Quantcast
Channel: Culture & Arts
Viewing all 18483 articles
Browse latest View live

21 Recommendations For Anyone Who Wants To Read Books And Chill

0
0

It's summer. You have visions of beaches, ice-cold beverages, and three-day weekends rolling around in your brain. Sure, maybe winter is the season to Netflix and chill. But the months of June, July and August? 'Tis the time to read books and chill.


The benefits of reading books and chilling (versus the streaming TV version of binge entertainment consumption) are obvious: You can do it anywhere -- at that dreamy beach, with that refreshing drink, at every destination planned for your holiday weekend. You need not hole yourself up in a Wi-Fi-ready bedroom. You can read books and chill out in the open, under the searing hot sun of summer, without abandoning your desire to not interact with a single soul other than your favorite characters of fiction.







You can read just about any book and chill. Some people can watch 30 episodes of "The Sopranos" without blinking an eye, others prefer digestible bits of "30 Rock," and books work similarly across vastly different personal preferences. But HuffPost writer Maddie Crum aptly outlined the perfect choice for a #ReadBooksAndChill weekend: "Books you can binge-read!" she described. "Sorry, binge-read is a garbage phrase. But, y'know, page turners. Quick reads. The opposite of Knausgaard, if you will."


In honor, here are 21 books that hook you from page one and keep you hungry for more even after the last page. Go forth, dear readers, and chill:


The Assistants by Camille Perri



There’s something about money (or the lack thereof) that makes for a page-turning read. Perri’s protagonist is a low-paid assistant who mistakenly cashes a company check that covers her student loans. When she doesn’t reverse her mistake, another low-paid assistant catches on and gets in on the scam. Anyone who’s toiled at a thankless job can relate. As our heroine muses, $15,000 is nothing to her high-powered executive boss, but to her, it’s a lifesaver. And as college costs keep rising, Perri’s novel will continue to be a fun, fantasy-filled reprieve from the joyless task of repaying student debt. -- Jill Capewell


The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins



Hawkins’ protagonist Rachel is struggling with an alcohol addiction and still in love with her ex-husband Tom. She’s been fired from her job but, not ready to confront the situation just yet, opts to take her daily commute anyway, riding the train to and from London, staring out the window at her old house, and reminiscing about her old life along the way. One morning Rachel wakes up hungover and bloody with no recollection of what happened the night before, only to find out her favorite woman to watch on her train rides disappeared that same evening. She decides, mostly for her own sake, to play detective and piece together the night. Through the voices of three smart, flawed women who are wildly unreliable narrators, The Girl on the Train is a chilling mystery that will make you never want to get blackout drunk ever again. -- Priscilla Frank


The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro



For those mourning the loss of "Game of Thrones" Season 6, here's a book that takes place in post-Arthurian Britain, filled with warriors, dragons, ogres, mysterious memory-zapping mist, and long-lost family members attempting to reunite across Saxon-trolled hinterlands. Sure, you could just go ahead and read George R.R. Martin's 4,000 plus pages of "GoT" lore -- and binge you can on that. But Ishiguro offers an addicting tale of knights and courageous laypeople in just over 300 pages. Its tangled prose and unexpected parallels to our own fumbled relationship with the past fit discreetly in the fantasy structure. It's enough for you to gulp in one extended evening of reading ... you know, the time you would have spent watching "GoT" reruns of Seasons 1-5. -- Katherine Brooks


The Girls by Emma Cline



Between her parents' divorce and her friend's fast betrayal, a lonely preteen is ready for any kind of kinship, and quickly latches onto a crew of girls she spots laughing playfully at a park. She gets wrapped up in their world, and learns that there's something sinister at the heart of it. In a quiet, stealthy examination of Charles Manson and the girls who followed his beliefs, Cline manages to write what I'd call the book of the summer -- pulsing, and full of heart. -- Maddie Crum


The Run of His Life by Jeffrey Toobin



If you’ve been watching “American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson” or “O.J.: Made in America,” your brain has likely been consumed by the story of the bizarre spectacle of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Toobin, a journalist and former prosecutor, chronicled the notorious case in his 1996 book The Run of his Life, and its 450 pages fly by. “American Crime Story” was based off Toobin’s non-fiction account, which explores how the case ballooned to encompass so much more than a single man’s violent crime, becoming enmeshed in the politics of race, gender and celebrity. If you’re interested in bingeing on the nitty-gritty of the case, this is a good place to start. -- Priscilla Frank


Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky



Love them or hate them, boy bands have been a fascinating segment of pop music for decades now -- none of which was beloved so fiercely by teenage women as the “on indeterminate hiatus” One Direction. In this novel, Moldavsky takes a 1D analog and tells their story through the eyes of four friends (who, it turns out, veer more frenemy than anything else) who make it past the security gate to get their objects of adoration ... and have to deal with the consequences. Perfect for the reader who loves a side of dark humor with their pop culture indulgences. -- Jill Capewell


The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni



The Farallon Islands -- a dangerous and unwelcoming little cluster of isles off the coast of California -- is populated only by its wildlife and a small clique of scientists. That is, until Miranda, an emotionally adrift photographer, manages to secure permission to spend a year documenting the natural wonders of the archipelago. To the trained biologists, long accustomed to wearing protective gear against vicious bird attacks whenever they leave shelter, Miranda seems naive to the life-threatening realities of their environment -- especially with real medical help so far away. Then, Miranda is assaulted by one of the scientists; not long after, he's found dead. Is this a karmic revenge enacted by the ruthless forces of the island, or a very human revenge? It's hard to stop turning pages as Geni leaves us wondering whether Miranda's honesty and even her memory can be trusted, and as the natural perils of the Farallon Islands loom so ominous that getting out safe seems impossible. -- Claire Fallon


How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball



In an interview with HuffPost, Ball explained that he likes writing quick reads -- that books have to compete with other forms of entertainment, and in order to do so they should be like firecrackers with a short fuse. He accomplishes this in his latest book, about a lovable teen arsonist, who scribbles her angsty philosophical musings in a beloved notebook. We're exposed to Lucia's unfiltered insights, and the trouble bubbling up beneath her story. -- Maddie Crum


The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer



From Annihilation, the story of four women tasked with surveying a bizarrely dangerous nature reserve-like territory known as Area X; to Authority, which focuses on the operatives of the so-called Southern Reach agency tasked with investigating the phenomenons associated with Area X from outside the territory; to Acceptance, the haunting conclusion to a warped collection of perspectives on a horror/sci-fi saga ... well, Jeff Vandermeer's three-part epic is worth reading all at once this weekend. If you liked the Strugatsky Brothers' Roadside Picnic or the weird flora and fauna folklore of Gold Fame Citrus, you'll love this bingeable trilogy too. -- Katherine Brooks


Modern Lovers by Emma Straub



Mix aging college indie rockers and their teenage children with a cat named Iggy Pop, SAT classes, a trendy restaurant, a cultish yoga studio and a restless Brooklyn summer, and you get Modern Lovers. Straub writes with fairness and intelligence toward her sometimes imperfect characters, and the unique moment in their lives she focuses on -- when a movie studio wants the rights to their old band’s song that a deceased bandmate made famous -- is a quirky and compelling place for the story to unfold. -- Jillian Capewell


So Sad Today by Melissa Broder



Melissa Broder became a fixture in the sad-verse of Twitter, a space where feelings of anxiety, depression, addiction could be expressed freely and unabashedly -- shared, liked and joked about. Lines like “i feel nervous about breathing” and “walk into the club like therapy isn't working” racked up thousands of likes and retweets, creating an internet army of sad girls sick of hiding their feelings. In her book of personal essays titled So Sad Today, Broder invokes her familiar combination of dark humor and brutal realness to discuss her struggles with drugs, alcohol, marriage, her body and mind. Border makes a strong case for incessant social media use and constant self-narration not as a space for frivolous or narcissistic output but a matter of survival. -- Priscilla Frank


A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James



If you consider "sprawling" an overused adjective when it comes to book summaries, well, I apologize, because this book is truly sprawling. It moves from the rise of the Shower Posse, a Jamaican crime syndicate that popped up in Kingston in the 1960s, to the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976, to the spread of the crack trade in New York and Miami in the 1980s and beyond. The story is international -- Cuban and Columbian history come into play (yes, there's mention of the Medellín ­cartel), punctuated by artfully written scenes of violence and dark inner monologues. If you're into binge-watching "Narcos" or "The Wire" or brutal crime dramas, here's a heftier, bloodier binge-read for you. -- Katherine Brooks


