Tuesday January 26, 2010

WEB BOHEMIAN (Tuesday January 26, 2010)
(1)- MADE IN N.KOREA -- Three Swedish men have established a line of jeans made in North Korea and sold in Stockholm. But they weren't prepared for the criticism their pants have produced.

(2)- UNLUCKIEST NATION -- The second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere has been wracked by coups, dictators, and foreign interventions throughout nearly its entire history. But the last few decades have been particularly tragic.

(3)- BLAME THEM -- One of the biggest disconnects on Wall Street today is between the way Goldman Sachs sees itself (they’re the smartest) and the way everyone else sees Goldman (they’re the smartest, greediest, and most dangerous).

(4)- REMEMBER THE POLAROID -- The camera was announced in 1947 and hit the market in 1948. Sixty years later the company stopped production of its film-based cameras and then of its self-developing film. The last Polaroid film expired on October 9.

(5)- JIHAD -- Al Qaeda is no longer a collective political actor. It is no longer an adversary that can articulate a will, capitulate, and be defeated. But the jihad’s new weakness is also its new strength.

(6)- BAMBOO BIKE -- Carbon fiber and aluminum are so 2009. This year's best bicycling model is made out of bamboo and hemp. A new generation of manufacturers are coming up with some of the most environmentally friendly transport yet.

(7)- WHITHER -- Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, and yet there's a peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal...

(8)- HAROLD PINTER AND ANTONIA FRASER -- Her memoir of their 33 years together, drawn from the diaries she kept and amplified by retrospective commentary, quietly dispels a number of myths.

(9)- TOGETHER -- Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, like Jim Carroll and Andy Warhol, were tribally Catholic. Smith’s memoir of the life she and Mapplethorpe shared in pursuit of their respective vocations is worth the read.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

ENDIT