- Björk's karaoke night
Björk has come out of her hiatus to lay down some vocals in support of Iceland's environmentalistsIn Iceland, 6 January is known as Thretándinn, the last day of Christmas, when, according to folklore, supernatural beings come out from their hidden world to walk among the humans. And so it (sort of) proved last Thursday, when Björk emerged from a period of relative obscurity to kick off a three-day karaoke marathon, organised as part of the singer's ongoing campaign to protect her home country's natural resources. Happily, onlookers were on hand to film the two performances and upload them to YouTube. At bit.ly/bjorkwagon you can see Björk and journalist Omar Ragnarsson delivering a perky, Icelandic-language version of Three Wheels on My Wagon. As if to balance out that song's cheeriness, the singer followed it up with an impressive solo rendition of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart (bit.ly/bjorklove). The recording quality isn't amazing on either, but it's certainly enough to whet the appetite for Bjork's likely return this year. Until then – and staying vaguely on the Björk karaoke theme – check out the marvellous cover of the Carpenters' Top of the World she sang for a Sugarcubes B-side in 1992, at bit.ly/bjorktop.Echo and the Bunnymen also celebrated Thretándinn – intentionally or otherwise – by choosing 6 January as the date to begin their own three-day marathon. Over 72 hours, the band uploaded a vast archive of old gig footage, TV performances and interviews to youtube.com/BunnymenTourBlog. In all, 91 videos were posted, featuring such gems as a reluctant interview with Canadian TV around the 1984 release of The Killing Moon, a shaky mid-80s live recording of Seven Seas filmed for Brazilian TV, and some hugely evocative footage from a 1982 hometown gig at Li ビョークは6月、民間伝承によると、超自然的な人間が間に歩いて彼らの隠された世界から出てくるThretándinn、クリスマスの最後の日として知られており、アイスランドのenvironmentalistsInアイスランドを支援するいくつかのボーカルを置くために彼女のお休みの出てきた人間
- Free thought can thrive under capitalism | John Redwood
Capitalism allied to democracy takes care of the basics of life, and then you are at liberty to do and believe what you wishThe question: Is capitalism a spiritual failure?Capitalism's critics overclaim and overblame. Those of us who think free markets are the least bad way to organise the supply of goods and services do not see it as an alternative religion. We know that markets can harbour the greedy and the venal, just as state planned systems do as well. We know that in market-driven economies some people will work hard and earn large sums of money, some will work hard and earn much less, and some will need help and assistance from government because they cannot succeed unaided.What we also know is that societies which have relied more on market freedoms have created higher living standards overall than tyrannies of the right or left. We know that in free enterprise societies churches and organised religions too can thrive. Capitalism usually works best alongside religious tolerance, allowing differing approaches to the supernatural to flourish. Capitalism allied to democracy takes care of the basics of life, allowing you some spiritual time and liberty if you wish.In the 50-year experiment after 1945 people did not starve from lack of food in the more free market west, but some did in the state planned Soviet Union and China. The churches were not put under pressure to close owing to disagreement with their beliefs in the west, but were more roughly treated in the state-planned east.No sensible defender of the market system believes it can work entirely without law and some state intervention. We are happy to see some money taken from the rich and successful and given to the poor. Fortunately the market system creates surplus which allows this to happen. We agree t 資本主義は民主主義への連合、生活の基本の世話をし、その後、自由に行うにはされ、あなたは資本主義の精神的な障害？資本主義の批評家が過大に申告するとoverblameか質問：wishThe信じています
- Paul the octopus and the secrets of the universe | Padraig Reidy
Humans – especially football fans – are attracted to the idea that someone or something somewhere knows the end to a storyFarewell Paul the predicting octopus. We hardly knew ye. But for a brief moment this summer, you were the world's most famous invertebrate.During his time in the spotlight, Weymouth-born German resident Paul, who became famous for his remarkable knack of guessing the outcome of World Cup fixtures by picking one of two boxes with opposing countries' flags on them, endured death threats from German football fans, and was even reportedly held up by Iran's President Ahmadinejad as a symbol of what is wrong with the western world. So he must have been doing something right.Of course, poor, dead Paul could no more predict the outcome of football matches than you or I. While octopuses (or octopodes, if you prefer) are intelligent creatures, their powers do not extend to seeing into the future, or even informed football punditry (though the average cephalopod could probably hold his own on the Match of the Day sofa).Even if they did have these powers, by the way, it would still only be the second coolest thing about octopuses. The coolest being, obviously, that the males have detachable penises.But clearly, some people did believe Paul had powers. Even more obviously, many of us chose to believe the Paul story at some level. Already involved in a group narrative – the World Cup – we (egged on, of course, by the media) chose to infuse it with a spooky, quasi-supernatural element.As with all appeals to the supernatural there was an underlying human element to this. We are creatures who thrive on narrative, and like to imagine there is a beginning, middle and end. And if there is a narrative, then someone, somewhere, must know what the end is, and why it is; wh 人間は - 特にサッカーファン - 誰か何かがどこかstoryFarewellに終止符をポール予測タコを知っているという考えに魅了されています
- 好きな海外ドラマ
supernaturalに決まってるでしょう
- Is there a God instinct? | The Question
If science could show that we have an evolved predisposition to believe in God, or gods, how would that change the debate?Religion is a feature of all human societies. Some people argue that without it, there could be no society: that belief in the supernatural expresses or dramatises some of the instincts we need to have to live in reasonably harmonious groups. Suppose science were able to prove this was true. What would it matter? Would it mean that we could then outgrow religion, understanding the cognitive and emotional illusions that give rise to it? Or should atheists resist the idea, because cognitive and emotional illusions are so deeply embedded in us that they are almost impossible to outgrow? Should believers suppose that the existence of an evolved hunger in us is an argument that the object of this hunger must somewhere and in some sense exist? ReligionAtheismguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
