![theatlantic:
The Middling Hilarity of The Dictator
In David Mamet’s feature-film debut, House of Games, Joe Mantegna explained the art of the con thus: “It’s called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.” Sacha Baron Cohen, who has for most of his career been as much con artist as comic, knows this well. For all their linguistic and ideological variety, the characters he inhabited on the big and little screens—Ali G, Borat, Bruno—shared an exquisite credulity. All three got their marks to believe them by being utterly open to belief themselves.
It wasn’t merely his victims who were being conned, though. In his two big feature films, Boratand Bruno, Baron Cohen laid the high low and the low lower—but consistently in that sequence. He would win the audience over at the outset by afflicting the comfortable, be they feminists, fashionistas, or famous folk. But by the end he was heaping ridicule on rubes or racists: the realsuckers, not people like you or me or Sacha Baron Cohen. Funny as these bits sometimes were, there was a mean-spiritedness to them, an undercurrent of social superiority.
Whether because he feared we mugs were getting wise or he felt he had nobody left to con, Baron Cohen has dropped the mockumentary form for his new movie, The Dictator, opting for a straightforward scripted comedy. And while the film lacks the delirious daring of its predecessors, the sense of possibility and peril, it leaves a less unpleasant aftertaste.
Read more. [Image: Paramount Pictures]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m44f7fa0D61qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
The Middling Hilarity of The Dictator
In David Mamet’s feature-film debut, House of Games, Joe Mantegna explained the art of the con thus: “It’s called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.” Sacha Baron Cohen, who has for most of his career been as much con artist as comic, knows this well. For all their linguistic and ideological variety, the characters he inhabited on the big and little screens—Ali G, Borat, Bruno—shared an exquisite credulity. All three got their marks to believe them by being utterly open to belief themselves.
It wasn’t merely his victims who were being conned, though. In his two big feature films, Boratand Bruno, Baron Cohen laid the high low and the low lower—but consistently in that sequence. He would win the audience over at the outset by afflicting the comfortable, be they feminists, fashionistas, or famous folk. But by the end he was heaping ridicule on rubes or racists: the realsuckers, not people like you or me or Sacha Baron Cohen. Funny as these bits sometimes were, there was a mean-spiritedness to them, an undercurrent of social superiority.
Whether because he feared we mugs were getting wise or he felt he had nobody left to con, Baron Cohen has dropped the mockumentary form for his new movie, The Dictator, opting for a straightforward scripted comedy. And while the film lacks the delirious daring of its predecessors, the sense of possibility and peril, it leaves a less unpleasant aftertaste.
Read more. [Image: Paramount Pictures]
A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, it is an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
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— Naomi Wolf Interesting take on modern perceptions of beauty. But not the only reason why thinness is considered beautiful. Men and women both look fat on camera if they’re not skinny. Men and women won’t fit in chairs if they were too fat. Men and women will speak like bloated fish if they were too fat. So there! It’s a transgender phenomenon. Ps. Don’t say it… I know I give weird examples… |
She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.
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| — | Michael Ondaatje (via flentes) |
Up to 40,000 Norwegians staged an emotionally-charged sing-along in Oslo on Thursday near the court house where Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for the murder of 77 people in a protest organizers said showed he had not broken their tolerant society.
“It’s we who win,” said guitar-strumming folk singer Lillebjoern Nilsen as he led the mass sing-along and watched the crowd sway gently in the rain. Many held roses above their heads, and some wept.
The protest followed several days of defiant testimony from Breivik who has admitted he killed his victims in a blood soaked attack on Norway’s multicultural society, but denied criminal guilt, saying he did so in self-defense.
READ MORE: Thousands protest at trial of Anders Breivik
Check out my friend, gracefulflight’s instacanv (just click on the title). He’s an amazing photographer, an aspiring pilot, and one of the few people I truly respect for being able to live for his dreams.
Follow him!
Bruce Schneier, talking about the social and economic threats to the Internet’s infrastructure. RSA Conference Online.
Yesterday it was suggested our raccoon green bin graphic needed more Snoop Dogg. Wish = granted.
