The Art of Destruction

YAFRAN, Libya — In a country where creativity was stifled to ensure the pre-eminence of one man, art can be the best revenge. Inside the gutted shell of a building that once housed a Qaddafi-regime intelligence unit, the paint of a new mural of a tree whose roots are feeding on the blood of fallen rebel fighters is drying on the wall. The house was half-destroyed in fighting between Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels who brought him down — and that’s exactly the way the artist Belgassem Grada hopes it will stay.The slight, wiry oil-field engineer never thought of himself as an artist — at most he used to doodle in his spare time. But today Grada, 47, has turned a former outpost of intimidation and symbol of Qaddafi’s stranglehold over Libya into Freedom House, a museum devoted to memorializing Libya’s civil war… Read more

The Under-Examined Story of Fallujah

Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined.On November 8, 2004, U.S. military forces launched Operation Phantom Fury 50 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people known for its opposition to the Saddam regime…Read more

In Tahrir Square: A nurse reports from the Tahrir Square field hospital

I got a message on Sunday that the Tahrir Square field hospital needed medical help and supplies. As I used to be a nurse, I went. The tear gas is toxic in a way it was not in January. Various people have said that the cyanide component is greater or that phosphorus is causing the problem. I can positively confirm that the gas injuries are completely different and much more severe. We treated hundreds of youngsters who had totally collapsed and were not breathing. Most came to quickly but we had two deaths and one, a young boy, asphyxiated…Read more

Mixed Messages for Tunisian Women

After the tumult of the Arab Spring, many Tunisian women are wondering whether they should be optimistic or concerned about preserving and expanding their rights…read more

Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters

HOW do people acquire high levels of skill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been a topic of intense debate in psychology.
Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it. In a pioneering study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing. By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled…Read More

Turkey, Jordan to set up safe zones in Syria: diplomats

BEIRUT: Turkey and Jordan, backed by Western and Arab powers, are preparing to set up two “safe zones” for civilians inside Syria, diplomats said Friday.

The Western and Arab diplomats told The Daily Star that Syria’s two neighbors would press ahead with preparations to establish the two havens if President Bashar Assad did not sign on to an Arab plan aimed at ending a bloody crackdown on anti-regime protesters by Saturday.

The diplomats said an international meeting in Paris would discuss later Friday the details of the plans to set up the zones in southern and northern Syria.

On Wednesday, the Arab League gave Assad three days to agree in writing to allowing hundreds of observers into Syria to oversee the implementation of the Arab plan to end eight months of violence against protesters that has killed more than 3,000 people.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Nov-18/154477-turkey-jordan-to-set-up-safe-zones-in-syria-diplomats.ashx#ixzz1eSvJJKOs
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb) …Read More

Famous Authors’ Harshest Rejection Letters

It’s hard to imagine that the definitive icons of literature could have been subject to the same iciness of the high-gated publishing-house “no” machines that we know all too well. Of course, even down-to-earth publishers can miss a great work sitting on their desks; with thousands of titles of varying merit clogging editors’ mailboxes, it’s impossible to skim every page of every slush-pile manuscript, let alone give it its proper consideration. Furthermore, some of our most adored geniuses churned out well-spotted crap before maturing into the artists we remember.

Prescience is no hard science, but hindsight can be a kick in the shins nonetheless, especially for the editors who sent these rejection letters to writers who would later become the bestselling, influential giants of their day — and ours…Read More

Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?

Is free will an illusion? Some leading scientists think so. For instance, in 2002 the psychologist Daniel Wegner wrote, “It seems we are agents. It seems we cause what we do… It is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion.” More recently, the neuroscientist Patrick Haggard declared, “We certainly don’t have free will. Not in the sense we think.” And in June, the neuroscientist Sam Harris claimed, “You seem to be an agent acting of your own free will. The problem, however, is that this point of view cannot be reconciled with what we know about the human brain.”… Read More

Why should a teacher earn less than a manager?

Criticism of capitalism has increased in recent months. Protest movements, such as “Occupy Wall Street,” are outraged at the excesses of bankers who, according to the protesters, bear the main responsibility for the current economic crisis – but apparently are not being held responsible. A growing number of voices from different parts of society are now showing solidarity with the anti-capitalism activities and reflecting the widespread frustration felt by citizens.Undoubtedly, these anti-capitalist protests have their finger on the pulse of our time. But it is not enough to simply condemn capitalism for its undeniable excesses. We need a deeper analysis of why the capitalist system, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us…

What’s the big deal? The Arab League’s Non-Solution for Syria

On the surface, the Arab League appears to have successfully negotiated a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad to end his bloody eight-month crackdown on largely peaceful protesters. But appearances are always deceiving, especially when the subject is the regime in Damascus, which has found endless ways to perpetuate itself, and the chief broker of the deal is a perennially ineffectual pan-Arabist dinosaur.On Wednesday, the Arab League announced from its Cairo headquarters that Syria had accepted the agreement without reservations. The pact calls on Assad to withdraw his security forces from the streets, stop violence, free all political detainees, hold a national dialogue with the opposition within two weeks and allow the media, the Arab League and international monitors access to the closed country. “The agreement is clear,” Qatar’s Foreign Minister, Jassem bin Hamad, said at a press conference in Cairo. “We are very happy that we have reached an agreement and will be happier when it is implemented.”… Read More

A Chill on Tahrir Square

CAIRO — A cool breeze wafts along the streets of Cairo these days and the North African sun has become a tamer, gentler creature. But this sleepless city now beats to a more unsettling rhythm.Much of the unease is fed by fear of the unknown — that febrile political playground, in which new parties proliferate, filling the air with their Much of the unease is fed by fear of the unknown — that febrile political playground, in which new parties proliferate, filling the air with their… Read More

In Assad’s Syria, There is No Imagination

The House of Assad evokes an imperial sense of power, or at least its trappings, with iconography that one scholar described as infused with “laudatory slogans and sempiternal images.”
But my first impression of Rami Makhlouf, President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and one-time confidante, was of his unassuming quality. Here was a tycoon, a figure as rich as he was loathed, who eschewed formalities and ceremony. I had seen it before, in men like Saad Hariri, a former prime minister in Lebanon, lavished with so much privilege and so much wealth that pretensions become unnecessary… Read More

Reporting From Syria in Secret

As The Lede has reminded readers for months, because of restrictions imposed by the Syrian government on independent reporting, much of the information about the uprising there, including video of the security crackdown on protesters this week, reaches the Web only after it has been smuggled out of the country by a network of activists.Some foreign reporters, including Anthony Shadid of The New York Times, have managed to make the opposite journey, sneaking into Syria to cover the uprising in person.This week’s episode of the PBS series “Frontline” featured a video report produced by another journalist who managed to work secretly inside Syria, Ramita Navai… Read More

The Consequentialist

Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists… Read More

An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’

Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us.Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us… Read More

Murong Xuecun’s Acceptance Speech for the 2010 People’s Literature Prize

If I am not mistaken, the People’s Literature magazine “special action award” was not bestowed for my literary achievement, but for my courage. I’m embarrassed because I am not a brave person.Genuine bravery for a writer is not about jousting with a pyramid-scam gang. It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience… Read More

For Student Journalists, Challenges in Putting Out the School Newspaper

There was something wrong in each of the four issues of The Bennett that students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School produced last year. Or at least that is what the assistant principal thought. Before they went to press, she edited 50 percent to 75 percent of the articles in each issue of the student newspaper. Everything from punctuation to a review of a school performance was fair game for the administrator’s red pen.“My students got to the point that they were saying, ‘Why should we do this? They are going to cut it anyway,’ ” said The Bennett’s adviser, Taisha Matthews… Read More

What Egypt’s Military Council Didn’t Learn from the Revolution

My friend Yusri Foda is the host of the Egyptian talk show, The Last Word. Yusri invited me to take part in his show to comment on a program that featured Generals Assar and Hegazy of the military council. Despite my full respect for the generals, what they said in the program was disappointing because they confined themselves to praising the decisions of the military council. The next day, Yusri called me to tell me that the show had been cancelled. When I asked him what had happened, he said, “There were pressures that led to cancelling the program, so I’ve decided to suspend the show. In my work, I obey only my conscience and I can never agree to take orders from any other party.” … Read More

J. Edgar, the movie(2011)

Even with all the surprises that have characterized Clint Eastwood’s twilight film years, with their crepuscular tales of good and evil, the tenderness of the love story in “J. Edgar” comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover’s humanity, despite the odds and an impasto of old-coot movie makeup, this latest jolt from Mr. Eastwood is a look back at a man divided and of the ties that bind private bodies with public politics and policies. With sympathy — for the individual, not his deeds — it portrays a 20th-century titan who, with secrets and bullets, a will to power and the self-promotional skills of a true star, built a citadel of information in which he burrowed deep… Read More

Venice’s Love Affair With Egypt

VENICE — For centuries most of the eastern spices on European tables were traded by Venetians via the markets of Egypt. Along with them came exotic textiles, dyes, glass, metalwork and other fine Islamic goods.But Egypt itself — Alexandria in particular — was also of enormous religious and mythical significance for the Venetians. For it was from Alexandria that the remains of St. Mark had been hijacked by two Venetian merchants in 828, an event that, in the Venetian mind, came to be seen as the beginning of Venice’s rise to power, empire and immense wealth.The story of this remarkably enduring east-west relationship is related in “Venice and Egypt,” illustrated by more than 300 paintings, sculptures, artifacts, manuscripts, books and prints at the Doges’ Palace…Read More

Hollywood Plans Big Binge for Christmas

It’s going to be a hot and crowded holiday at the box office. After shuffling schedules, finishing final edits and kicking tires on the festival circuit, Hollywood is preparing for a holiday film season that will end with a spectacular collision of high-profile pictures.There were four major studio releases on or around Christmas Day last year, and three the year before. But in the five days ending on Dec. 25 — a Sunday, not the usual day for film debuts — five of the major studios are to release six movies with a total production and marketing cost approaching $1 billion, from directors who have 25 past Oscar nominations among them… Read More

Longlist Announced for International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2012

The long-awaited longlist for the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced this morning. Popularly known as the Arabic Booker, the prize, currently in its fifth year, has come to be regarded as the premier prize for literary fiction in the Arab world. This year’s list contains 13 titles, culled from a selection of 101 entries from 15 countries, all published within the last year… View Website

Tips to get you motivated to run

101 Kicks in the Butt You have 100 reasons for losing motivation to run. But we can top ’em with tips, inspiring quotes, and more. Pick your fix. Repeat as necessary… Read More

Famous Scientists As Children

Watch famous scientists when they where small children ….. can you really know that these kids will grow to be leaders in there fields …. Read More…

Aging Well Through Exercise

Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow older? That question preoccupies scientists and the middle-aged, particularly when they become the same people. Until recently, the evidence was disheartening. A large number of studies in the past few years showed that after age 40, people typically lose 8 percent or more of their muscle mass each decade, a process that accelerates significantly after age 70. Less muscle mass generally means less strength, mobility and among the elderly, independence. It also has been linked with premature mortality. Read More …