科学は我々が進化素因は神、または神を信じるように持っていることを示すことができれば、どのように議論を変えますか？宗教はすべての人間社会の特徴です
- Albums of 2010, No 10: John Grant - Queen of Denmark
Largely unknown a year ago, the former Czars frontman surprised many with his weird and wired take on soft rockExclusive session: John Grant performs Where Dreams Go To DieLast year, John Grant was known to perhaps a handful of hipsters as the former frontman of the Czars, a band who enjoyed a measure of critical acclaim if not commercial success. Twelve months on, his name features in many 2010 roundups for an album that is one of the year's word-of-mouth triumphs. After the Czars imploded, Grant descended into booze, drugs, suicidal thoughts and self-loathing, but subsequently had the kind of epiphany that can follow such a crisis. The result is a scarred but revelatory album. Queen of Denmark recalls Dennis (brother of Brian) Wilson's 1977 masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue: it has a similar feel of gazing out on to something endless and darkly inviting. With Midlake as his backing band, Grant assembled a tapestry of flutes, piano, strings, eerie synths and gentle drums; almost a weird, wired take on 70s soft rock with some deliberate, ironic nods to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Dean Friedman. Marz and Where Dreams Go to Die take cocked glances at capitalist America while the perkier Jesus Hates Faggots pokes fun at redneck attitudes, which Grant was forced to endure as a gay child in a religious Colorado household. But the sucker punch arrived with the emotionally wringing ballads Queen of Denmark, Sigourney Weaver and Caramel, on which the 41-year-old croons like a latterday, acid-scarred Sinatra. Grant has written almost supernaturally beautiful hymns of love, despair, chaos and ultimate redemption. His are the sort of songs that some artists spend their entire careers wishing they had written.Pop and rockFolk musicDave Simpsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limite 今年大部分が未知の前に、元皇帝のフロントマンが多くを驚かせた彼の奇妙なソフトrockExclusiveセッションを取る有線：ジョングラントは夢GoはDieLast年に、ジョングラントは皇帝の元フロントマンとして流行に敏感なのかもしれない一握りに知られていた場所を実行ではなく、商業的な成功を収める場合、批評家の称賛の尺度を楽しんだバンド
- Rosemary's Baby: No 2 best horror film of all time
Roman Polanski, 1968Roman Polanski's first Hollywood feature was an adaptation of Ira Levin's bestseller, and its success launched a trend for devil-baby, evil-kiddy and satanic pregnancy movies that extended well into the 70s. The novel was first recognised as potential film material at proof stage by low-budget horror entrepreneur William Castle, who ended up as the producer and had a fleeting cameo in the film as a man smoking a cigar outside a phone booth.According to a (probably spurious) film-making legend, Polanski, having never before adapted a novel, didn't realise he was allowed to make changes, with the result that his screenplay is remarkably faithful to Levin's book. Mia Farrow, best known for her role in the TV soap opera Peyton Place and as the wife of Frank Sinatra (who served her with divorce papers during the shoot) played Rosemary Woodhouse, a nice Catholic girl who with her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), a struggling actor, moves into an apartment in The Bramford, an old New York block with a sinister history. (The exteriors were filmed outside the Dakota building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where John Lennon would later be shot dead.) Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer play Minnie and Roman Castavet, the nosy neighbours from hell – and that's even before we find out they're satanists. Gordon won a best supporting actress Oscar, the only Academy Award for a horror movie until 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. The film works on multiple levels – as a supernatural thriller (though explicit paranormal elements are limited to a hallucinatory dream sequence and the final shot of the baby's eyes), as a psychological thriller about a paranoid pregnant woman who imagines herself at the centre of a conspiracy, and as the last word in marital betrayal, since t ロマンポランスキーは、1968Romanポランスキーの最初のハリウッドの機能と、アイラレヴィンのベストセラーの適応され、その成功は、1970年代に入っても拡張、悪い子どもと悪魔のような妊。映画悪魔の赤ちゃんの傾向を開始した
- Twilight's feminist backlash | Bidisha
That a woman created Bella's man-worshipping, abuse-excusing pathology is baffling – luckily strong heroines abound elsewhereSo. Twilight Eclipse. Wolfboy Jacob lurks nudely, rudely, buffly, looking ever-ready for some lupine tussling out yonder. Vampire Edward appears to be struggling with constipation. And Bella, how goes it with her? Do you know, I can't remember. Who is she? Nobody. What does she do? Nothing. Where is she without men? Nowhere. Want to know what Bella's secret power is? It's the power of negation. She's such a deadzone of psychic antimatter that supernatural mojo doesn't work on her. Other characters' magical skills simply dissolve when they encounter the sullen ringfence of her anticharisma.Bella's passivity, the oppressiveness of her boyfriends (presented as protectiveness), the fetishisation of female victimhood and the unstinting justification of the guys' abusiveness have spurred a strong feminist backlash against the books – a backlash which I fully support. Part of our sense of disturbance and bafflement is that while all the misogynist elements of Twilight are detectable in mainstream arts and the media, they are rarely created by women.Why would a dynamic, creative, prolific and talented woman like Stephenie Meyer write a protagonist as useless as this? Why would she create bullying males and set them up as love objects? Do young women despise themselves so much that the very best they can fantasise about is trailing around after not one but two bullies? It's puzzling. I grew up obsessively reading adventure novels by Tamora Pierce, the Worst Witch series and all sorts of bronze breastplate Amazonian guff. The women in these books bristled with chagrin and energy, as did their lovers, allies, enemies and friends. How could publishing have ta 女性が作成ベラの男-崇拝、虐待-言い。病理は不可解です - 幸いにも強いヒロインはelsewhereSoを富む
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