Proof, Stanley Hoffmann, Dau, Hitler, Gore Vidal
Why Doesn’t God Provide Scientific Proof Of His Existence?
Anonymous | Quora | 4th October 2015
Whatever you think this will be like, it isn't: man meets God on the 8.20 train from Paddington. "He was about 30, wearing a pair of jeans and a "hobgoblin" tee shirt. Definitely casual. Looked like he could have been a social worker or perhaps a programmer like myself." Unexcerptable, indescribable: just read it. The future of humanity may depend on it... (5,570 words)
Europe For The Right Reasons
Michal Matlak | New York Review of Books | 5th October 2015
The late Stanley Hoffmann on Harvard colleagues Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, John F. Kennedy (and brothers Bobby and Teddy), Barack Obama, Charles de Gaulle, the E.U., and the future of Europe. Twenty years ago Americans used to view Europe politically – the threats and power balances of the 19th and 20th centuries were still in force. Nowadays, "Americans who are interested in Europe tend to be historians" (2,370 words)
Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s “Dau”
James Meek | London Review Of Books | 8th October 2015
For the “ultra-elaborate artistic experiment” Dau, hundreds of volunteer actors were filmed around the clock “living, sleeping, eating, gossiping, working, loving, betraying each other and being punished in character;” they “lived their fantasy lives with enough intensity for 14 children to be conceived on set.” The film may have been "most fully realised" not on the screen but "in the emotions of those who enacted it" (3,570 words)
Hitler’s Drug Addiction
Andrea Maurer | Guernica | 28th September 2015
“At the end… [Hitler] had lost his teeth, he was drooling and he was hallucinating.” Argues that abuse of drugs played a significant role in the lives of both senior Nazi officials (opioids) and the regular German army ("Pervitin, a pill form of Crystal Meth"). Suggests that Hitler’s addiction to Eukodal, a preform of heroin, led to his downfall. "Hitler became a dictator on drugs, a strict vegetarian using animal hormones" (1,570 words)
Gore Vidal Vs. Academe
Jay Parini | Chronicle Of Higher Education | 21st September 2015
"Teaching has killed more good writers than alcohol," said Gore Vidal, who never went to college. A winding and namedrop-filled profile by a friend of the author. Vidal's generation – including Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Updike, and Joan Didion – "earned a living by their pens," or by journalism or business if necessary. Only later did writers get sucked into academia. "It’s a terrible distraction" (3,180 words)
Video of the day: Gone
What to expect: Music video of freed legs by Jr Jr (4’19”)
Thought for the day
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong
Voltaire