Virginia’s Visit from Bristol what an earthy title for a brilliant novel ... We live on the thin ice of unexplained phenomena
Whatever you do avoid a movie named Being in Heaven as it felt as being in Hell when Media Dragon watched it.
But watch and enjoy Crazy heart The whole world's crazy but me and thee
Second generation Hollywood, his dad Lloyd Bridges was a major heart-throb in the 60s, Jeff Bridges admits having famous parents made it easier for him to be successful in Hollywood. A hokey story about a washed-up country singer is rescued by a wonderful performance by Jeff Bridges who shows off his musical as well as his acting talent in Crazy Heart. ; Based on a 1987 novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb, this film is a quality romantic drama that carries considerable punch. Jeff Bridges adds an expertly developed and totally credible character to the gallery of movie drunks. Jeff Bridges, nominated for an Oscar for Crazy Heart, believes the secret to success lies in a four-letter word: Love!
The Way of All Debt Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of debt. In her wide-ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.
Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. Margaret Atwood writes “These are not lectures about how to get out of debt; rather, they’re about the debtor/creditor twinship in the broadest sense – from human sacrifice to pawnshops to revenge. In this light, what we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.”
• Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance [ BBC; Massey filled with dangerous ideas ]
• · What I’ve learned from 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice - Paula Marantz Cohen has been teaching literature for 30 years, and “the longer I teach, the more I enjoy teaching Shakespeare. As I grow older and wearier, his plays seem to deliver greater matter and art in a more condensed and lively way than any other text I could choose. To be clichéd about it: Shakespeare offers more bang for the buck.” If we want a happy ending, at some point with Shakespeare we must draw a line and close our eyes to the injustice an ending may entail Consider Shylock, My Students, and Me - By Paula Marantz Cohen; while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it ; debt as an ancient and central motif in religion ; Putting the U.S. Debt Problem in Perspective - Due to massive increases in federal spending, the economic future of the United States looks gloomy. The interest cost to "carry" the U.S. public debt was $383 billion in Fiscal Year 2009 and is estimated to exceed $700 billion by 2019. Taxes can be increased only so much before taxpayers rebel by working less or voting incumbent politicians out of office. Another alternative--monetary expansion--also has limited potential for paying down the debt: it leads to rising prices and, eventually, rising interest rates, which would make it harder to sell U.S. debt abroad Could the U.S. Default on its Debt?
• · · Seeking How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, by Emily Yoffe Writing on the walls of filthy liars; Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting...If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly.
You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Social bohemian media dragon bandwagon
• · · · JD Salinger's reclusiveness was as famous as his slim output of books. The life of JD Salinger, which has just ended, is one of the strangest and saddest stories in recent literary history A lifetime of celebrity for J.D. Salinger from just one Cold River ; Like many of my fellow pilgrims, I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of "Holden Caulfield." (You think you had it bad: I come from the High Tatra Mountains, didn't make it through prep school, believe the world divides into two kinds of people, phonies and, well, me.)
• · · · · I’ve been spending some time recently on planet Janacek. You could call planet Janacek the earth inside this earth – the molten planet of passion below the solid, congealed crust. You don’t visit the territory carved out by the Czech composer Leos Janacek without risk; but the risk is not so much to your physical safety as to your emotional comfort. Janacek, as much as the late JD Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, has no time for phoneys or phoneyness Love of the world
; Seldom has a man who wrote so few words attracted so many as J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author who died on Thursday at his remote home in Cornish, New Hampshire, at the age of 91 Google on Loneliness