Shrill by Lindy West



Lindy West, who's written for The Stranger and Jezebel and appeared on "This American Life" and "Two Dope Queens," has the kind of comedic voice you remember. (On Jezebel, she showed a penchant for all-caps; in her podcast appearances, she's dry but relentlessly pointed in her language.) She's a comedian with messages -- fat acceptance, feminism -- and the willingness to make her point known. In her recent book, West gets into why she cares so passionately, and why she's not afraid to speak up even if women who talk in public might be called "shrill" or worse. Not sure why you'd want to chill with this when there's Netflix? Um, because it's hilarious. Comedy plus substance: the perfect recipe for a book you'll never want to put down. -- Claire Fallon


The History of Great Things by Elizabeth Crane



If "chill" for you means skillful prose but a lighthearted narrative -- one graced with moments of laugh-out-loud humor -- than Crane's latest effort, a slim novel about a mother-daughter relationship, is a good pick for you. The pair tells each other's life stories in alternating chapters, funnily filling in gaps of knowledge with their own presumptions and fears. Spanning generations, Crane's book exposes the changes in how we approach love, marriage and family. -- Maddie Crum


Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons



The energetic, mostly millennial-led, beer-tap-having, ping-pong-playing workplaces known as start-ups seem relentlessly fun and cheerful -- you can make six figures a year and play with Legos on your lunch break?! But for every laudatory story about the new face of work, there is an equal and opposite backlash. In his memoir, Dan Lyons plays the role of old-guard journalist who, after being ousted at Newsweek, lands a marketing gig at a Boston company where it takes him months to figure out what he’s actually there for, where team members send weirdly cheerleader-y emails and thoughtful criticism is met with shunning. He’s a little curmudgeonly as a narrator, sure, and we only ever get to see his side of things, but that doesn’t mean I raced through his takedown of his Kool-Aid-drinking former co-workers any slower. -- Jill Capewell


Surveys by Natasha Stagg



Bored of her life working in a Tucson, Arizona, mall, 23-year-old Colleen takes the life-changing plunge that so many millennials often consider — becoming an internet celebrity. Colleen posts updates about her life online, gaining followers and forming a double life teetering between young adult normalcy and the uncanny phenomenon of being sort of, kind of famous on the internet. The coming-of-age story offers a psychological dissection of the logic behind sharing your every thought with a mass of anonymous strangers, exploring the strange terrain where the personal and performative overlap and bleed into one another. Without altogether celebrating or condemning the contemporary obsession with online sharing, Stagg explores the roles we play and the selves we inhabit, online and IRL. -- Priscilla Frank


Love and Friendship by Whit Stillman



Filmmaker Whit Stillman penned this novel in letters to accompany his recently released film of the same name; it’s a finished adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished work Lady Susan, an epistolary work about a beautiful, young, and cunning widow determined to use her charms (and those of her reserved teenage daughter) to secure a position atop the social ladder. Stillman subverts the original perspective, with a preface, footnotes, and editing provided by Lady Susan’s gullible nephew by marriage, to provide a rousing defense of the conniving lady. It’s a classic Austenian social set-up, but in Stillman’s hands it’s injected with more scandalous drama, more malice, an anti-heroine, and a bumbling, oblivious Mr. Collins type as the unctuous narrator. Love and Friendship offers a darker brand of comedy than Austen, and a thriller-esque narrative that entices readers to find out who will come out on top and whose social stratagems will be foiled. And then, well, you can Netflix and chill with the movie. -- Claire Fallon


Losing It by Emma Rathbone



It's summer, and sometimes we just want to read a book about summer, okay? So it goes with Losing It, centered on 26-year-old Julia Greenfield's desire to finally, dramatically, and somewhat unrealistically lose her virginity. As an adult woman she's aware that the romance won't be perfect, but she becomes obsessed with the heteronormative definition of sex, hellbent on alieving herself of the dredded personhood modifier "virgin." Then she learns her North Carolina-based aunt, with whom she's temporarily staying, is a virgin too. And so begins a very digestible tale of deciphering the differences between like, lust, love and loyalty. -- Katherine Brooks


Uprooted by Naomi Novik



Fantasy stories tend to stick to a certain template: hero leaves home, hero’s home is destroyed or otherwise put in danger, hero promises to seek revenge on whoever inflicted said harm. In her Nebula Award-winning novel, Naomi Novik tried to work around those tropes, while still embracing the foundations of fantasy. In an interview with HuffPost, she said, “I wanted a heroine who was willing to risk her life, not for revenge, not to gain power or even necessarily to tear someone down, but in order to protect her community. Revenge is a very cold, sad motive.” Instead, her protagonist Agnieszka fights to defend her heritage, to preserve the ideals she holds dear. With the taut, wondrous style of a fairy tale, but with the warmth of a more contemporary story, Uprooted can be devoured quickly, but I suggest you savor it. -- Maddie Crum


The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell



Haven't read Cloud Atlas yet? Who cares? This one works on its own, as Mitchell intended it to. The novel revolves around Holly Sykes, a young English woman who seems to possess semi-psychic abilities, and a gang of telepathic deviants criss-crossing time and place (Mitchell fans will recognize some of the characters from previous books). The Bone Clocks is the definition of a fast read, stuffed with characters and gripping high points and surprising twists. Take it with you on vacation and you'll avoid having to speak to a tiring stranger on the plane or an irritating relative at the hotel. This book in front of your face means you're busy.  -- Katherine Brooks


The Royal We by the Fug Girls



The Fug Girls -- Heather Cox and Jessica Morgan -- have been the unforgivingly snarky voice in our head for nearly a decade telling us that "tights are NOT pants," thanks to their deservedly popular celebrity fashion blog Go Fug Yourself. Then they went and wrote the ultimate summer chill read for their target audience: A royal romance, inspired very loosely by Will and Kate, heaping with aww-worthy sweetness and lol-worthy jokes. The novel follows Bex Porter, a down-to-earth American girl with a penchant for so-bad-it's-good TV, to Oxford for her year abroad, where she finds herself unexpectedly plopped in the midst of Prince Nick's inner circle. Initially uninterested in the future king and the lifestyle that would come along with him, Bex ends up falling for the sweet, goofy, thoughtful boy she discovers Nick to be. Being part of a royal couple, of course, totally upends her life -- especially when her more spotlight-hungry twin, Lacey, starts tagging along -- and Bex's determination to stay her own person while fulfilling the royal expectations seems doomed. Let's be real, though, this is a romantic comedy between two covers, and the blend of happily-ever-after with relatable real-world problems only makes the hopeful message more poignant and powerful. Best of all for a binge read, the Fug Girls did not skimp: this book is nearly 500 pages long. Bye, I'll be in my room for the next two days. -- Claire Fallon

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Ad Campaign Reveals 'Ugly Truth' About Human Trafficking In U.S.

0
0

If you think human trafficking is a terrible thing that happens in countries far away, you’re dead wrong.


A new ad campaign from the San Diego District Attorney’s Office launched on Monday, aiming to debunk myths about sex trafficking, according to a press release.


“The unfortunate reality is that widespread human trafficking is currently taking place in our neighborhoods and schools,” San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob said in a statement. “We need to shine a spotlight on this appalling epidemic.”


The Ugly Truth campaign will disseminate provocative ads across the city, informing people that sex trafficking is a problem in their own backyards, and directing them to a site where they can learn more or get help.



Human trafficking is defined as the harboring or transport of persons for the purposes of exploitation, according to the United Nations. It can include anything from prostitution and sexual exploitation to child labor and forced labor.


In San Diego, there are anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 trafficking victims each year, according to the University of San Diego -- and about 80 percent of the victims are from the United States


And San Diego is not alone: There are an estimated 1.5 million victims of human trafficking across the U.S, and 27 million worldwide, according to UNICEF


The Ugly Truth ads aim to bring home the point that human trafficking is often closer than you think: “I don’t know anyone who pays for sex,” one ad says in bold. “Yes, you probably do,” reads the fine print underneath.