Saw the original on my dash and I had to
Essay by Joe Heim on the Washington Post
We’ve seen these images before. From Iraq and Afghanistan. From Bosnia and Berlin. Rwanda and Darfur. Okinawa and Vietnam.
No matter the war, no matter the perpetrator, what comes across in these photographs is almost always the same: They capture a moment where the humanity of both the living and the dead is absent.
War dehumanizes, desensitizes. It can break the spirits of great men and create monsters of schoolboys. And the history of warfare is accompanied by a history of trophy taking and desecration.
So, why are we still surprised?
Strange Charm: A Song about Quarks (by vlogbrothers)
Lyrics:
A quark is a fundamental constituent of matter
Observed in nineteen sixty eight through deep elastic scatter
We found that protons aren’t as simple as we thought
We thought they were solid particles but they are notProtons in fact are made up of three separate pieces
It just gets more confusing as our knowledge increases
But that is what a quark is, it’s a piece of a proton
And they also make up other things including the neutron[Chorus] Oh up down strange charm top bottom
If you don’t know what a quark is it don’t matter you still got ‘em.
And with leptons and bosons unless something’s amiss
They make up everything that we can see and that we know existsThings made up of quarks including protons and neutrons
Are composite particles that physicists call hadrons
Many types of hadrons are theoretically described
But most exist for only very brief amounts of timeQuarks have electric charge, colour mass and spin
And having colour charge means they exist solely
Inside of other kinds of particles and cannot exist alone
Which is why quarks have never been studied on their own[Chorus] Up down strange charm top bottom
If you don’t know what a quark is it don’t matter you still got ‘em.
And with leptons and bosons unless something’s amiss
They make up everything that we can see and that we know existsQuarks can join together in two different ways
Baryons and mesons, but most instantly decay
If a particle has three quarks, then it’s a baryon
And if there’s one quark and an anti-quark then it is a mesonThese tiny bits of matter are part of almost everything
And there is no unified theory to make it less confusing
But the fact that we’ve identified that they exist at all
Is so god damn remarkable that I just sit in awe[Chorus] Oh up down strange charm top bottom
If you don’t know what a quark is it don’t matter you still got ‘em.
And with leptons and bosons unless something’s amiss
They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists
The Los Angeles Times has released just two of 18 photographs depicting U.S. soldiers posing happily next to Afghan corpses, or pieces of bodies. As with previous such incidents, the dehumanization of the “enemy” – a virtual necessity in war – runs deep.
Other unreleased photos show “Two soldiers posed holding a dead man’s hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man’s hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading “Zombie Hunter” next to other remains and took a picture.”
The Army of course promised to “take appropriate action” against those involved, just after reciting the same line about how this isn’t representative of the rest of the soldiers. These are hard to listen to when news of such behavior is anything but new. It’s worth noting also that the U.S. military officials the Times approached to ask questions about the photos before their release, requested they not be published. Big surprise there.
The release of the images comes at a time when the Obama administration is losing its grip on the war. The last few months have held a number of high-profile failures and embarrassments. First, a video went viral depicting U.S. soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses. After that, the controversy over the U.S. Army’s burning of Muslim holy books sparked country-wide protests and violence. Then Staff Sgt. Robert Bales (& Co.) slaughtered 17 Afghan civilians in an unprovoked massacre of men, women, and children. Just last weekend, insurgents mounted spectacular coordinated attacks that set off an 18-hour battle with NATO forces, an indication of their annual spring offensive and a public relations embarrassment for the U.S. at what seems to be the lowest point in the war.
Another day, another embarrassing moment for the Americans. The justifications given by the LA Times for publishing those photos showed the lack of consideration for the consequences of their actions. And lack of respect for their government, and national prestige. Here’s what Editor Davan Maharaj has to say about this:
“We considered this very carefully,” Maharaj said. “At the end of the day, our job is to publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions. We have a particular duty to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan.”
The truth is, they are simply looking for a way to break through the clutter, and to capture the attention of the mass media. Not saying that posing next to the dead is all that ethically moral, but this information did not need to be published. The whole nation does not need to humiliated by the actions of a handful of boys.
