Michael Chabon, the awkward teen years

I dunno...it might be good, might be really lame. Has a Laurel Canyon feel to it. My Michael Chabon experience is limited to the first 100 pages of The Yiddish Policemen's Union (which was good, I just had to leave it in Berlin) but he's supposed to be a literary genius and stuff. And nothing beats a movie that allows you to pretend like you've read the works of literary geniuses (ahem, Everything is Illuminated, ahem, Atonement). Here are those trailers, for those of us who can't be bothered to even watch the films at all:

"An unprecedented cultural and historical disaster"

REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

Cologne's archive collapse called 'cultural catastrophe'

Hundreds of thousands of documents and items, some dating back to the Middle Ages, were buried when the six-story building collapsed, and two people are missing and feared dead. The other employees and visitors escaped before the building crumbled to the ground.
[...]
In addition, the building housed papers belonging to Konrad Adenauer, West Germany's first postwar chancellor, who signed the reparations agreement with Israel; correspondences by the poet Paul Celan, author of "Death Fugue"; and papers of the writer Guenther Grass, also a Nobel laureate, and of Gottfried Boehm, a recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize; as well as the archive of a newspaper edited by Karl Marx.

This is devastating.

I used to think about memory as something personal, private, and arbitrary - serendipitous remembering, reluctant forgetting, and vice versa, all at your own pace. Not so. As a librarian-in training, I've learned to appreciate the immense effort, sustained over a hundred lifetimes, that goes into preserving a cultural heritage. And yet, I worry sometimes about the quality of our memories. Should we preserve the @So-and-so Twitter updates between politicians and celebrities as the modern equivalent of literary correspondence? To do so is like comparing a non-stick pan flaking cancerous shards of its coating to an old-school cast-iron skillet.

It pains me to think about all hundreds of thousands of skillets being forgotten in Cologne.

Herb and Dorothy

How can an 82-year-old former postal clerk and and 72-year-old librarian amass one of the most important collections of modern art around today? Looks like one part inspiration, one part dedication, and one part love (awww).

And somebody thought to make a movie about them! Thank goodness...

If anyone happens to be in or near Louisville on March 22 or March 26, go to the Speed Art Museum to see this film. It looks delightful.

Watch the trailer! Watch the trailer!

Shooting the shooter: Israeli law-breaking caught on tape

Last year, B'Tselem decided to give ordinary Palestinians cameras so they could record any abuses to their rights committed by police or soldiers. The project, which has been going on for over a year, has been largely successful. Of course, these kinds of videos are highly contested by articulate and suspicious Israeli advocates, but sometimes the footage speaks for itself.

The most recent example shows an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian protestor at close range with a rubber bullet. It's clear that the soldier is subdued, unarmed, and posing no threat to the soldier. This incident is being investigated by the Israeli army. Comforting? Not exactly...

The International Law Observer drew my attention to this story, as well as to this report by Yesh Din of how internal Israeli military law enforcement punishes soldiers who violate the law. I haven't gotten through the entire document (it's 131 pages), but from what I've skimmed it's clear not only are there many examples of such violations, there are also many more which go unpunished. Even if you believe that Israeli law prevents and punishes crimes of individuals, you can't argue against the, at the very least, tolerance within Israeli society for such behaviors. These kinds of incidents should provoke outrage, but instead the Israeli PR machine tries to pretend this kind of incident is an anomaly.

The study, funded, inter alia, by the European Union; various Jewish and Israeli NGOs; and the German, Dutch, and British governments, is one to be taken seriously, not covered up.

On a related note, check out this article by Valentina Azarov about defining civilians in Gaza and Israel within the scope of international law.

I need a bigger bed.

Despite the advanced state of digital animation and the romance of traditional animation (an animator drawing by the light of a single lamp, the pile of finished pages growing with each passing hour), I find myself increasingly partial to stop-motion projects. Stop-motion allows for plenty of artistic innovation while retaining a sense of play with the clumsy-halt-jerk of its signature movements; the slight catch between each frame lets the moment settle - it expands, and lends greater poignancy to what we are shown. A picture is worth a thousand words, and when each sweeping gesture is dissected into hundreds of photographs or frames, each incremental movement becomes a story unto itself. The story multiplies.

From the exaggerated clay-comedy in Wallace and Gromit, to the magical charm of Henry Selick's high-tech Coraline, to the unconventional grace of Israeli musician Oren Lavie's music video for "Her Morning Elegance," stop-motion animation gives me a lot to think about during my recreational criticism of pop culture topics.

Take a look:

Springtime in The Hague

Last Monday, I started noticing little purple buds popping out of the ground. Springtime! I had been so worried about winter in The Hague and not only did it end, it ended ahead of schedule!

Spring also means that toads (or Padden, in Dutch) are coming out of hibernation. And they need my help! I volunteered to help the toads cross the road. Despite the toad hate I've been hearing from my co-interns, I'm happy to help.

Also, happy Purim!

The Execution of Justice

According to this article, Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, stands accused by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct with incompetence, violating her duties and casting public discredit on the judiciary.

Apparently Judge Keller refused to extend the hours of her clerk's office to allow a convicted man to file an appeal only hours before he was due to be executed. The execution was carried out. If there weren't so much at stake the circumstances of Judge Keller's refusal would be comic.

The article quotes Judge Keller and her views on criminal justice. When interviewed by Frontline on an unrelated matter (another appeal against a sentence of death), Judge Keller mused that "[w]e can't give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent". Why not? Because there would be "no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important".

It is true enough that in some jurisdictions, a convicted appellant bears the burden of proof of innocence. That appears to be the case in Texas, at any rate. But it is almost grotesque to speak of "finality" in the context of someone trying to halt an impending execution. There's not much that is more "final" than staring your mortality in the face.

It's good that the American practice of electing judges has not caught on. In her campaign for a spot on the Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge Keller sold herself as "pro-prosecution". We all know that judges can't be absolutely objective when it comes to deciding cases, but there is an ideal to aspire to. And to be unashamedly "pro-prosecution"? I'm not an expert on Texan criminal law, but there is a presumption of innocence, right?