However, experts have pointed out that some of the ads in the campaign make broad statements about prostitution, without distinguishing between consensual sex work -- which is a choice -- and sex trafficking -- which is exploitative and a human rights violation. 


"Some of the messages in this campaign are troubling, as we have found that conflating consensual sex work with trafficking makes conditions dangerous for both sex workers and victims of trafficking," Tarah Demant, senior director of Amnesty International's Identity and Discrimination Unit told The Huffington Post via email. "[It drives] sex work further underground, making it harder to access health services or appeal to the authorities for help."



The ad campaign will run on billboards, radio stations and bus stops across San Diego through the end of September, according to the release.


“Until our community sees the damage done to women, girls and boys forced to work in prostitution, they will lack the will to take on this threat to our children and end demand,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Summer Stephan said in the release.


To see all the ads and learn more about trafficking, visit The Ugly Truth website.


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Eva Longoria Posts A Moving Message About How Selena Inspired Her

0
0

On Tuesday, Selena Quintanilla fans celebrated news that the Queen of Tejano would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame more than 20 years after her tragic death. The announcement was particularly special for Eva Longoria.


The 41-year-old actress, who was raised in Corpus Christi, Texas like Selena, will also be receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2017. On Thursday, Longoria posted a moving message about the importance of receiving the honor alongside her idol:



She was the reason I even dared to dream that a better life was possible. And that that life didn't have to distance you from where you came from. So many people become famous and leave a place without ever crediting it with the role it played in shaping their lives. Selena was proud of being from Corpus Christi, Texas. And that made me proud to be from Corpus. She blazed the way for all of us and I will be forever grateful to her for not only that but for the pure joy I felt when I got to see her perform. Her smile, her charisma, her beauty put every single person who watched her under a spell. Thank you Selena. I know I will receive my star on the Walk of Fame because you dared to dream it first.





Longoria had previously posted a message of gratitude for the honor on Instagram on Wednesday, sharing a story of when she first arrived to Hollywood and giving a shout out to Selena. 




Other new Walk of Fame honorees include Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Legend, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel and more. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Don't Miss The 10 Best Movies Of 2016 So Far

0
0

Half of 2016 has already come and gone, but have any Oscar contenders hit theaters yet? Have any future classics graced our biggest screens? Probably so! Despite the blockbuster box-office woes plaguing Hollywood's purse strings right now, this year has offered a few remarkable movies here and there -- if you know where to look. In some places, like a certain lucrative animal utopia, that's obvious. In others, you have to keep squinting at your theater's marquis to realize it's probably not screening the best independent titles. But have no fear -- some of these have already appeared on iTunes (or whatever home-viewing platform you select), and others will arrive there imminently. Put 'em all on your radar, because we could be talking about these 10 titles again very soon. And a special shout-out to a few honorable mentions: "10 Cloverfield Lane," "Hunt for the Wilderpeople," "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising" and "De Palma." Onward!


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Jennifer Lopez's Makeup-Free Selfie Has A Surprise 'Hamilton' Guest

0
0

No makeup necessary!


Jennifer Lopez might require a glam squad to go full J.Lo every night of her Las Vegas residency, but in her down time she's happy to just be Jenny from the Block. 


The "Shades of Blue" star shared a photo of herself looking gorgeous sans makeup on Thursday with a surprise guest in the background: Lin-Manuel Miranda! 


Clearly inspired by the "Hamilton" creator's moving Tony Awards acceptance speech, Lopez captioned the photo of the duo with the hashtags #loveisloveisloveisloveisloveislove#LoveMaketheWorldGoRound and #JLin



#loveisloveisloveisloveisloveislove #LoveMaketheWorldGoRound. #JLin

A photo posted by Jennifer Lopez (@jlo) on




With papers strewn across a coffee table and Miranda at his laptop, we can't help but wonder if the two might be collaborating in the near future. A new musical, perhaps? 


A friend to Miranda since his "In the Heights" days, Lopez was one of the lucky few to score a ticket to "Hamilton" and went backstage to congratulate him after the show. 



How could we say no to these two? 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

What Does 'Kafkaesque' Mean, Anyway?

0
0



You poor mortal fools -- you thought you already knew what "Kafkaesque" meant, didn't you? How wrong you were.


A recent TED-Ed animated video by Noah Tavlin lays it all out, explaining how we cavalierly misuse the adjective and what it really means. "Beyond the word's casual use," he asks, "what makes something Kafkaesque?" (You can check out the full video below.


Sure, you might be shouting at your computer or smartphone screen, we know what "Kafkaesque" is. Obviously, it means reminiscent of the themes and events found in the work of Franz Kafka, the Prague-born author whose famous stories (such as The Trial and The Metamorphosis) drew upon the soul-crushing bureaucratic machinery of Eastern European communism.


We can even get more specific, though. "Kafkaesque" describes, as the Oxford Dictionaries would put it, "oppressive or nightmarish qualities," or as Merriam-Webster suggests, "having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality."


Here's the rub, though: Any time an author's oeuvre becomes the basis for its own descriptor (Orwellian, Dickensian, Proustian), the meaning of that adjective depends completely on the interpretations of the original work. No matter what the dictionary says about "Kafkaesque," the true denotation has nothing to do with dictionary entries and everything to do with what literary critics have to say about Kafka himself. 





Tavlin's own definition of "Kafkaesque" derives from reading The Trial, "A Hunger Artist," The Metamorphosis and other Kafka works more closely, and he draws out several trademarks of his fiction beyond the idea of a baffling, illogical bureaucracy.



"It's not the absurdity of bureaucracy alone, but the irony of the characters' circular reasoning in reaction to it, that is emblematic of Kafka's writing," the video argues. 



This TED-Ed video is the latest entrant in a long-running battle to define "Kafkaesque," and, in a roundabout way, define Kafka's artistic legacy. In 1991, Kafka biographer Frederick Karl offered a more limited but fairly straightforward definition to The New York Times:



"What I'm against is someone going to catch a bus and finding that all the buses have stopped running and saying that's Kafkaesque," he said. "What's Kafkaesque [...] is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces [...] What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafkaesque."



A 2014 Atlantic "By Heart" column with author Ben Marcus, about Kafka's "A Message From the Emperor," claims that Marcus's "discussion of the piece ultimately included a concise and brilliant argument for what constitutes the Kafkaesque, though he never used that word." Instead, Marcus made arguments about what Kafka's "quintessential qualities" were, including "affecting use of language, a setting that straddles fantasy and reality, and a sense of striving even in the face of bleakness -- hopelessly and full of hope." (If "affecting use of language" becomes one of the qualifiers for appropriately deploying "Kafkaesque," the term will be almost impractically circumscribed.)


As Tavlin argues, "The term Kafkaesque has entered the vernacular to describe unnecessarily complicated and frustrating experiences, especially with bureaucracy. But does standing in a long line to fill out confusing paperwork really capture the richness of Kafka’s vision?"


Probably not. What does, aside from Kafka's own brilliant and rightfully well-studied fiction? By this standard, perhaps we should only call Kafka himself Kafkaesque. 


Prescriptivists who want to limit how we use terms like "Kafkaesque" are almost certainly fighting a losing battle, but there are some side benefits. For example, a quirky, thoughtful video exploring the common motifs and themes of Kafka's fiction -- that's a worthy end in itself.



H/t Electric Literature

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Gay Talese Says His New Book Isn't Credible, Then Defends It

0
0

Gay Talese didn't mean it, guys.


The nonfiction writer and journalist told The Washington Post on Thursday that he is disavowing his new book The Voyeur's Motel because its "credibility is down the toilet."


The book follows Colorado motel owner Gerald Foos, outlining the three decades he spent allegedly spying on his guests, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Though there were skeptics before him, WaPo’s Paul Farhi recently identified a plethora of discrepancies between Talese's book and public records -- most notably a previously unknown eight-year period of time during which Foos didn't even own the hotel, starting in 1980. 


Talese was apparently unaware of the sale and subsequent gap in Foos' story until Farhi asked him about it this week. Readers were not pleased.










After the revelation Talese told the Post:



“The source of my book, Gerald Foos, is certifiably unreliable. He’s a dishonorable man, totally dishonorable . . . I know that . . . I did the best I could on this book, but maybe it wasn’t good enough … I should not have believed a word he said. I’m not going to promote this book. How dare I promote it when its credibility is down the toilet?”



