The Kestner Foundation in Hannover is currently showing the films of Michaël Borremans. I've only seen stills from the films, like this one, from "Taking Turns" (2009):
Even viewed as still images alone, however, the work is incredibly arresting.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
(FromKung Fu Monkey; hat-tip, Penny Dreadfuls)
Leave it to 3quarksdaily to pick the strongest of Drago Persic's oil paintings from his 2007 show at the Engholm Engelhorn Gallery, this one, Untitled (2007):
Still, I couldn't help featuring Persic's work here as well.
It's here, and it's .... awesome.
One initial quibble: if the analogy is to hold, group 18 on the table should correspond to the noble inert gases -- i.e., items in column 18 should not really combine easily with other items on the table.
But #2, Ninjas, the top item in column 18, naturally combines with #23 (throwing stars), #41 (nunchucks), and #42 (daggers) -- plus, I could easily imagine there being video games (#77) out there in which there are ninjas with boobs (#13).
A fatal flaw in the table? Doubtful. But clearly there are still some kinks that need working out.
I'm not sure gay marriage can avert the impending economic doom, but "Prop 8 - The Musical" is pretty funny nonetheless.
(From The Big Picture.)
Regardless of what you think of John McCain, particularly given the sleaziness to which his campaign has stooped, it is undeniable that he served the United States for decades, often in a manner that demonstrated real integrity, judgment and personal courage.
Now, as earlier posts of mine should have indicated, I feel very strongly that Barack Obama -- and not John McCain -- should be the next president of the United States. Certainly, he doesn't match McCain with respect to McCain's decades of service. Nevertheless, Obama brings many qualities to the office that make him more qualified than McCain: Obama's obvious intelligence, his equanimity under pressure, his creation and management of the largest, most efficient, most democratic (small-"D"!) presidential campaign in history.
Furthermore, aside from questions of mere competence, one must also consider a candidate's agenda: a competent candidate committed to a wrong-headed agenda would not be desirable. I happen to think Obama's approach to the domestic problems that face this country (health care, in particular), his commitment somehow to extricate us from our disastrous experiment in Iraq and to realign the United States with the prevailing international consensus on the rule of law and the threat of global climate change, and his promise to redress the conservative imbalance that currently exists in our nation's federal courts are correct; all stand in stark contrast to McCain's long-held and starkly conservative positions.
It would seem that a majority of Americans now agree with me in preferring Obama to McCain. Why, then, am I depressed?
Here's why. Regardless of what any thinking person thinks of McCain or Obama, there is some sense in which one could recognize that neither of them would be undeserving of the office of the presidency. Sarah Palin, however? I'm not alone in thinking that it would be a travesty if Palin became president.
In particular, then, I would think that it would be a travesty if Sarah Palin had a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain. Given this, I would be depressed to discover that Sarah Palin has a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain. As Alex Tabarrok (over at Marginal Revolution) notes, however, it is in fact very plausible that Sarah Palin has a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain.
Tabarrok, following the betting markets, gives McCain about a 16% chance of winning the presidency. Should McCain win, Palin could become president either by assuming the presidence should McCain die in office or as McCain's successor; let's put that chance at 40%. Since many are already suggesting that Palin will be a Republican standard-bearer in 2012 should McCain lose in '08, we have to figure some chance that Palin could win the presidency as the Republican nominee in '12; Tabarrok puts that chance at a (very conservative) 12%.
Given these probabilities, we have:
Pr(Sarah Palin=President) = (0.16*0.4) + (0.84*0.12) = 16.48 > 16% = Pr(John McCain = President)
Thus, I'm depressed. Q.E.D.
In their latest attempt to smear Obama by association, the McCain/Palin ticket is criticizing the LA Times for their refusal to release video of a dinner at which Obama apparently praised Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, currently the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and former Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
As reported on the Huffington Post (here), however, McCain has his own history with Khalidi:
In regards to Khalidi ... the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
As Cass Sunstein notes in yesterday's TNR, it seems that McCain's endgame involves hammering Barack Obama on the tax issue.
As an analysis provided by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center makes clear, however, Obama's tax plans are good news for the vast majority of Americans -- much better news, in fact, than McCain's plans:
(Thanks to Kevin Drum for the graph, based on the Tax Policy Center results.)
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