Working the Mekong, Laos
We took a two hour motorized long-boat ride up the Mekong this morning. The first destination was an enormous cave …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Luang Prabang, Laos
Out of the ghastly big city of Bangkok to the sweet, old river-town of Louang Phrabang where the ‘low’ Lao …
Did Gifted Generals Win the War?
Andrew Bacevich, former colonel in the US Army, and now professor of International Relations at Boston University reviews two books …
The Human Condition: What Is A Man to Do? Japan in Defeat
Masaki Kobayashi’s war time epic, The Human Condition, at 9 hours and 45 minutes, in black and white, with subtitles …
Literary Festival in Rangoon
I would think that many, especially the young, would be dizzy with excitement in the ‘new’ Burma/Myanmar. After decades of …
Zero Dark Thirty: Normalizing Torture
I have posted previously that after a thorough examination of reviews and opinions about Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, I …
The Abolitionists: When so Few Did so Much
I’ve really learned a lot viewing the three-part PBS series, The Abolitionists. Having a lived a life committed to nonviolence …
The Guardian: A TV Show Worth Some Time
In our house television mostly serves as a movie screen — runs on French new-wave auteurs, old chestnuts from Hollywood’s …
The Good Soldier Švejk — Anarchic Humor Against War
Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, ‘a certified idiot,’ tickles us into an anti-war, anti-militarism, anti-bureaucracy mood the more we read. Unlike …
Easter Island: Object Lesson — but in What?
Last week at one of Long Now Foundation’s ongoing, and always interesting, seminars two archaeologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, presented evidence …
More Movie Violence: Staying On the Wagon
After holding myself into my seat to get to the end of Quentin Tanrantino’s Inglorious Basterds several years ago I …
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power: Rachel Madow
Drift, by MSNBC’s popular news show host, Rachel Maddow, combines an easy and difficult read in one volume. Easy because …