However, the 84-year-old recently changed his tune. 


Publisher Grove Atlantic released a statement Friday afternoon, in which Talese, who has clearly calmed down since the initial storm, finds himself more supportive of his work.



“When I spoke to the Washington Post reporter, I am sure I was surprised and upset about this business of the later ownership of the motel, in the eighties,” Talese says in the statement. “That occurred after the bulk of the events covered in my book, but I was upset and probably said some things I didn’t, and don’t, mean. Let me be clear: I am not disavowing the book and neither is my publisher. If, down the line, there are details to correct in later editions, we’ll do that.”



David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker (which published an excerpt of Motel in April), came to Talese's defense and told The New York Times that Foos hasn't been portrayed as a reliable narrator from the start. 


“The central fact of the piece, that Gerald Foos was, in the late ’60s and ’70s, a voyeur, spying on the guests in his motel, is not in doubt in the article,” Remnick told The Times. “The fact that he could sometimes prove an unreliable and inaccurate narrator is also something that Gay Talese makes clear to the reader, repeatedly, and is part of the way Foos is characterized throughout the article.”


There's something very A Million Little Pieces about the sequence of events that has unfolded. Readers can only hope that despite Talese's actions this summer and previously this year, his new work will stand up to the legacy his previous ones have helped create.


The Voyeur's Motel will come out on July 12. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

12 Patriotic Baby Names Inspired By Revolutionary War Figures

0
0

This coming Monday, the U.S. celebrates Independence Day, a time not only for barbecues and burgers, flag-waving and fireworks, but also a chance to look back at the history of the nation. Nameberry took the opportunity to examine some of the more interestingly named heroes in the struggle for independence. Here are 12 figures for baby name inspiration.


Sybil


When she was just 16 years old, Sybil Ludington rode on horseback to alert rebel forces of an impending British attack. Some call her "the female Paul Revere." In more recent years, the lovely but tragic Lady Sybil Crawley on "Downton Abbey" has brought new life to this ancient Greek name -- especially on Nameberry, where it’s Number 291. On the U.S. Social Security Administration charts, it peaked around 1920 and has yet to make a major return.


Rufus


Rufus Putnam was an officer in both the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War.  Today, the name has appeared through characters on "Gossip Girl" and in the Harry Potter series. Popular on Nameberry at Number 214, the name Rufus just waiting for the rest of America to catch up.


Polly


Polly Cooper was a woman in the Oneida who took part in an expedition to help the Continental Army at Valley Forge. The name Polly has long history ranging from nursery rhymes to Tom Sawyer to "Orange is the New Black."


Mercy


Mercy Otis Warren is known as "The conscience of the American Revolution." She advised leaders on political matters and wrote one of the first published histories of the Revolutionary War.  The name Mercy is headed for a comeback, experiencing a rapid rise of late. Madonna named her daughter Mercy James.


Horatio


Horatio Gates was a retired British soldier who served as an American general during the war. He was named for his godfather, the English man of letters and Whig politician Horace Walpole. Horatio is a noble, dignified name, that of Hamlet’s loyal friend and author Horatio Alger. Its cool o-ending increases its potential.


Lydia


Though Lydia Darragh was a pacifist Quaker, lgend has it that during the British occupation of her house in Philadelphia, she delivered overheard information to Washington’s troops, warning them of British attacks. Now at number 52 on Nameberry, the name Lydia has New Testament and literary cred via Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina.


Lachlan


Lachlan McIntosh was a Scottish-born Georgia general who served as the head of the Western Department of the Continental Army. He also fatally shot Declaration of Independence signer Button Gwinnett in a duel. A charming Scottish name wildly popular in Australia and New Zealand, Lachlan entered the U.S. list in 2013.


Patience


Patience Wright was an American sculptor who, according to some books, helped spy for the Patriot cause. Along with Prudence, Patience was a popular virtue name of the era.


Artemas


Artemas Ward was an American major general in the Revolutionary War. Artemas was also the name of a biblical figure. The similar Artemis refers to the Greek goddess of the moon.


Casimir


Polish-born Casimir Pulaski has been called one of "the fathers of the American cavalry" for his contributions to the U.S. military during the Revolutionary War. A regal name in Poland, Casimir would make a strong and dashing name option, with the appealing nickname Caz. It was actually a Top 400 name in the early 20th century but has been somewhat MIA since 1942.


Crispus


Crispus Attucks, the son of an African-born slave father and Native American mother, is believed to have been the first American casualty of the Revolutionary War. His name is now 370 on Nameberry. This variation of Crispin means "curly-haired" and could fit in with other Latinate boys' names.


Mordecai


Mordecai Gist was a general in command of the Maryland Line in the Continental army. A Hebrew appellation, Mordecai has never ranked on the U.S. Top 1000, but it it is 457 on Nameberry.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


All Black Female Comedy Show To Fundraise For Black Lives Matter

0
0

Agunda Okeyo celebrates blackness and explores how to heal pain with humor through her work as a writer, producer and activist.


"Laughter is the most liberating emotion and it's my joy to bask in it and share it with others," Okeyo told The Huffington Post. 


Okeyo said that's why she created "Sisters of Comedy," a special stand up showcase that first kicked off in 2014 and features acts from talented black women comedians. The show, which is presented at popular comedy clubs in New York City like Gotham and Carolines on Broadway, is the only all-black women comedy show at any of the top clubs in NYC, Okeyo said. 


On July 7th, Okeyo will host a special installment of the showcase that will be co-sponsored by Black Lives Matter. The show will be hosted by comedian and writer Chloe Hilliard and will feature comedians Aminah Imani, Sydnee Washington, Janelle James, Sunda Crooknkist, and include special guest Judah Friedlander. 



"American culture in my view is thirsty for truth and comedy is an excellent vehicle for authentic truths because it's nothing but a voice, ideas and a mic," Okeyo said. "The fact that this particular show is co-sponsored by Black Lives Matter... is a perfect illustration of why I do this work: to celebrate black women, black culture, black self-determination, welcome allies and above all spread laughter with love." 


Okeyo said partial proceeds from the show will go to Black Lives Matter on behalf of BLM activist Jasmine Abdullah Richards. Richards, a 28-year-old founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Pasadena, California, was convicted of a "felony lynching" charge in June. Last September, Pasadena police arrested Richards after they say she interfered with their attempt to arrest a fellow activist at a local peace march. Many activists have spoken out against the charges. Richards was released from jail in July, but Okeyo said the proceeds will help with her existing and future expenses in dealing with this conviction.  


"It's critical to raise funds in support of Jasmine Abdullah because she's unfortunately the first black woman ever convicted of lynching in America. That's an astounding charge," she said. "Since the 1980s [California's 'felony lynching' law] has been used as an effective loophole for police to undermine and arrest protesting activists often while they attempt to protect their colleagues from arrest or excessive force." 


"We cannot allow a dubious precedent to legitimize police brutality at this time of social change," she added. 


Through her upcoming showcase, Okeyo said she hopes to amplify the work of the Black Lives Matter movement and the many activists, like Richards, who risk their lives and safety to help defend others. 


"I hope this showcase will provide greater awareness about the work of BLM Network, the courage and leadership of Jasmine Abdullah, the power of the Sisters of Comedy showcase (my labor of love) and why our lives so deeply matter," she said. "Most of all, I want people to laugh and celebrate because for me life is a precious gift that must be shared."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

13 Photos Of Fireworks At Weddings That Are Absolutely Explosive

0
0

There's nothing like wedding fireworks to really end the party -- and start off your marriage -- with a bang.


In celebration of July 4, we're sharing some of our favorite shots of fireworks at weddings. Check them out below. 



Check out the video below for even more:




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Samra Habib's Photo Series Highlights The Faith Of Queer Muslims

0
0

HuffPost Religion is highlighting the voices of Muslim artists this Ramadan. Every Friday of the holy month, we’ll feature artwork and reflections from artists around the world on our Instagram account. You can follow along at @HuffPostRelig.


Samra Habib is a queer Muslim photographer from Toronto, Canada. Faith has been a part of her identity since she was a child growing up in Pakistan. But it wasn't until she started attending Unity mosque, a "gender-equal and queer-affirming" worship space in Toronto, that she discovered a spiritual community where she could be herself. 


