In Paris, the Olympics are all about judo
Jingoism is bad enough but someone else’s jingoism is truly excruciating
Christian Marclay’s The Clock and the essence of film
The most powerful exploration since Sergei Eisenstein of the way in which edits create meaning
In Syria, the sectarian atrocities will commence shortly
Atrocities are tactical, deployed to shore up loyalty. Moments like this are when they are used
The Egyptian Angel of Darkness passes away
For the US, Omar Suleiman was ‘our man in Cairo.’ That only makes it worse
The Syrian gun market as horoscope
New York Times reporter C. J. Chivers says weapons are expensive so bad things lie ahead
Mubarak the undead
Mubarak, Sharon, Arafat: there are new actors on the stage now and the old men have been forgotten
I still don’t understand the Higgs boson
The discovery is the e=mc² of our day: it sounds big but few really understand it
Arafat poisoned, world fails to notice
Al Jazeera asks: was Arafat murdered using radioactive polonium, like Russian dissident Litvinenko?
Syria, citizen journalism and the New York Times
The paper of record embraces citizen journalism at last
Fast and Furious ‘scandal’ is a GOP hatchet job
The gun lobby lambasts the Obama administration for not seizing enough guns. An election year irony
Zadie Smith on libraries and the state of the state
How did something as fine and useful as a public library become an ideological issue?
Mubarak dead. Revolution critical.
The regime has already demonstrated it can survive without Mubarak
On the Egypt revolution and America’s War of 1812
A bad week in Egypt, but profound political change can take a very long time
Bruce Lee: Real? Fake? Whatever: I believe
Bruce Lee plays ping pong and lights matches with uncanny accuracy
Looking at the war in Syria
Unlike Gaddafi, Assad has international allies who will protect him so this is likely to get worse
Did Bashar al-Assad pay for this photo?
In 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy brought Bashar al-Assad in from the cold. Why?
What that Venus transit thing looked like
It won’t happen again for 105 years but, honestly, it is better on video
What made Khaled Saeed a symbol?
All humans are imperfect but imperfect symbols don’t work: they get vilified for political purposes
Actually, in Egypt now it is Chirac vs Le Pen
Large parts of the political spectrum have no representation at all in the second round
Mubarak gets life in prison, Egypt gets nothing
Mubarak earned the sentence a hundred times over but it does not feel like justice was done
Queen Victoria’s journals now online
The Empress of India’s 43,765 pages: a record of Britain at its peak that you can’t access for long