Nepenthe

Six years ago, the world came together to stop a trade in gems that was fuelling civil war in Africa. Now the architect of the deal has quit, warning that jewels 'have blood all over them' again. The leading architect of the international system to stop the trade in blood diamonds has warned that the safety net is close to collapse with governments and the industry failing to act against gross violations. Ian Smillie, the "grandfather" of the landmark Kimberley Process, that was agreed in response to appalling civil wars in Africa fuelled by illegal gems, said he had "stomped out" on his scheme as it was no longer working. "It isn't regulating the rough diamond trade," the Canadian expert said yesterday. "It is in danger of becoming irrelevant and it's letting all manner of crooks off the hook." The Kimberley safeguards came into effect in 2003 and helped restore consumer confidence in precious stones. Today they regulate 99.98 pe...

In her book, A Classical Education, Caroline Taggart says the ancient Greek and Roman influence is still alive and well in many aspects of the modern world, from language, architecture and science to art, maths and astronomy. But do you know your Plato from your Pluto? Take our quiz and find out. You scored 10 out of a possible 10 By Jupiter! A stellar performance. Your knowledge of the Greco-Roman world is impressive. Top marks! Good to know my brain still works... then again, it's ancient history ;)

Because she was beautiful and strong, and a capable actress, one who tried to start changing the sempiternal beauty-versus-brains dogma. Even this past Monday: Though Farrah Fawcett is "fighting for her life," Ryan O'Neal tells Barbara Walters, "I've asked her to marry me, again, and she's agreed," ABC News reports. "We will, as soon as she can, say yes," O'Neal, 68, says about his companion since 1980. "Maybe we can just nod her head," he said, with a laugh. "I used to ask her to marry me all the time," O'Neal said for the interview to air Friday on 20/20 . "But ... it just got to be a joke, you know. We just joked about it." But now with Fawcett, 62, deteriorating from cancer, "I promise you, we will," says O'Neal. "Absolutely."

Are We Having Sex Now Or What? Copyright 1992 Greta Christina. Originally published in The Erotic Impulse , edited by David Steinberg, Tarcher Press. ( Note: This is probably my best-known piece of writing, and is certainly my best-known essay. It's been reprinted numerous times (including a butchered version that appeared in Ms. Magazine with all the references to kinds of sex they don't approve of removed), and it's been studied and cited all over the damn place. No kidding. I Googled myself once and found a reference to this piece on a university's on-line midterm exam question. Perhaps my proudest moment as a writer ever.)

When Paramount Pictures decided to remake Footloose , the 1984 teen romance that made a young, lanky actor named Kevin Bacon famous, the studio looked to Zac Efron of the High School Musical trilogy. He could sing. He could dance. And most importantly, he could summon the teenage girls to theaters with one strategic toss of his swoopy hair. But then Mr. Efron abruptly ditched the picture. He didn’t want to be typecast as the guy who does musicals, he said. The suits at Paramount barely flinched. There were no threats of delaying the filming, set for next spring. They simply found a quick but suitable replacement— another swoopy-haired, pretty-faced actor, named Chace Crawford. Mr. Crawford, 23, bears a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Efron, 21. In fact, these men are perhaps the youngest incarnation of something eerie that’s been happening in Hollywood. Male actors have become increasingly indistinguishable. And not only are they all starting to look alike; but they also sort of act ...

Tandem Films

Nesta república das bananas, nós, os invísiveis: Como sempre, leio com grande interesse os últimos números das revistas sobre livros. E constato que em mais de cem recensões às obras estrangeiras recentemente publicadas não há uma única referência à tradução, à excepção da indicação do nome de tradutor. Será que a tradução de A Montanha Mágica de Thomas Mann, directamente do alemão (832 páginas), de Mar de Papoilas de Amitav Gosh, finalista do Booker (456 páginas), de Vida em Surdina de David Lodge, um autor cujas traduções tantos desafios apresentam, não merecem um comentário? Será que nem os críticos se lembram de que, sem os tradutores, essas obras não chegariam aos leitores portugueses? Obviamente, não é o facto de os livros que referi terem tantas páginas que justifica o destaque que deveria ser dado à tradução. É o trabalho que isso envolve, as longas horas de entrega, de dúvidas, de pesquisa, de esforço criativo a que qualquer tradução obriga para ser bem feita. Infelizmente, en...

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Seventeen years ago a high school cheerleader in Southern California learned that she was the one girl of her generation chosen to stop the spread of evil -- namely, by slaying vampires. The cinematic incarnation of Buffy Summers wasn't a notable success, but when she returned five years later, this time to the small screen, a cult classic was born. Though it's been off the air for six years now, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" lives on, in the theses of hundreds of culture studies grad students, in a series of comic books by creator Joss Whedon, in persistent rumors that some or all of the TV show's cast members may unite for a film (with or without Whedon), in seemingly countless spinoff novels, and of course, in fan fiction. But Buffy persists in other, less obvious ways, as well. Whedon's original idea, to take "the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie" and make her the hero of the story, mutat...

