"I would caution against believing the 'life is short' advice that you should live every day as if it is your last - as if you're only ever going to be roughly the age you are now.... Hopefully, life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come.-- Rachel Maddow, Smith College Commencement Address, 16 May 2010
"The best way to guess what is going to work out in the future, to figure out what you will be glad to have played a role in, is to get smart and get smart fast. To take the opportunities that you've got very seriously. To continue your education ... in a lifelong way. Be intellectually and morally rigorous in your own decision making and expect that the important people in your life do the same, if they want to stay important to you.
"Gunning not just for personal triumph for yourself but durable achievement you will be proud of for life is the difference between winning things and leadership.... When given the choice between fame and glory, take glory. Glory has a way of sneaking up on fame and stealing its lunch money anyway."
Monday, 17 May 2010
Life is Long
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Graffiti
We have a lot of taggers in Wellington. Generally they annoy me, but sometimes they take me by surprise, like this one at an Island Bay bus stop. It was painted over by the end of the week.
Interview: Michael Otterman
This month I interviewed Michael Otterman, an American writer and human rights consultant, in preparation for his appearance at the 2010 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. The original post can be found at The Lumiere Reader.
In the lead-up to Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March, much of the Western media was optimistic, even congratulatory. Newsweek magazine went so far as to declare “Victory at Last”, heralding the rise of a new democracy in the Middle East. The cover shot was from President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which took place seven years ago this month.
For Michael Otterman, a writer and human rights consultant, the view of Iraq is shockingly different. “There are children in Iraq who were born seven years ago who have known war their entire lives,” he told me over the phone from New York. “It’s been horrendous. By some estimates there have been 600,000 deaths, and displacement which is unparalleled in the Middle East.”
This is the grim focus of his second book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage. Co-authored by Richard Hil with input from Paul Wilson, it examines the devastating effects of the war on Iraqi citizens, who have been largely ignored by Western governments and the mainstream press. The book includes first-hand experiences from people of all backgrounds, collected from blogs, diaries, and personal interviews.
In the lead-up to Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March, much of the Western media was optimistic, even congratulatory. Newsweek magazine went so far as to declare “Victory at Last”, heralding the rise of a new democracy in the Middle East. The cover shot was from President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which took place seven years ago this month.For Michael Otterman, a writer and human rights consultant, the view of Iraq is shockingly different. “There are children in Iraq who were born seven years ago who have known war their entire lives,” he told me over the phone from New York. “It’s been horrendous. By some estimates there have been 600,000 deaths, and displacement which is unparalleled in the Middle East.”
This is the grim focus of his second book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage. Co-authored by Richard Hil with input from Paul Wilson, it examines the devastating effects of the war on Iraqi citizens, who have been largely ignored by Western governments and the mainstream press. The book includes first-hand experiences from people of all backgrounds, collected from blogs, diaries, and personal interviews.
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