Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2554

"I Am Not Afraid"

Alex Shephard interviews Werner Herzog on why he's making a 3D movie, why Roger Ebert should be "weighed in gold," and on the advantages of "extreme" characters or situations:

I think when you are looking at a city from its outskirts on a hill you probably understand the pattern of the city much better than being right inside. And I think looking at a human being from a far-out position gives you more insight; you will have more insight into the human condition. Let me make a metaphor: If...

"Skin"

Mark Jacobson tracks the origin of a supposedly skin lampshade, from the Holocaust to post-Katrina New Orleans, with help from those who identified the victims of 9/11:

I wanted to know. And I had to confess, I wanted it to be "real," i.e., to have once been part of a walking, talking human being. It was a sick thing, I had to admit, but it wasn't only me. Everyone I spoke to about the lampshade said, given a choice, they would be disappointed to find out it was made from a goat or a pig's...

Maggie Meets Saint Peter

Web Design and Development - Protocols - HTTP - Color - Online Tools

Truth And Discomfort

A new study compares our psychological reactions to things that upend our accepted world-views. Participants responded to the simple moral of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare in which perseverance wins the race, and then, in turn, to the more pessimistic take of Kafka's "An Imperial Message," a story in which no matter how hard one tries, one doesn't succeed:

When there's a challenge to our established world-view, whether from the absurd, the unexpected, the unpalatable, the...

Not Just Cricket

Mohsin Hamid confronts Pakistan's culture of hypocrisy head-on:

A state that mandates religious practices, as Pakistan does, is a state that mandates hypocrisy, because the law can only govern outward behaviour. It can say that such-and-such behaviour is prohibited, but it cannot say that such-and-such belief is prohibited. And as the gap between belief and behaviour widens, hypocrisy sets in. People with beards still kill. People who cover their heads still steal. People who thank God for...

Face Of The Day

Visitors to Salisbury Cathedral admire Sean Henry's sculpture, Catafalque, which is being displayed as part of the Cathedral's Liminality exhibition on September 10, 2010 in Salisbury, England. The two month exhibition 'Liminality: Toward the Unknown Region' features large scale, three dimensional works - including two suspended installations - in various surroundings in the 750-year-old building. By Matt Cardy/Getty Images.

Salisbury Cathedral - England - Cathedral - Sculptu...

Death By Dickens

If he has to go, playwright Tom Stoppard prefers a literary demise:

I have a
spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long
as it doesn't happen prematurely... It would be a good way to go. You went when you were in a good frame
of mind and you were doing something pleasant and interesting. A lot of people would say, 'I would rather have a heart attack at the
height of sexual passion.' On the whole, I would prefer to be killed by a
bookcase.

...

The Heavenly Gaze

Riffing on Stephen Hawking among others, Mark Vernon wonders if cosmology could be the new theology?

Cosmology is so popular, not just because of the science, but because it allows us to ask the big questions — where we come from, who we are, where we're going. It's metaphysics by other means. If the Scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages liked to speculate about the number of angels on the heads of pins, we today like to speculate about the number of dimensions wrapped up in string...

Tips For Saturday Night

Pallab Ghosh reports on a new study about what makes some male dancers better than others and why "good dancing may be indicative of good health and reproductive potential." Evolutionary psychologist and co-author Dr. Nick Neave was surprised by what they found:

We thought that people's arms and legs would be really important. The
kind of expressive gestures the hands [make:], for example. But in fact
this was not the case.

We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region...

The Science Behind Chubby Chasers

Judy Mandelbaum reports on a new Turkish study which is selling fat as the new thin, at least concerning men in bed:

The reason? Female hormones. Men with excess fat showed higher levels of
the female estradiol sex hormone. This substance apparently disrupted
their bodies' natural "male" neurotransmitter chemicals and slowed their
progression towards orgasm. Ironically, the less masculine their bodies
appeared, the better lovers they proved to be.

Better, meaning taking longer to come, I...