Raios. Nádia bateu com a cabeça na porta quando se tentava afastar. Quando espreitara pelo intervalo de dez centímetros entre a porta e o chão, dera consigo a olhar para as pernas esqueléticas com meias cor de creme de Andrea. Andrea, que tinha olhado para o espelho, vira dois olhos escuros a espreitarem debaixo da porta atrás dela, tornou a guinchar, girou nos calcanhares, e deixou cair a bolsinha das pinturas no lavatório. — O que raio se passa aqui? Não posso! Levanta-te — gritou Andrea — levanta-te e sai daí! Mas que raio de brincadeira vem a ser esta? Nádia chegou a pensar em fazer o que Ewan McGregor fizera no filme Trainspotting , mergulhar de cabeça na sanita. Melhor não. Toda torta, lá conseguiu pôr-se de pé. *** — Dormiste com ele? — Quem? — Nádia estava contente por ter o Sol a bater-lhe nos olhos, e pestanejou com força. Laurie fez tss-tss. — O Ewan McGregor . Tu sabes de quem estou a falar. — Ah, não dormi. — Vês? Erro crasso. Devias ter dormido. ...

Flight 753 from Berlin lands without a hitch at JFK International Airport, taxis towards the terminal and then abruptly shuts down. The emergency services are mobilised and the incoming jets are hastily rerouted, while Flight 753 simply sits out there on the tarmac like some beached leviathan. Inside, at first glance, the crew-members and passengers appear all to be dead in their seats. The scene provides an appropriately cinematic curtain-raiser for The Strain, a modern-day vampire yarn cowritten by the Mexican film director Guillermo Del Toro with author Chuck Hogan. Reputedly the first instalment of a trilogy, it is the sort of fast-paced, high-concept outing that seems tailor-made for either a big-screen adaptation or - as Hogan has enthused - "a long-form, cable-type TV series". And yet at the same time this opening salvo also looks to the past; doffing its cap to an illustrious ancestor. For what is Flight 753 from Berlin if not a winged update of the Demeter, t...

Dracula The Un-Dead , by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, is the sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula , written by his direct descendant. Bram Stoker's Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, an inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic-in books, television shows, and movies-only the 1931 Bela Lugosi film bore the Stoker family's support. Until now. Dracula The Un-Dead is a bone-chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Written with the blessing and cooperation of the Stoker family, Dracula The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula "crumbled into dust." Van Helsing's protégé, Dr. Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and...

And from the Comments section of the article, many many claim Girls don't Fart ;) Historically research has focused on men. As one example, women are under-represented in major clinical trials for cancers that affect both sexes, a new study found. Researchers say several factors could be responsible, from childcare issues to reluctance by researchers to expose women of childbearing age to trial drugs and treatments. In other areas where research into women's medical problems is lacking, the issue is not just about sexism. Women's hormone fluctuations are, well, complicated and can confound basic findings. But in recent years, women have been getting increased attention. Still, much misinformation about the female body circulates in mainstream consciousness. Myth: A women can't get pregnant during her period. While a woman is unlikely to conceive during menstruation , "nothing, when it comes to pregnancy, is impossible," said Aaron Carroll of Indiana Univ...

Why do some people pay a 100,000 percent premium for a Rolex when a Timex is such a sleek and efficient timepiece? Why do others kill themselves at work just so they can get there in a Lexus? Why do we pay 1,000 times more for designer bottles of water when the stuff that gushes from our taps is safer (because it’s more regulated), often tastier, and better for the planet? And how do we convince ourselves that more stuff equals more happiness, when all the research shows that it doesn’t? In Spent , University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller contends that marketing—the jet fuel of unrestrained consumerism—“is the most dominant force in human culture,” and thus the most powerful shaper of life on Earth. Using vivid, evocative language, Miller suggests that consumerism is the sea of modern life and we are the plankton—helplessly tumbled and swirled by forces we can feel but not understand. Miller aims to penetrate to the evolutionary wellsprings of consumerist ma...

This remarkable book was first published in France in 2006, as Les Bienveillantes. The first significant work of Jonathan Littell, Francophone son of American spy author Robert, it was an entirely unexpected success. Gallimard, the publisher, originally printed 5,000 copies. Within months, Les Bienveillantes had sold 300,000 copies, had been welcomed by critics as the most important book for 50 years and had won the Goncourt and Femina prizes. Stupendous sums were paid for its foreign rights and it went on to sell more than a million copies across Europe. Now it has been translated into English and will surely cause a similar fuss. What accounts for the attention? A 900-page work written in impeccable French by an American, albeit one educated in France, was always going to be talked about. But the main reason for the book's notoriety is its subject matter. The novel tells the story of the Holocaust and Nazism through the eyes of one of the executioners, an SS Obersturmbannfürher o...

Whatever happened to the Muse? She was once the female figure -- deity, Platonic ideal, mistress, lover, wife -- whom poets and painters called upon for inspiration. Thus Homer in the Odyssey, the West's first great work of literary art: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, of twists and turns driven time and again off course." For hundreds of years, in one form or another, the Muse's blessing and support were often essential to the creation of art. Poets stopped invoking the muse centuries ago -- eventually turning instead to caffeine, alcohol and amphetamines -- but painters, musicians, and even choreographers have celebrated their actual female inspirers in their work up until recent times. And now, we learn, having a muse isn't a benefit restricted to artists. According to a recently opened exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," the muse lives on as the fashion model who inspires masses of women to d...