"To me, the mosque embodies the diversity that exists within Islam," Habib told The Huffington Post.


One of the mosque's founders, El-Farouk Khaki, encouraged Habib to capture the spirit of the worship space through her photography. The resulting photo series, "Just Me And Allah," highlights the stories and extraordinary faith journeys of queer Muslims.


Habib took over HuffPost Religion’s Instagram account Friday to share photos from her series and to talk about what it's like to produce art in a time of Islamophobia.


To see more photos from Habib's series with queer Muslims, check out her Tumblr here. Read on to learn more about this artist's vision.



Tell us about yourself!


My name is Samra Habib. I'm a queer Muslim journalist and founder of "Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Photo Project." I photograph my subjects and share their stories. My body of work aims to bring light to the struggles and often complicated experiences of queer Muslims around the world by documenting their visual history and narratives.


What is your earliest Ramadan memory and what are you praying about this year? 


My earliest Ramadhan memory would have to be passing out at the tender age of six while trying to fast because of low blood sugar. I just wanted to share the experience of fasting with all the grownups because I was so excited. This year, I'm praying for the safety and well being of queer folks all over the world, as well as religious minorities who get killed by extremists on a regular basis. And because the Ataturk Airport attack is so recent, I'm praying for the victims and their families and the safety of my queer friends in Istanbul.



What is it like to produce art during a time of Islamophobia?


I'm hoping that the work I create helps combat Islamophobia by humanizing the subjects I photograph and interview. That's why I've just started sharing my experience as a queer Muslim as well. Although many of our experiences are specific to being queer Muslim, we also have similar hopes, dream, fears and aspirations as many non-Muslims do.


Has this climate affected the way you think about your identity as an artist?


I feel that my identity as a queer Muslim woman of color who is an artist, a journalist and an activist gives me a unique platform to share the kind of insight that had been missing from mainstream media. Our voices had been missing from conversations about the Muslim experience. I feel so fortunate to be part of the many emerging voices of queer Muslim artists and writers that highlight the diversity that exists within Islam. Because of the climate, there is a hunger for the different perspectives of Muslims who deal with Islamophobic attitudes daily.



I feel so fortunate to be part of the many emerging voices of queer Muslim artists and writers that highlight the diversity that exists within Islam.



Has it affected what galleries, buyers, or clients expect from you?


A decade ago, while I was working as a journalist, I was hesitant to write about the queer Muslim experience because I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a writer. After working on the photo project, I realized that I need to do the stories and experiences I was coming across justice and share them any way I could. I was so unhappy with the media coverage and subtle Islamophobic attitudes I was coming across. So now when I get asked to write about Islam and queer issues, I gladly accept the opportunity to offer a smart and nuanced perspective.


Click through the slideshow below to see more artists from HuffPost Religion's Ramadan Instagram takeover. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A Dystopian Novelist Predicted Trump's Campaign Slogan In The '90s

0
0

There’s something maddeningly vague about Donald Trump’s catchall campaign slogan, “Make America great again.”


Maybe it’s the blatant fallacy of “again,” alluding to imagined halcyon days. Or maybe it’s the lack of specificity of the word “great” -- if you were to survey 10 Americans about what greatness looked like to them, you’d likely turn up a mish-mash of responses, and certainly nothing actionable. 


Whatever the case, it seems sci-fi writer and unofficial Queen of the Galaxy Octavia Butler predicted the slogan a couple of decades ago. Nearly 20 years before Trump trademarked the term, she wrote about a character named Senator Andrew Steele Jarret, a harbinger for violence in her 1998 book Parable of the Talents.


You can see an excerpt outlining Jarret's use of the phrase "make American great again" below:






As Fusion writes, Butler's "crystal ball wasn’t entirely accurate; he didn’t have Trump’s red-orange hair.” But, her antagonist did run for office during a period of isolationism, religious intolerance and duress. Sound familiar?


Although The Donald trademarked his capacious slogan, it existed before him, as a few writers pointed out during his surreal rise. Appealing to those effected by inflation in the late '70s, Ronald Reagan ran on a platform of return to economic promise, printing “Make America great again” on buttons. But, the catchphrase didn’t gain the same kind of traction as it has today, proliferated on mantra-friendly Twitter and, of course, on some ostentatious hats.


After Reagan, a few pop culture avenues predicted that the phrase would be a favorite of a particularly noxious candidate. A 2013 entry in the “Metal Gear” video game series featured a CEO-turned-2020 Presidential candidate who at one point huffs, “The weak will be purged, and the strongest will thrive -- free to live as they’ll see fit. They’ll make America great again!”


It’s not surprising that Butler, of all dystopian writers, predicted Trump’s campaign slogan to a T. She has a penchant for accurately determining the future -- including her own, writing once on the back of a notebook that her books “will be read by millions of people. So be it! See to it!”


She’s not the only writer to wield her pen against such a campaign, either. Earlier this year, over 450 writers, including Stephen King and Michael Chabon, signed a petition against Trump, declaring, “the history of dictatorship is the history of manipulation and division, demagoguery and lies.”


So, greatness, it would seem, is a highly interpretable concept.


Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liarrampant xenophoberacistmisogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.


For more on the women of science fiction, read "14 Women Writers Who Dominate The Universe Of Sci-Fi."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

After Brock Turner Case, This Woman Wants To Tell The World What It Costs To Survive Sexual Assault

0
0

Wagatwe Wanjuki, a writer and activist, is raising funds to spread the stories of the costs of sexual assault for survivors. 


"It’s time to talk about -- and highlight -- the price that survivors pay simply by having the misfortune of being in the presence of a rapist who decided to strike," Wanjuki writes on her Kickstarter page for the project, called #SurvivorPrivilege. The effort takes its name from a hashtag she created two years ago in response to an op-ed by columnist George Will that was widely seen as mocking sexual assault survivors.


Wanjuki, who went public in 2009 with her report of being sexually assaulted at Tufts University, is launching the project now because of the outcry that followed former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner's six-month sentence last month for sexually assaulting a woman student outside a fraternity house. Turner's father argued for leniency, saying prison was "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life." 


The light sentence, the father's words, and a powerful letter written by Turner's victim prompted widespread outrage. Judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Turner, talked about the "adverse collateral consequences" of the punishment on Turner's life, and said the "degree of monetary loss to the victim is not really applicable" in the case.



Wanjuki is collecting stories that contradict that statement. She plans to enlist at least 20 survivors to write about the price they paid after being assaulted -- literally and emotionally.  


"I want to create a collection of stories to shift the focus from the 'lost' future of assailants to the present and future price survivors pay for being the victims of a heinous act," Wanjuki explained. "These collection of firsthand stories will highlight the reality of being assaulted; the price paid comes in many forms -- financial, social, emotional, physical, mental, and the list goes on."


Research has shown victims can expect to pay from $15,000 to $108,447 in personal costs for a sexual assault, depending on where they live. 


So far, Wanjuki has raised $2,215 toward her $20,000 goal. The money will go toward printing and shipping costs, web hosting, legal costs and paying editors and contributors.


"I believe that survivors should be compensated for the labor (emotional and otherwise) of sharing their stories," she wrote. 


______


Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter focusing on sexual violence and higher education. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or find him on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.


 


 


Related Coverage:


Being A Sexual Assault Survivor In College Often Comes With Huge Bills


The Woman Behind #SurvivorPrivilege Was Kicked Out Of School After Being Raped


Judge Who Sentenced Brock Turner Believed He Was Sorry


How Rolling Stone’s UVA Story Sparked A Controversial Frat Lobbying Effort


In One Woman’s Sexual Assault Case, Police Succeeded Where Her College Failed


Brock Turner’s Dad Gave Tone-Deaf Plea For Lenient Sentence In Son’s Sexual Assault Case


‘Dear Brock Turner’ Photo Series Gives A Voice To Silenced Rape Victims

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Cops Find $10 Million Worth Of Cocaine Inside Blinged-Out Horse's Head

0
0

New Zealand made its biggest ever cocaine bust after finding $10 million worth of the drug stashed inside a diamante-encrusted sculpture of a horse's head.


Police officers and customs officials seized the artwork, which weighed 880 pounds, shortly after it was freighted into the country from Mexico in early May. They opened it up and were stunned to discover 35 bricks of high-grade cocaine inside.


