Posts by Jake Pollock
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double post: oh yeah, The Tempest. D'oh.
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I think Hermes was the greek messenger god. The original Hans Christian Anderson story, The Little Mermaid, doesn't have the name Ariel, so it may well appear first in the Disney movie, in which case it's theirs.
I imagine there's a large grey area where what we think of as the traditional story is actually the relatively recent invention of Walt Disney and co. They have a real hold over the popular imagination, and we might wonder, for instance, at what point the seven dwarves acquired their names. They didn't have them in the Brothers Grimm version. Of course, I don't know for sure, as my googling skills are not what they might be, but if Disney baptised those dwarves, then it really says a lot about the hold that corporate-US culture has over our imaginations.
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This book excerpt from the Guardian offers a slightly more nuanced version of the 'blame the left' meme than D'Souza's, and it's certainly worth a read. I'm not sure that I agree with him, but it's food for thought about what principles should be guiding left-wing thinking.
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I'm not an expert on Islamic history, but what I've gleaned from the backs of cereal boxes (and the occasional actual book) suggests that Islam is anything but the static, unchanging set of fundamentalist, anti-modern beliefs that we see in al-Qaeda and it's followers, and is, in fact, a very complex religion that has shifted often and in curious ways in response to changes within Muslim empires (which, after all, once spanned throughout Northern Africa, Southern Europe, the Balkans, South Asia, and South East Asia as far as Thailand and most of Indonesia) and in response to local condtexts.
For instance, in pre-19th Century Iran, Sufi-ism not only tolerated homosexual behaviour, it positively encouraged it, within strictly encoded parameters and in ways that are very different to our own concept of homosexuality. This practice wasn't restricted to the sufis either -- it made up the core conceptions of Iranian sex and gender discourse for centuries. Now, of course, Iranians get sex changes rather than run the risk of being gay, but the present far from characterises the past.
What we have seen in both the United States and in the Islamic world is a rise in fundamentalism that probably didn't exist in any great numbers before the 20th century. I don't really know why this has happened, or if the two fundamentalisms are somehow connected, but I'm pretty sure that, as Lyndon says, these golden ages that are being appealed to are fictions of the worst kind -- ones that claim to be absolutely true, that have can very real consequences, and that offer no opportunity to admit that they're fiction.
In terms of the Colbert interview, whilst I think that D-Souza has it dangerously wrong, I found Colbert's behaviour depressing. I know that it's satire, but Colbert didn't trick D'Souza into anything, unless you consider twisting someone's arm and making them say "uncle" a particularly clever trick. I don't. I call it bullying. Colbert barely let's D'Souza finish a sentence in the whole interview, and the bit where he "gets" him, D'Souza isn't allowed to say more than three words. Classy. If the tables had been turned, and D'Souza had been able to ask 'yes or no, do you agree with Al-Qaeda that the United States should not be in Iraq?', Colbert would have said yes (had he been out of character). I think Colbert should have given D'Souza enough rope to hang himself -- he would have been quite capable of it.
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I thought he came off quite well, if sounding like a middle-management is the name of the game. I like my politicians equivocating, mealy-mouthed and foaming sweet-nothings to the electorate. I particularly liked the bit about patriotism. That's what's wrong with New Zealand -- no patriotism. No matriotism either. And any guy that gets into politics because he finds it 'fascinating' and thinks it will be a good career is alright by me. New Zealand faces many problems today, and we need someone with no vision, no nous, and no committment to any kind of political ideas whatsoever if we're going to face them with mediocrity.
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Well, if they're going to build on the waterfront, they should at least make it into an advantage. Have a look at these two stadiums, which are on the river front, looking over downtown Pittsburgh.
PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates
Heinz Field, home of the Steelers
The Pirates couldn't win a punch up with a nine-year old, but people still go to the games just for the views. And these were built by a post-industrial, depressed little town with a shrinking population and a flat-lined economy.