For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in th...
When I first went to college, I went to Western Michigan. I had been rejected by a bunch of schools for theater. I was like, 'I'm obviously not cut out for this, so I might as well just go into film.'
I think the American Western laid down a kind of subject matter that's about following your instinct or following your gut and having a sort of removed quality from your humanity. And I think Clint Eastwood helped to establish that.
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk roc...
We have finally started to notice that there is real curative value in local herbs and remedies. In fact, we are also becoming aware that there are little or no side effects to most natural remedies, and that they are often more effective than Wester...
On romance books: We might assume then that men, major consumers of thrillers, westerns, and detective fiction, enjoy being beaten up, tortured, shot, stabbed dragged by galloping horses, and thrown out of moving vehicles.
I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctu...
For the jihadists, Muslim women who embrace Western mores, and wear tight jeans or mini skirts, are hated symbols of corruption that need to be eradicated. For the ideological mentors of Breivik, a similar disturbance comes from the burqa, which is b...
Who killed Christianity in Europe? Was it, as (Max) Weber himself predicted, that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy the Protestant ethic parents, as materialism corrupted the original aestheticism of the godly?
Um, thanks,” she said. It was nice to see one woman finally immune to that accent. That wasn’t to say Rose wasn’t a sucker for accents. She just preferred hers from the other side of Europe.
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.
The English, by and large, being a crass and indolent race, were not as keen on burning women as other countries in Europe.
Even all the top players going to Europe to play helps soccer in America, as do all the MLS players like Beckham and all that, they're trying to promote it. At the end of the day it's about getting the younger generation interested at an early age so...
The only thing to be said for air travel is speed. It makes possible travel on a scale unimaginable before our present age. Between the ages of 20 and four-score I visited every country in Europe, all save two in Latin America, ditto in Africa, and m...
In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me.
We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cav...
I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in...
The English soldier was probably the worst-treated soldier in Europe, and judging from the English casualty rates during the Napoleonic wars, English generals were more lavish with their soldiers' lives than were their French and German colleagues.
Good wines are produced in small quantities. It is a matter of time and attention and picking only the best grapes. Today they get as much as they can out of the ground, and what can you expect? The wine has no taste.
The invention of the mechanical clock was one of a number of major advances that turned Europe from a weak, peripheral, highly vulnerable outpost of Mediterranean civilization into a hegemonic aggressor.
Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have...
