The Arc of History

"The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice." -Dr Martin Luther King, 1963
"Americans put their hands on the arc of history and bent it toward the hope of a better day." -Barack Obama, 2008

Don't Forget to Vote

"Gum Election is a guerilla art project which started in New York City in October 2008. It should encourage people to vote on November 04th and also not to spit out their chewing gums carelessly on New York Cities already dirty streets."

Poehler and Arnett Talk About The Baby

Two of the funniest people on the planet now have a baby son, Archie. Awesome news and a terrific name, but it looks like they expect him to be a brooding, "little baby Sean Penn":

(Footage cribbed from the Blades of Glory dvd, in which Amy Poehler and Will Arnett presumably play a hilarious ice-skating duo; presumably, because I fear the Will Ferrell and have not seen the movie.)

Bravo Paul Krugman

Pundits are decrying the Nobel committee's selection for economics this year as just another jab at the current US administration. They are selling short on Mr Krugman and one would think by now, in light of the current economic meltdown, that short-sellers would be silenced. While Mr Krugman is unapologetically harsh when it comes to Bush, he should be recognised for his true talent: making economics comprehensible to noodniks like myself. His weekly op-ed column has been of immeasurable help during these tumultuous times, and I wouldn't understand half of what's gone down were it not for his concise, plain-spoken breakdowns of US capitalism.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio

From this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
My message will be very clear; it is that I think we have to continue to read novels. Because I think that the novel is a very good means to question the current world without having an answer that is too schematic, too automatic. The novelist, he's not a philosopher, he's not a technician of spoken language. He's someone who writes, above all, and through the novel asks questions.

Robert Redford on Paul Newman

REDFORD: There were a lot of times we played these gags on each other and they were great fun. And one of them was that he used to -- when he went into racing, he just drove me crazy talking about racing, because he was obsessed with it, and, obviously, great at it -- by the way, great at it.

And I said, "Geez, can't we talk about something else?" He said, "Well, I want to take you up to the track and we'll do this and we'll do that." So for his 50th birthday, I happened [to be], in Connecticut, to find a trashed Porsche and it was just totally demolished and I had them wrap it up and leave it on his kitchen back step, wrapped in paper with a ribbon around it, that said "Happy 50th."

And so a couple weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, and then I went up to my house a couple weeks later and walked in the living room and there was this gigantic box in the living room, and it was so heavy you couldn't lift it.

In fact, it was so heavy, it had created an imprint on the floor, and this was a rented house. Well, by the time I crobarred it out, there was just this block of metal that had been taken down.

The [towing service] came and took it away ,and they said, "This is great." I said, "OK, look, hang on." And I called a friend of mine who was a sculptor in Westport.

I said, "If I give you some material, can you create a sculpture." He said, "That's great, absolutely." So these guys come take the thing over to her, and she did a sculpture. I said, "Make it a garden sculpture."

So she did. Had the towing guys take it to Newman's garden and just plump it there. Now, to this day, neither of us had ever spoken about that, never even -- that was -- there were many other situations like that, but that was ...

QUESTION: No one ever says "gotcha?"

REDFORD: No, no. That would diminish it. No. The idea was you just never acknowledged it.

So Long Paul Newman

He was peerless, the best man in any crowd. It was my aunt who loved him and taught me to love him, taking me to matinees in my childhood to watch one great film after another: Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, The Verdict, Nobody's Fool, The Color of Money, and so many others. He was more than a talented actor: in philanthropy, he was generous to a fault; as entrepeneur, he gave us the gift of great sauces, popcorn and chocolate; and to the end he was a brave, outstanding individual with a heart like no other. The Paul Newman moment that lives forever for me is his "Plastic Jesus":