The Clash of Civilizations (and the Passing of its Author)

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | December 29th, 2008

When the twin tow­ers were tak­en down in Sep­tem­ber 2001, Amer­i­ca looked to make sense of what hap­pened. And it was­n’t long before many start­ed turn­ing to The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order, a book writ­ten by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, the Har­vard poli sci pro­fes­sor who passed on last week.

The book itself was an elab­o­ra­tion upon a con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle that Hunt­ing­ton pub­lished in For­eign Affairs in 1993. In the open­ing lines, he wrote: “World pol­i­tics is enter­ing a new phase… It is my hypoth­e­sis that the fun­da­men­tal source of con­flict in this new world will not be pri­mar­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal or pri­mar­i­ly eco­nom­ic. The great divi­sions among humankind and the dom­i­nat­ing source of con­flict will be cul­tur­al. Nation states will remain the most pow­er­ful actors in world affairs, but the prin­ci­pal con­flicts of glob­al pol­i­tics will occur between nations and groups of dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tions. The clash of civ­i­liza­tions will be the bat­tle lines of the future.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly he sug­gest­ed, it would be the “West ver­sus the Rest,” and with­in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, he lumped in Islam.

Below, we have post­ed Hunt­ing­ton’s 1997 appear­ance on the Char­lie Rose show, where he expand­ed on his world view. You can also get Edward Said’s gen­er­al retort, The Myth of the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions, here and Noam Chom­sky’s thoughts on the con­cept here.

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Remembering Harold Pinter

in Theatre | December 26th, 2008

Harold Pin­ter, the Nobel Prize-win­ning play­wright, died in Lon­don on Wednes­day. As The New York Times obit men­tions, when Pin­ter won the Nobel in 2005, his declin­ing health pre­vent­ed him from attend­ing the awards cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm. Instead, he gave his accep­tance lec­ture  — “Art, Truth & Pol­i­tics” — via a record­ed video, which we’re post­ing below. (You can also watch it on the Nobel web site here or alter­na­tive­ly read the tran­script.) The speech runs a good 45 min­utes.

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David Lynch on His Favorite Movies and Filmmakers

in Film | December 22nd, 2008

In a quick 59 sec­onds, David Lynch tells you the films and film­mak­ers that he likes best (see below). In equal­ly suc­cinct videos, though with a bit more salty lan­guage (read: lan­guage that’s not ide­al for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on prod­uct place­ment and the whole con­cept of watch­ing a movie on an iPhone. 

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Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 — Karajan or Muppet Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | December 21st, 2008

A cou­ple of big blogs recent­ly high­light­ed a clip of the Mup­pets doing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s cute, and I was hard­ly sur­prised that the video logged 3.6 mil­lion views on YouTube.

Not far behind, at 3.2 mil­lion views, is a long video show­ing Her­bert Von Kara­jan lead­ing a live per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Ninth. The fact that Kara­jan, one of the world’s best-known con­duc­tors, lags behind a bunch of pup­pets is unfor­tu­nate, no doubt. But it’s also heart­en­ing in some ways. It tells me that high cul­ture is still com­pet­ing for an audi­ence. So here it goes. Kara­jan in action:

(You can get Part 2 here, and we’ve added both clips to our YouTube Favorites. Also you can find more vin­tage Beethoven/Karajan footage in this guy’s video col­lec­tion.)

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It’s a Wonderful (Scratch That, Miserable) Life

in Film | December 19th, 2008

About the Christ­mas clas­sic, “It’s a Won­der­ful Life,” a New York Times op-ed had this to say today:

It “is any­thing but a cheery hol­i­day tale.” It “is a ter­ri­fy­ing, asphyx­i­at­ing sto­ry about grow­ing up and relin­quish­ing your dreams, of see­ing your father dri­ven to the grave before his time, of liv­ing among bit­ter, small-mind­ed peo­ple. It is a sto­ry of being trapped, of com­pro­mis­ing, of watch­ing oth­ers move ahead and away, of becom­ing so filled with rage that you ver­bal­ly abuse your chil­dren, their teacher and your oppres­sive­ly per­fect wife. It is also a night­mare account of an end­less home ren­o­va­tion.”

And, with that, we present the 1947 film direct­ed by Frank Capra and star­ring James Stew­art:

 
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Top Ten Versions of Leonard Cohen’s Classic “Hallelujah”

in Music | December 18th, 2008

Hat tip to Bob for tip­ping us off to this col­lec­tion put togeth­er by The Mir­ror in the UK. They take  Leonard Cohen’s clas­sic “Hal­lelu­jah” (lis­ten below) and then bring you the ten best cov­er ver­sions. On the list, you’ll find ver­sions by Bob Dylan, John Cale (founder of The Vel­vet Under­ground), Rufus Wain­wright, Jeff Buck­ley, among oth­ers.

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Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | December 14th, 2008

Ayn Rand’s clas­sic gets dust­ed off and humor­ous­ly brought into 2008 over at McSweeney’s. Worth a read. 

As a side note, you may want to revis­it the New York Times 2007 piece, Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism, which talks about the influ­ence that Atlas Shrugged (and its free mar­ket phi­los­o­phy) has had on For­tune 500 CEOs and par­tic­u­lar­ly Alan Greenspan, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al Reserve, who helped archi­tect the dereg­u­lat­ed bank­ing sys­tem that’s now unwind­ing around us. Belat­ed­ly, Greenspan would acknowl­edge a “flaw in the mod­el” that he “per­ceived is the crit­i­cal func­tion­ing struc­ture that defines how the world works” — which is a fan­cy way of say­ing “on sec­ond thought, maybe the free mar­kets don’t always reg­u­late them­selves.” And there we have it, anoth­er utopi­an ide­ol­o­gy col­lides with real­i­ty. Not the first, and it won’t be the last.

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40 Inspirational Film Speeches in 2 Minutes

in Film | December 12th, 2008

Let’s ease into the week­end on a high note:

via Life­hack­er via Over­thinkin­git

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Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Circa 1970

in Comedy, Television | December 11th, 2008

Bad clothes, real­ly bad TV sets, not so good hair, and some briefly good com­e­dy — that’s what you get when Woody Allen hits the Dick Cavett Show in or around 1970. Watch it below, and get oth­er seg­ments here, here, and here. And find it on our YouTube Favorites.

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Animated Aurora Borealis

in Science, Video - Science | December 10th, 2008

While work­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, Astro­naut Don Pet­tit cre­at­ed this remark­able video of the auro­ra bore­alis (oth­er­wise known as The North­ern Lights). How? By stitch­ing togeth­er a large sequence of still images that he took from space. It makes for some good view­ing.

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via NYTimes DotEarth