny writes”. It’s an annoy­ing thought, given that in my head I am so achingly mod­ern that it’s prac­tic­ally a curse, but some­times the gran­ni­ness just takes over and I feel like writ­ing whole chunks in incred­u­lous, shouty upper­case. Here is what granny won­ders dur­ing the week that Col­onel Muam­mar Gadaffi was killed: when did it become accept­able to show pic­tures of dead people on the front pages of news­pa­pers and on the home pages of web­sites and on tele­vi­sion, where you get not only phở­to­graphs but expli­citly grue­some foot­age, too?… [con­tinue reading]

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Aug 292011
 

It’s sort of sham­ing when you think about the kind of social unrest that’s been going on in Egypt or Syria or Libya, where people are demon­strat­ing against some­thing. The riots didn’t seem to be about any­thing, they were just focused on viol­ence and loot­ing … or have I missed something?

It’s no way to make any point, smash­ing win­dows and steal­ing shoes. And I don’t think it’s reflect­ive of Bri­tain today, I really don’t. That’s the upset­ting thing about it: people in other coun­tries will think of these trouble­makers as being sym­bolic of what Britain’s like at the moment. And that’s not been my exper­i­ence at all.

It’s all very well to say people in Peck­ham or wherever don’t have any money, but the people who were out on the streets were not steal­ing food.”

via The Sunday Times[con­tinue reading]

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Jul 302011
 

rex harrington and partner 400x224 Canadian ballet star Rex Harrington on same sex marriageSince retir­ing from bal­let in 2004, dance star Rex Har­ring­ton has been busy as a judge on So You Think You Can Dance – and plans for his wed­ding to Robert Hope. It’s fit­ting, then, that he’s chosen the theme of “part­ner­ship” for his stage time at Toronto’s Top Ten Event on Thursday, where 10 not­able Cana­dians will each spend 10 minutes reveal­ing the secrets to their suc­cess. Also not sur­pris­ing: his sup­port for this week’s slew of mar­riages in New York, which just leg­al­ized same-sex unions.

What are your reflec­tions on why same-sex mar­riage is such an import­ant right? You’re about to get married…

We were, but now we post­poned it another year or so. [He laughs.] It’s not that I’m get­ting cold feet!… [con­tinue reading]

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Jul 272011
 

David Ber­reby on bigthink.com swims against the cur­rent of pop­u­lar opin­ion and the flood of outpourings…

Amy Winehouse healthy We dont all need to make old bones   swimming against the Winehouse tideWhy do we think longev­ity so nat­ural and right? In part, I think, it’s because we think of it as the byproduct of liv­ing well: We like to think the traits that make life sweet are those that make it long. But this long-term study of longev­ity over dec­ades sug­gests that’s not so. Over 20 years, Howard S. Fried­man, a psy­cho­lo­gist at the Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia, River­side, and his col­leagues stud­ied 1,500 “gif­ted” chil­dren iden­ti­fied in 1921 by Louis Ter­man, a psy­cho­lo­gist at Stan­ford. Friedman’s team looked at the life­time data on these kids, who were about ten when first identified—their rela­tion­ships, their per­son­al­it­ies (as repor­ted by teach­ers and par­ents) edu­ca­tions, work his­tory and so on.… [con­tinue reading]

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