Month: August 2010

A stranger in Johannesburg immediately notices serious security measures everywhere. High walls are topped with electrified razor wire. Dogs are visible or audible behind the walls. Signs warn of alarms that will bring “rapid armed response” from one of many thriving security companies. The presence of so much defensive and offensive hardware prompts a question: … Read more

Forget “Avatar” and “Step Up 3D”: When filmmakers finally master 3-D, it will mark the start of a new art form… Is digital 3-D the future of cinema or an annoying, overhyped fad? The movie industry is understandably torn. On one hand, money talks, and some of the biggest hits of the last six months … Read more

These scribbles in the margins already seem like messages from a dying age. Will the next generation of writers leave similar guides to the workings of their minds for the future? Perhaps – but not in a format we can currently comprehend. Link

Like Mount Vesuvius but at briefer intervals, Prince Charles erupts in high dudgeon over various and sundry affronts to his very particular and sometimes very peculiar notions of how life should be lived. The ghastliness of modern architecture and the superiority of homeopathic medicine—in 2004 he endorsed an alternative cancer treatment that prescribes, among other … Read more