"This is obviously an extremely large amount of cocaine, and in the past we've only found very small amounts of this drug," Detective Senior Sergeant Colin Parmenter, from the Organised Crime Auckland squad, said in a statement on Saturday.



"Prior to this, the average amount of cocaine seized by police each year was around 250 grams (0.5 pounds). What this find tells us though is that there is obviously a demand for it," he added.


Three men have been arrested in connection with the plot. A 56-year-old U.S. national and a 44-year-old Mexican national were detained at Auckland International Airport, just as they were about to catch a flight to Hawaii on Friday night.



They appeared at Manukau District Court on Saturday morning, facing charges of importing a class A drug and possession for supply.


A 29-year-old Mexican national was arrested in Christchurch shortly after. He is scheduled to appear at Christchurch District Court on Monday on the same charges. If convicted of importation, all three men could face life imprisonment.


"The enquiry is ongoing and police are not ruling out further arrests," New Zealand Police added in a second statement, issued Saturday afternoon.



Parmenter added that, while it was entirely possible the statue may have eventually been sent on to another country, "there's every possibility that the cocaine was destined for the New Zealand market and we would be naive to think otherwise."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Stunning Photographs Capture The Grief And Survival After Orlando

0
0

Photographer Wayne Lawrence has always sought to capture individuals overlooked by mainstream media, such as exonerated prisoners and families affected by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in his colorful, prolific images.


But Lawrence, who is based in New York, said he wasn't fully prepared for what he witnessed when he visited Orlando, Florida in the wake of the June 12 mass shooting that left 49 people dead.  


"There was no way for me to fully understand the magnitude of what happened at Pulse," he told The Huffington Post. "Forty-nine people lost their lives at a place that was supposed to be their safe haven. They were killed for absolutely nothing other than being human, leaving a whole community to grieve in public."


Lawrence's solemn shots from his June visit are the centerpiece of a new National Geographic feature. Written by Melody Rowell, "Orlando Strong: A Community United After Massacre" focuses on how the city's LGBT and Latino communities are learning to cope in the aftermath of the tragedy. Rowell points out that 90 percent of the 49 people who were killed when Omar Mateen opened fire on the crowd at Pulse nightclub, which was hosting a Latin night, were of Latino descent. 


The photographer said he was initially hesitant to approach residents who were grieving, as he "naturally wanted to give the families their space."


"Being there with a camera felt awkward and wrong at first," he told HuffPost. "But as with stories like this, I am always inspired by the generosity of the human spirit." 


Don't miss a selection of Lawrence's incredible shots below, then head to National Geographic to read the full article. 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor And Nobel Laureate, Dead At 87

0
0

July 2 - Activist and writer Elie Wiesel, the World War Two death camp survivor who won a Nobel Peace Prize for becoming the life-long voice of millions of Holocaust victims, has died, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem said on Saturday.


Wiesel, a philosopher, speaker, playwright and professor who also campaigned for the tyrannized and forgotten around the world, was 87.


The Romanian-born Wiesel lived by the credo expressed in "Night," his landmark story of the Holocaust - "to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."


In awarding the Peace Prize in 1986, the Nobel Committee praised Wiesel as a "messenger to mankind" and "one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression and racism continue to characterize the world."










Wiesel did not waver in his campaign never to let the world forget the Holocaust horror. While at the White House in 1985 to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, he even rebuked U.S. President Ronald Reagan for planning to lay a wreath at a German cemetery where some of Hitler's notorious Waffen SS troops were buried.


"Don't go to Bitburg," Wiesel said. "That place is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS."


Wiesel became close to U.S. President Barack Obama but the friendship did not deter him from criticizing U.S. policy on Israel. He spoke out in favor of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and pushed the United States and other world powers to take a harder stance against Iran over its nuclear program. Wiesel attended the joint session of the U.S. Congress in 2015 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the dangers of Iran's program.


"Elie Wiesel was one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world," Obama said in a statement.










"Elie was not just the world's most prominent Holocaust survivor, he was a living memorial," the statement read. 


"After we walked together among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald where he was held as a teenager and where his father perished, Elie spoke words I've never forgotten - 'Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.'"


U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described Wiesel as a voice for a generation of the Jewish people who saw and suffered horrors no people should endure.


"His light in this world will be greatly missed," Cardin said in a statement.


Wiesel and his foundation both were victims of the wide-ranging Ponzi scheme run by New York financier Bernie Madoff, with Wiesel and his wife losing their life's savings and the foundation losing $15.2 million. "'Psychopath' - it's too nice a word for him," he said of Madoff in 2009.



Wiesel was a hollow-eyed 16-year-old when he emerged from the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. He had been orphaned by the Nazis and their identification number, A-7713, was tattooed on his arm as a physical manifestation of his broken faith and the nightmares that would haunt him throughout his life.


Wiesel and his family had first been taken by the Nazis from the village of Sighetu Marmatiei in the Transylvania region of Romania to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters died. Wiesel and his father, Shlomo, ended up in Buchenwald, where Shlomo died. In "Night" Wiesel wrote of his shame at lying silently in his bunk while his father was beaten nearby.


After the war Wiesel made his way to France, studied at the Sorbonne and by 19 had become a journalist. He pondered suicide and never wrote of or discussed his Holocaust experience until 10 years after the war as a part of a vow to himself. He was 27 years old in 1955 when "Night" was published in Yiddish, and Wiesel would later rewrite it for a world audience.



"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed ...," Wiesel wrote. "Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live."


Asked by an interviewer in 2000 why he did not go insane, Wiesel said, "To this day that is a mystery to me."


By 2008, the New York Times said "Night" had sold an estimated 10 million copies, including 3 million after talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey made it a spotlight selection for her book club in 2006.


In 1985 Wiesel helped break ground in Washington for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the following year was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In typical fashion, he dedicated the prize to all those who survived the Nazi horror, calling them "an example to humankind how not to succumb to despair."



Wiesel, who became a U.S. citizen in 1963, was slight in stature but a compelling figure when he spoke. With a chiseled profile, burning eyes and a shock of gray hair, he could silence a crowd by merely standing up.


He was often described as somber. An old friend, Chicago professor Irving Abrahamson, once said of him: "I've never seen Elie give a belly laugh. He'll chuckle, he'll smile, there'll be a twinkle in his eye. But never a laugh from within."


A few years after winning the peace prize, he established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which, in addition to Israeli and Jewish causes, campaigned for Miskito Indians in Nicaragua, Cambodian refugees, victims of South African apartheid and of famine and genocide in Africa.





Wiesel wrote more than 50 books - novels, non-fiction, memoirs and many with a Holocaust theme - and held a long-running professorship at Boston University. In one of his later books, "Open Heart," he used his 2011 quintuple-bypass surgery as impetus for reflection on his life.


"I have already been the beneficiary of so many miracles, which I know I owe to my ancestors," he wrote. "All I have achieved has been and continues to be dedicated to their murdered dreams - and hopes."



He collected scores of awards and honors, including an honorary knighthood in Britain. Obama presented him the National Humanities Medal in 2009.


Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel in 2007 by a 22-year-old Holocaust denier, but not injured.


Wiesel and wife Marion married in 1969 and their son, Elisha, was born in 1972. (Editing by Diane Craft and Dan Grebler)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Iconic Bon Jovi Song Gets A Gorgeous Vintage Blues Makeover

0
0



Postmodern Jukebox is back with another glorious reworking of a classic song.


This time, Bon Jovi's 1986 rock anthem "You Give Love a Bad Name” received the old school blues treatment.


With "The Voice of Holland" alum Jennie Lena on vocals, the glorious cover has garnered almost 200,000 views since being posted to YouTube on Thursday.





"As someone that grew up in New Jersey, I'll never turn down a chance to cover some Bon Jovi," Scott Bradlee, the group's creator, posted on its website.


"'You Give Love a Bad Name' had just the right swagger in the lyrics for Jennie to completely own this performance," he added.  


See how it compares to Bon Jovi's original here:





Postmodern Jukebox and its roster of artists, who in September will embark on a 45-date tour across North America, have covered dozens of modern pop, rock and rap songs in recent months.


