I just found out last week that there’s a documentary out of Bob Dylan’s performances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 1964 and 1965. It’s called The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965. These are just amazing performances and I’ve seen bits and pieces of them in other documentaries. But for the hardcore Dylanophiles this is a critical three years because he shows up at the festival in 1963 as some sort of half reincarnation of Woody Guthrie and then in 1965 he comes with what was basically an electric blues backing band and gets everybody totally freaked out and upset.
In any case, I was going to order it when I got home tonight because it’s only available on DVD, not in any digital format that I’m aware of. But here I was cleaning off my desk at work — which is a fairly major enterprise — and what the hell, here it is. Like the whole thing. And I don’t know where it came from. Read More
Interesting article in the Times about contemporary Turkey as a possible model for a post-Mubarak Egypt: more imbued with Islam, but democratic and far more economically vibrant. I think the piece somewhat discounts the pre-1980 Kemalist tradition as the (perhaps now slightly paradoxical) underpinning of modern Turkey. But interesting nonetheless and makes very good points.
AOL is buying Huffington Post for $315 million.
This passage from the Times write-up caught my eye: “AOL’s own news Web sites like Politics Daily and Daily Finance are likely to disappear when the deal is completed, and many of the writers who work for those sites will become Huffington Post writers, according to people with knowledge of the deal, who asked not to be identified discussing plans that are still being worked out.”
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Countering Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) hearings on radicalism among American Muslims, Muslim group hosts forum on cooperating with the Feds.
Palin cancels Colorado appearance due to onslaught of “negative rhetoric.”
The US Chamber of Commerce has apparently sent a letter to Iran declaring its opposition to new sanctions aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear program.
Okay, it’s incredibly stupid and right out of a Bill & Ted’s movie. But you must hear the recording of the 911 call of guy who called 911 to ask “how much trouble” he could get into for growing a single marijuana plant in his home.
Bill Kristol says Glenn Beck is “marginalizing himself” with “hysteria” over Egypt.