Publicity is meaningless for an artist. If the pictures are good, it doesn’t matter who took them, and if the pictures are not good, it also doesn’t matter who took them. Lu Nan Our point-and-shoot culture is awash in photographs. The reigning snapshot aesthetic has grown threadbare, exhausted by its own success. What began decades […]

Church, Zero; Zeitgeist, Two

Maureen Mullarkey

May 4, 2015

A few days before the last of the Vatican’s three climate workshops, the Italian parliament sped up the divorce process. The new law cuts the time Italians have to wait for a divorce: from three years to six months in uncontested cases; one year in contested ones. It was approved with a breathtaking vote of […]

The Toxic Legacy of Rachel Carson

Maureen Mullarkey

April 27, 2015

. . . the fraudulence of Silent Spring goes beyond mere cherry-picking or discredited data: Carson abused, twisted, and distorted many of the studies that she cited, in a brazen act of scientific dishonesty. So the real tragic irony of the millions of deaths to malaria in the past several decades is that the three […]

Iconography of Power – Soviet Propaganda Posters

Maureen Mullarkey

April 24, 2015

Propaganda posters are a fascinating genre in their own right. Early Soviet posters are graphically compelling, and among my favorite works of art. It is a topic to come back to on a later date. But let me just touch on it for the moment in response to readers who emailed to comment on the […]

Notes On An Idol

Maureen Mullarkey

April 21, 2015

The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit this earth and the kingdom of heaven, too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen […]

RFRA & My Wedding Ring

Maureen Mullarkey

April 7, 2015

It has been some time since I gave thought to the day my soon-to-be husband and I bought our wedding rings. But the spectacle over RFRA—all the panting hysteria of a predatory media and toadying politicians aided by timorous clergy—brings it back with great clarity. And even greater poignancy. Our wedding date was set. It […]