David Hasselhoff got busted on suspicion of drunk driving.
Good Life
I’m sitting on an Aeron chair in a luxury hotel in San Francisco, where I’ll be attending the BIO conference. The first game of the NBA finals is playing on the Gateway flatscreen atop the minbar. Sun Ra is playing on my iPod, singing about Love in Outer Space.
I spent the day up in Napa with my publisher and my associate editor, visiting vineyards and having a fantastic lunch. If I complain about my job, please hit me.
Did Pythagoras invent the triangle offense?
Dave D’Alessandro on the Lakers:
Two millennia and four centuries ago, Pericles observed that an empire, once acquired, is a very dangerous thing to let go. Of course, he was more preoccupied with establishing a democracy while fighting off the plague, so his problems were different from Phil Jackson’s.
Unfortunately, I think the Lakers are going to win the finals in 5 games, which is much better than the Athenians ended up doing.
State of the Arts
Frank Hughes on the importance of the Royal Academy for revitalizing the fine arts:
[W]hen everything is included in the game, there is no game to be ahead of. A string of brush marks on a lace collar in a Vel�squez can be as radical as the shark that an Australian caught for a couple of Englishmen some years ago and is now murkily disintegrating in its tank on the other side of the Thames. More radical, actually.. . .
In the 45 years that I’ve been writing criticism there has been a tragic depreciation in the traditional skills of painting and drawing, the nuts and bolts of the profession. In part it has been caused by the assumption that it’s photography and its cognate media–film and TV–that tell the most truth about the visual.
It’s not true. The camera, if it’s lucky, may tell a different truth to drawing–but not a truer one. Drawing brings us into a different, a deeper and more fully experienced relation to the object. A good drawing says: “not so fast, buster”. We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media.
I have a lot of thoughts on this subject, and I’ll try to write about it next week. I’m heading off to the big biotech conference in San Francisco tomorrow, which’ll be followed by a leisurely drive down the California coast to visit friends in San Diego, but I’ll try to get some blogging in (and maybe post some neat pix from the trip in progress).
Thanks to Arts & Letters for the link.
“I bet I outlive you!”
I was thinking about George Tenet’s resignation today. It struck me as weird timing. I mean, yeah, it came years too late, but it seems to be awfully odd that it happens just now, with the election impending.
But then it hit me! He wasn’t caving into pressure! He was waiting!
George Tenet is Bart Giamatti to Ahmad Chalabi’s Pete Rose!
Buggin’ Out!
My buddy Jess sent me this link to one of the eeriest slideshows ever. I thought of calling it “Midwife of Butterflies,” but felt that was too close to the title of one of those weird femme-wicca-type books.
The official VM girlfriend wanted to name this entry Fer Chrysalis’ Sake!
Hmm. Maybe discretion really IS the better part of valor . . .
Evidently, the new Spanish prime minister has awarded military medals to his generals who withdrew troops from Iraq. The defense minister gave his back, out of embarrassment. No word on whether he threw his medals (or someone else’s) over a fence.
Rock On
In theory, I’m glad that this line of books exists. I’ll have to delve into it at some point, maybe starting with the book on Sign ‘O’ The Times.
Sudan Again
Added a Sudan crisis link to the blogroll. And here’s an article from the Financial Times calling for EU action to stop the genocide:
The Security Council should in addition authorise all measures short of force to be used against Sudan and warn Khartoum of international military intervention if it does not alter its course. Only such an ultimatum will demonstrate that the international community means it when it says “never again” — that we are not going to stand by as another mass slaughter of innocents unfolds before our eyes.
Glory
This weekend, my friend Stacy asked me what techniques I use to get myself out of my depressive spirals. I told her that I think about all the wonders and blessings of my life. Here’s the view from my backyard this evening:
