Keats and Yeats are on your side

10/2/2009 12:57:00 AM

I think the time is ripe for an Irish poem:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

- William Butler Yeats, 1920

The road to recovery

9/18/2009 7:50:00 AM

Can you describe the economic situation in less than 50 words? Me neither. Well, Tom Toles can. Maybe the Fed should hire him.

http://www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/2009/09/13

Post it

9/1/2009 1:29:00 AM

Tony Judt deserves all the praise he got for his monumental book, "Postwar". It covers everything and spares no-one. I hope it's translated into Russian soon.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview4

TV art

7/31/2009 6:02:00 AM

I'm glad to note that Arte.tv is shaking its reputation as the channel where professors talk about Franco-German history. Putting a bunch of jazz musicians in a studio and asking them to cover '80s classics sounds like a recipe for disaster but they managed to pull it off. It's rare to hear such natural groove in pop music these days, thanks to the industry discipline.

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Echappees-culturelles/Nighting-Eighties/2765006.html

She bangs the drums

7/17/2009 2:00:00 AM

Just when I thought that all fun had disappeared from pop, out come The Ting Tings. They are so much fun to watch and a good reminder that popular music is basically about dance and sex.

http://www.thetingtings.com

Walkman fever

7/9/2009 1:20:00 AM

No better way to spend a summer Sunday than listening to old cassettes. With the right gear they can sound great - lush, organic, warm. Things started to go wrong when B sides went out of production.

http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-d6c

Box magic

7/3/2009 1:16:00 AM

God bless bands who still have the guts to put all their production in a CD box. Freaks like me can spend hours with them. Time stops and your mind flies into some quiet Nordic town, waking up slowly.

Kent Box 1991-2008 is a masterpiece. And Joakim Berg is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. The non-Swedophones don't know what they're missing.

http://www.kentjunkie.com/box1991_2008.htm