BBC Radio "In Our Time" show

The BBC Radio has a show called In Our Time which explores the "history of ideas." They recently had a show on Machiavelli, who was also recently written about in a Salon.com book review.

Brazil governor vetoes walls around Rio slums

A Yahoo! News article is saying that Rio's state governor vetoed a plan to erect walls around the city's slums to protect residents from stray bullets from gang wars. Anybody see that movie City of God?

Scientists Raise Alarm About Ocean Health

If you've ever read Timescape by Gregory Benford, you know about the nightmare scenario of what happens when the global food chain is disrupted at the lowest (e.g., plankton) levels. Yahoo! is running a story which indicates that scientists may be observing that scenario right now.

Colm Toibin on plot in his new novel and Henry James

I'm reading The Master. In an NPR interview, Toibin said:

"James's stories are really much better [than Toibin's Master]. They're much better organized in terms of plot and development. I had to stick to the facts, you know, and the facts of an ordinary life don't give you the great shape of one of those cathedrals of stories that James made for something like The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove."

G8 Information Centre

I don't know if there is a more official one, but there's a U. of Toronto web site that has a lot of documentation on the G8 group.

Captain Obvious from Homeland Security raises terror level

Yahoo! News, via AP, reports that "The Bush administration is raising the terror alert to code orange for mass transit in the wake of London explosions, U.S. officials said Thursday." Is this what we're paying billions of dollars for? Telling us to watch out on public transportation after there was a major terrorist attack at another metropolitan subway? How did we get to the point where a) this kind of information qualifies as news and isn't instantly ridiculed, or dismissed as irrelevant by the press, as it should be, and 2) our government has the nerve to say things like this as if it is acting in an official capacity? This is damage control, ass-covering, and nothing else. I live in a corrupt, police state, and am lied to by my elected officials daily on matters that concern life and death.

books I have from the library

Want to know what books I have checked out of the library right now? (Do I have a choice? you ask.) :

Europe Central, by William T. Vollman
You Bright and Risen Angels, by William T. Vollman
The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto Che Guevara
The Seasons of a Man's Life, by Daniel Levinson
Hatchet Jobs, by Dale Peck
Refusing Heaven, by Jack Gilbert
The Master, by Colm Toibin
The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
The Sleeper, by Christopher Dickey

The Toibin and Roth books are one-week express checkout, so there's probably a slim chance I'll get both of them read. The Motorcycle Diaries I started, and it's good, so I'll probably finish that. Europe Central is enormous, I'll be satisfied if I finish just a single story in that. I want to read them all, though. Sigh ... so many good books, so little time.

I finished Snow, by the way, and it was fantastic. Orhan Pamuk is my new favorite author of the moment.

cool New Yorker article about US/Iran/Israel intelligence

The New Yorker is running an article this week about come (former?) employees/members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who are either indicted or being indicted for espionage. The government claims they passed American intelligence on Iran to Israel. Reading this kind of article, which never seems as authentic or exciting as it does coming from this magazine (compare U.S. News, which blows), always makes me want to join the CIA. But only the black ops units like the one Jason Bourne was in.

volunteer vacations

There's an interesting article on Yahoo! News about volunteer vacations, which are apparently gaining popularity. There's a list of organizations that promote this kind of thing. Maybe they can pay for my next trip to Brazil.