Burnin’

Media critic Norman Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death has been made into a movie by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. It’s narrated by Sean Penn.

Guided by Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

Jim Hightower suggests the book, which came out in 2005, is a must read:

If you want to help prevent another war (Iran? Syria?), read War Made Easy now. This is a stop-the-presses book filled with mind-blowing facts about Washington’s warmongers who keep the Pentagon budget rising. It would be funny if people weren’t dying. War Made Easy exposes the grisly game and offers the information we need to stop it.

For more, visit WarMadeEasy.org.

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” -from Atlas Shrugged

The New York Times Business section is marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Rand celebrates industry and the power of individual contributions. To her, these are the central engines working for good in the world.

The novel begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt (an inventor of a revolutionary new motor powered by ambient static electricity), calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.

Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.”

The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of “greed is good.” Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out.

According to the article, Rand’s fans include many captains of industry. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time in college life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made success seem rational.

J.G. Ballard’s workspace

Jason Kottke points to a Guardian feature on writers’ rooms.

British writer J.G. Ballard describes his work environment:

On the desk is my old manual typewriter, which I recently found in my stair cupboard. I was inspired by a letter from Will Self, who wrote to me on his manual typewriter. So far I have just stared at the old machine, without daring to touch it, but who knows? The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don’t think a great book has yet been written on computer.

Ballard has worked at the desk pictured above for the past 47 years.

Two of Ballard’s novels–Crash (1973) and Empire of the Sun (1984)–have been made into Hollywood films.

American designer, architect and filmmaker Charles Eames–who together with his wife Ray, was responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century–appeared on the Arlene Francis “Home” show on NBC in 1956. It’s neat to see Eames on TV, but this episode is also an odd reminder of how square things were in 1950s America.

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.

Experts say they are “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.

So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia’s Arctic coast could open later this month.

If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

[via Guardian Unlimited]

Back porch, Cafe Driade, Chapel Hill, NC

Over the past two days I’ve enjoyed sipping fine espresso thanks to the efforts of Scott Conary at Carrboro Coffee Company and the baristas at Cafe Driade in Chapel Hill. Like wine, coffee is culture, and culture is found in intelligent places. Chapel Hill is an intelligent place.

Author and recovering zinester, Pagan Kennedy, has a funny essay in the Times Sunday Book Review about literary corners of MySpace.

I’d jumped into the social-networking site after a fellow author told me I absolutely had to use MySpace to promote my forthcoming book. “I’d try it myself, but I feel too old to be on that thing,” she said. So here I was navigating though pages of Hello Kitty wallpaper and frat brothers wearing chicken heads. Supposedly, thousands of writers had migrated onto MySpace, but where were they? Eventually, through trial and error, I discovered the best way to find them: if you type the right word into the site’s search engine — say, “Foucault” or “Kafka” — you will tumble through the rabbit hole into MySpace’s literary scene.

Imagine a version of Studio 54 where Jane Austen, wearing nothing but gold panties, vomits all over Harold Bloom’s shoes while infomercials for debut novels flash on the walls. In literary MySpace, most people are cruising: they’re hoping to find cute nerds, to hype a memoir or to indulge some bookworm fetish. Pranksters pretending to be Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein and Ovid rub elbows with authors masquerading as their own characters. Of course, many of the profiles are just glorified advertising pages. And yet, amid all the craziness, readers have formed dozens of groups — for instance, Ladies and Lads of Library Land — to engage in serious bibliophilic conversation.

Salt Lake Tribune looks at that city’s race for mayor and in doing so questions my good friend D.K., also known as David R. Keller, associate professor of philosophy at Utah Valley State College and director of the Center for the Study of Ethics.

DK, a native, envisions a vibrant, modern Salt Lake City.

“The real issue that transcends the sky bridge or the mayoral race is the fundamental question: What kind of city should Salt Lake be?” Keller says. “A celestial city or a cosmopolitan city? A city that reflects the values of one particular social group or the value of pluralism, which is fundamental to the American experience? The latter option is more economically viable, and, more importantly, interesting.”

Of course, pluralism requires a “live and let live” mindset and that’s not where members of the LDS Church are coming from. Proof of this can be found in the church-mandated worldwide proselytizing/recruitment efforts. And in the state’s arcane liquor laws.

Having lived in Salt Lake City twice, I will say it’s a great place with great people. Yet, I could never quite get comfortable there. The reason I could not has everything to do with the fact that the Mormons can’t quite get comfortable with me, and those like me, living among them as neighbors.

D.K. and I have talked before about the difference between a place settled by pilgrims and a place settled by pioneers. Salt Lake was settled by pilgrims—those with a religious agenda. Yet, we expect Salt Lake as a Western frontier city to embody the pioneer spirit. But that’s not the case. Salt Lake embodies the pilgrim spirit, much like the New England states once did.

As in most arguments about American culture, the debate eventually winds its way to an economic answer. For pilgrims, like pioneers, both share a love of American money. The Mormons have become more adept than most at gathering this money. Thus, the fundmental question is: Will Salt Lake’s desire to become even wealthier than it already is, lead the LDS Church to embrace pluralism? In the short term I don’t think it will, for the simple fact that the economy in Salt Lake has been, and remains, quite strong. Hence, there’s little incentive to change.

I just finished reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley In Search of America, which is appropriate since our trip to Alaska was a journey towards self and our selves are thoroughly American. Yet, we’d like to think we are somehow separate from the mindless hordes that consitute “American” with a capital A.

Emerging from the Savage River Loop in Denali National Park on Tuesday, a middle-aged woman and man were standing at the trailhead talking. Upon our approach the woman asked, “Are you Americans?”

“Yes,” we replied.

“Oh, thank god,” she snapped. “This place is crawling with foreigners.”

Appalled once more by the attitudes of our fellow Americans, we didn’t hesitate to walk on and find a nice German couple observing a caribou through binoculars, which they kindly offered to share—the very thing Mrs. America refused to do. Allow me to add that Denali is a park with six million acres and only one lightly travelled road.

In Steinbeck’s travel chronicle he doesn’t find fault with the characters he encounters so readily. I believe he was a man of great compassion. In my narrative the faults compound and compete for supremacy.

After meeting the Germans, we boarded a loaded bus back to the Wilderness Access Center. Before we could get underway we had to contend with camera-slinging tourists fighting for window space along the right side, where the caribou we had been casually observing was wisely escaping up the embankment. A few miles down the road things really heated up when a bull moose was spotted. One over-zealous white shoed cameraman had the gall to bark orders at the moose. “Come on. To the right. That’s good. Head up. That’s it.” When he was satisfied that the moose was safely trapped inside his digital tool, he said to no one in particular, “I’m glad that moose showed up. I was gonna ask for my money back.”

Alaska is a stunning place. We expected that. What was unexpected was how the beauty of the place would provide such stark contrast for observing those who visit it. A lot has been said about Americans and our essential character. More will be said. But one thing we know for sure, “Americans” (in the pejorative sense) are an ugly people living in a beautiful land.

Of course, we can’t in good conscience find fault with others without also seeing it ourselves. For no one in the country is totally immune from the sins or arrogance, ignorance and detachment from nature. It would also be half-baked not to mention the good people encountered on this trip, for there were many. My hope is this kind of raw exposure to the land and the beasts who are supported by it, including humankind, fuels our will to be better, kinder, smarter people. America certainly is “the beautiful.” Let’s learn from the land and be beautiful too.