Justin Bieber's "Sorry," Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy”and Justin Timberlake’s "Cry Me a River” have all succumbed to their effortless style.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Alvin Toffler Saw the Future Before It Arrived

0
0




Alvin Toffler, the noted futurist, passed away last week at the age of 87. He saw it all before it happened. Through his seminal books, “Future Shock” (1970) and “The Third Wave,” (1980)  he accurately predicted the trajectory technology and society would take – from centralized, mass industrial institutions to de-centralized, de-massified, customized niches and networks. He saw that knowledge would replace labor and capital as the key driver of wealth creation and called this new era The Information Age.  And he worried that the accelerated pace of change could well overwhelm us and precipitate “wave conflict” between different speeds of change.  In short, he got the big picture right.


If what he said in the 1970s and 1980s turned out to be right by the first decades of the 21st Century, are his prognostications from 2006 about the times ahead panning out now? I interviewed him then about his last book, “Revolutionary Wealth,” written with his wife and muse Heidi. 


Below are excepts of that interview in which Toffler talked about the “outside brain” of big data, how companies “outsource labor” to the consumer, desk-top manufacturing and the unworkability of the European Union,  among other topics.


Nathan Gardels: iPods, cloning, outsourcing, Googling. All these disparate changes and breakthroughs are not only transforming our lives; you argue they are converging into “a new wealth system.”


How is this new system a departure from the economics we're familiar with?


Alvin Toffler: In two ways: First, knowledge is now the key driver of wealth creation, and, second, the radical fusion of production and consumption will lead to the explosion of the “non-money” economy.


Conventional economics is about scarcity. But knowledge is essentially inexhaustible. If you grow rice in a paddy, I can't grow rice in the same paddy at the same time. If you use a machine tool, I can't use it at the same time. But we can both use the same knowledge at the same time — and not deplete it. No matter how many people use arithmetic, it doesn't get used up. In fact, the more people use knowledge together, the more new knowledge they tend to create.


It's more portable than any other product. It can be compressed into symbols and abstractions. It tends to leak and is hard to protect. It's non-linear, so that tiny insights can yield huge outputs. Above all, it's intangible.


Intangible factors have always been entwined with tangible assets. As Hernando de Soto, for example, points out in “The Mystery of Capital,” a piece of land is not “property” in any tangible way unless its ownership is enforced by an “intangible” legal title or by “intangible” social norms that secure its ownership. These intangibles are like the protective skin around an orange.


Today, companies like Google are all orange peel. They have no tangible core. Yet they are worth billions! In advanced economies the tangible property base of capitalism is being outpaced by the intangibles.


Just consider the dramatic development of the “outside brain” -- data banks, connectivity, word searches, genetic mapping or the World Wide Web -- that radically expands our capacity and possibilities in almost every realm. And the knowledge at our disposal will only continue to grow. Everything a person remembers in a 70-year lifespan can be stored digitally on a 6-gigabyte chip. And today we have 400 gigabytes in a personal computer!


At the same time, it is becoming harder and harder to protect many intangible assets — harder, for example, to enforce intellectual property rights.


Gardels: What do you mean by the non-money economy — and why do you say it is going to explode?


Toffler: When we work at a job, when we buy and sell, when we invest, when we use our credit or debit cards,we are operating inside the money economy.


But that doesn't end the list of things we do with our lives. We raise children. We care for our elders. We fix a leaky faucet. We help a friend paint the living room. We cook. We clean up our house. We garden. We jump-start the car battery. The do-it-yourself activities might be called pro-suming, because we are both the producer and consumer.


We sometimes pay people to do many of these things for us. When we do, we're operating in the money economy, and the activities are seen by economists as creating value in the gross domestic product. If, however, we choose to do these things ourselves, or if poverty requires us to do so, our efforts would not be added to GDP and would not be counted as having added any value to the economy — i.e., the money economy.


The non-money economy may well create as much value as the money economy because a myriad of unpaid activities feed “free lunch” into the money economy. In effect, they subsidize it.


Just stop for a minute to think about Linux open-source software and the huge impact it's had all around the world. Here is a product initially produced by Linus Torvalds without pay, almost as a hobby, which then attracted large numbers of unpaid programmers to adapt, adjust and expand it, encouraging still others to volunteer time producing other kinds of software.


This prosumer activity in the non-money economy has transformed the way software products in the money economy are produced.


Gardels: Prosuming has been with us a long time. What’s so new?                                        


Toffler: What’s new is that cheap new technologies are shifting activities from the money economy into the non-money economy. More and more companies in the money economy are externalizing labor by requiring customers to perform tasks previously done for them by employees. We use ATMs and punch in the data ourselves — and tellers get laid off. That is pro-suming.



More and more companies in the money economy are externalizing labor by requiring customers to perform tasks previously done for them by employees. We use ATMs and punch in the data ourselves — and tellers get laid off. That is pro-suming.



We used to send film off to Kodak to be developed and printed. Today we perform those functions ourselves in the palms of our hands. We take our own diabetes readings. We produce our own digital movies and music CDs.


All this is just the beginning. We are going to see an explosion of unpaid work. Soon there will be 1 billion people over 60. They will be using new technologies, from self-diagnosis to toilet urinalysis, to do for themselves what doctors used to do.



All this will make the pro-sumers far more important. We'll buy technology in the money economy and use it in the non-money economy that, in turn, will feed back into the creation of new value in the money economy. Just wait until desktop manufacturing — still in its infancy — puts the equivalent of a small factory in everyone's home.


OUTSOURCING AND THE THIRD JOB


Gardels: Doesn't this externalization of labor from the producer to the consumer also put new costs and burdens on the consumer?


Toffler: We call this externalization of labor the “third job.” Your first job is the one you get paid for when you go to your office or factory and get a paycheck every week or month. Your second job is taking care of yourself, your kids, your parents or your home, cleaning up or doing the dishes.


The third job is the work being “outsourced” by the producer not to India or the Philippines, but to you, the consumer, from the friendly companies all around you.


A few years ago, if I wanted to find out what happened to a FedEx or DHL package, I'd call some number in Memphis or Frankfurt or Tokyo to talk to a clerk. Now, I'm my own clerk. I go to my computer, punch in the tracking number and trace the package myself. I'm doing what the clerk used to do and was paid for. The same is true when we use an ATM machine. We do what the teller used to do.


So, in this new economy, our “third job” is the work we do for all these companies, but don't get paid for! Clearly, this adds to our daily stress and is yet another reason we always seem to have less and less disposable time.


Gardels: And just by making transactions in cyberspace, we are providing valuable personal information that marketing companies used to have to find out through research and had to pay for. Every time you do a Google search, it is tracked and noted so that advertisers can match their product to your interests for future marketing.


Toffler: Absolutely, this is another aspect of the “third job.” In an information-based system, everything is out there. Some consumer advocates are already starting to demand payment for the sale and use of their personal information, whether revealed by their purchases at the supermarket or a visit to a Web site.


THE CLASH OF SPEEDS


Gardels: How is the knowledge-based system affecting what you call in the book the “deep fundamentals” of wealth creation — time, for example?


Toffler: In two key ways. First, we are leaving behind the impersonal, collective time of standardized mass industrial society where everyone works from 9 to 5, going to the job and coming home at the same time. That time is homogenous.


Now we are seeing the advent of personalized, irregular time. New technology reduces the costs of variety that would have undermined mass assembly. It enables niche production and thereby customization and diversification in how we schedule our daily lives, both at work and at play. Twenty-first century time will thus be 24/7, flexible time.


Second, when you accelerate changes in technology and society, by definition you accelerate the rate at which knowledge becomes obsolete. What we “know” is undone almost on a daily basis, whether because we've discovered a new planet or uncovered the chromosome linked to hypertension. This acceleration can transform current knowledge into what we call “obsoledge” — outdated information — overnight. Time and the rapid decay of knowledge are very much related in an information society.


In the past, both truths and untruths endured for centuries, if not millennia, without challenge. Now, much of our decision-making is based on facts that could change tomorrow or are already obsolete.



Acceleration can transform current knowledge into what we call 'obsoledge' — outdated information — overnight



Gardels: What kind of problems does this diversification and acceleration of time produce?


Toffler: One of the key problems in the world today is de-synchronization — “the clash of speeds” between the old, lumbering mass system and the new diversity, flexibility and acceleration demanded of institutions built on knowledge. They are out of sync.


One of the biggest clashes is with standardized education, which was originally designed to turn the children of farmers into industrial workers comfortable with the requirements and rhythms of a mass society. Education is among the slowest institutions to adapt to the new wealth system.


If you were a cop at the side of the road monitoring the speed of the cars going by, you would clock the car of business, which is always changing rapidly under competitive pressures, at 100 miles per hour. But the car of education, which is supposedly preparing our young for the future, is only going 10 mph. You cannot have a successful economy with that degree of de-synchronization.


Gardels: There is not only institutional inertia, but active political opposition to this new regime of speed, flexibility and diversity. Look at the French students, who have been demonstrating against a “precarious” working life they fear a new labor law would introduce. 


Toffler: What we are seeing today on the streets of Paris is “wave conflict” — the conflict that arises from the shift out of a “second wave” mass society to a “third wave’ knowledge society; it is a battle between those who benefit from the old system and those who would benefit from the new.


But for Europe, this is only a symptom of a larger problem. While the revolutionary wealth system is all about decentralization, niches, flexibility and devolution to networked and distributed power, Europe's leaders are trying to build a mega-state headquartered in the gray ministries of Brussels.



Europeans have very slow-moving institutions and societies. And they are proud of that fact. That is fine, but there will be a price. The large states — France, Germany, Italy — are falling into relative decline behind quick-paced Americans and Asians who are thrust into the future not only by business competition, but also by the lure of the new opportunities created by the knowledge economy. It is the small states— Finland or Ireland, for example — that are in sync with the revolution now under way.


Gardels: According to Moore's Law — Silicon Valley's rule of thumb — the number of transistors per square inch of integrated circuits will double every 12-18 months for the next two decades, at least. This ever-larger capacity enables ever-faster speed for computer calculations.


What is the impetus behind this quest for speed that drives the information revolution? Why is it better to embrace this path than, say, the slow food movement in Italy?


Toffler: First, competition. Second, the allure of diversification within your own life. The faster you can do things, the more diverse things you can do. In mass society, large parts of life are repetitious. Revolutionary wealth brings with it diversity and a wide range of potentials for the individual.


Gardels: It seems the biggest “clash of speeds” is not only between the West hurtling into this accelerating wealth system and those who want to return to 12th century Islam, but the clash with all religions. All religions emphasize equilibrium, pace, patience, withdrawal and meditation. “Haste is the devil's work,” the Prophet Mohammed warned.


Toffler: Well, there is certainly a clash with 12th century Islamists. But the rules of most religions were laid down in times when the spatial reach of experience was small — people traveled on average just 15 miles from their village during their lifetimes — and the pace of social, economic and technological change was imperceptibly slow.


These religions claim that they have found the right pace to live one's life for all time. But what makes it the right pace? The human race has had a better shot at a decent and longer life the more it has sped up. The quickened pace of the industrial revolution created an immeasurably better life for most people than the peasant life before it, or the pre-agricultural life before that.


But the more relevant point here is that the knowledge-based wealth system will not impose one homogenous time on everyone. On the contrary, it creates a diversity of possibilities for everyone to set their own pace. Some may want to rush around the planet or cyberspace getting money-rich; others may want to lie on the beach all day or have long meals with their family and friends. They may want to do both at different times. One slogan for this new era might well be, “Each to his own tempo.” Above all, the emerging new civilization is a civilization of choice.


WEALTH CREATED EVERYWHERE, NOWHERE AND OUT THERE


Gardels: What about changes in space and spatial relations, another of the deep fundamentals included in your book? Today the new venues of wealth are everywhere — globalization, outsourcing and “the flat earth” are part of the lingo, but also, as you suggest, are “nowhere” and out there — outer space.


Toffler: By now it is widely understood that the diffusion of technology, capital and skills means wealth can be created everywhere on the globe. Comparative advantage is now more about skill sets than, in most cases, natural resources or capital assets. In the U.S., the state of Indiana used to try to attract business by bragging about its limestone deposits and non-union labor; now it advertises its universities and cultural amenities.


Add to this the “nowhere” — cyberspace. Of course eBay, Amazon.com and others have their servers located in geographic space somewhere, but they make their money in the intangible zone of electronic transfers. Kenichi Ohmae, the Japanese management expert, calls cyberspace “the new continent” where entrepreneurial explorers are seeking — and making— their fortunes.


Few ever think, however, about the new wealth-creating zone in outer space —12,000 miles above planet Earth. This development may well go down as the greatest turning point in this historical moment.


Global positioning satellites(GPS) today are key to synchronizing precision time and data streams for everything from a cell-phone call to an ATM withdrawal. They allow us to precisely track packages or shipping containers as they make their way from the factory to the market — something critical for just-in-time productivity, but also for security. Soon, GPS will be the central system that allows air-traffic controllers to manage ever more congested skies full of planes that carry us to business conferences or vacations. Weather-tracking satellites can increase agricultural productivity and give early warning of impending disaster through more accurate forecasting.


In time, these satellites will be available to all, spreading the wealth. Algeria, Pakistan and Nigeria have already bought microsatellites weighing little more than 100pounds, making them inexpensive to launch.


THE END OF THE JOB


Gardels: Won't work itself be transformed?


Toffler: Yes, and not only through pro-suming. We may see the end of the job, as such. “The job” has not always been there. The regularized relationship between a worker and an employer, usually based on the number of hours spent doing some task for a regular paycheck, is a recent historical invention. Most of our ancestors never had a “job.” You had slaves or indentured servants who largely worked according to the seasons, not the clock.


What we are seeing now is a shift away from formalized “job” relationships to individualized agreements. It will be non-physical “piece work” or project work for which you or a team is paid. You may come together as a team for one project, disperse, and regroup with others for another project. You may work together as a family at home, just as before the industrial revolution. Like the family, the work experience will be highly diversified, both in what you do and where you do it.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Is The Statue Of Liberty A Man?

0
0

Maybe Lady Liberty isn't a lady after all. 


The model for the Statue of Liberty may not have been sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's mother, as widely believed, but his brother, Jean-Charles Bartholdi.


Elizabeth Mitchell, author of "Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure To Build the Statue of Liberty," told Discovery Family's "Secrets of America’s Favorite Places" on Sunday night that the statue doesn't look much like Bartholdi's mother.


"Going through photos he had in his files of his brother, I started to look at the face more carefully, and it really did look to be like Liberty," she told the New York Post. "His brother in his adult years had actually gone mad, and it was Bartholdi’s task to go once a week to visit, sometimes [spending] hours just staring at his brother, who was not speaking."


However, New York University professor Edward Berenson isn't buying it. 


Berenson told "Fox & Friends" on Sunday that Lady Liberty isn't based on Bartholdi's mother because it's not mentioned anywhere in the sculptor's extensive letters.


"He was a mama's boy," Berenson. "If he was going to model the Statue of Liberty after his mom, he would've told her that." 


But he said it's also not based on his brother, because that's also not in the letters. 


Instead, Bartholdi was inspired by classical arts, especially Greek and Roman sculpture. 


"The Statue of Liberty is clearly a Roman goddess of liberty," he said. "To me, there's no way that the Statue of Liberty is male."


 


(h/t Raw Story)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Lin-Manuel Miranda Names His Favorite Rappers Of All Time

0
0



By now, even the freshest fans of Lin-Manuel Miranda are aware of the fact that his hip-hop-inspired musical "Hamilton" is filled with veiled references to history's best rappers


Stuck between the obvious homages to America's Founding Fathers -- Alexander Hamilton among them -- are subtle nods to LL Cool J, Mobb Deep, Notorious B.I.G., Ja Rule, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and many, many others.


In a recent interview at the Rockefeller Foundation, Miranda answered the tough questions related to his hip-hop fandom. When asked to name his favorite rapper of all time, he agreed to pinpoint five of them. Of course, Biggie was number one:



1. Biggie
2. Big Pun
3. Eminem
4. Jay Z Lauryn Hill
5. André 3000



And yes, the Tony Award winner originally named Jay Z amongst his top five, but then struck him from the list when he remembered that Lauryn Hill reigns supreme. 


Good call, Mr. Miranda. As a wise woman told us, two MCs cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  







To read more from Miranda's discussion at the Rockefeller Foundation's Insight Dialogue series, check out our past coverage here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Viewing all 18483 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images