SIDELINES / rio helmi

The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival has managed to pull in a number of interesting people over the years, some with overwhelmingly political backgrounds. This year is no exception, with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and Fatima Bhutto in the line-up.
As journalist-turned-arbitrator Michael Vatikiotis commented, the UWRF has become something of a writer’s talk show. There [...]

Wired magazine, the issue with Brad Pitt glowing a blue tooth out his ear, tells me it’s ok if I text when I am at lunch. Which I do sometimes (but I have double standards, part of me still speculates it’s antisocial). I read on and realize they are talking about teens. Oops. And apparently [...]

DIVINE RIGHT IS SO WRONG
If anything, the Ayatollahs have proven it yet again. Whether feudal or religious, it is somehow amazing to see relics of medieval political structures now in the 21st century insisting on reimposing their will on their people (and others). Iran’s Ayatollahs have brought this to the forefront once again. Unlike a [...]

TAKING IT ALL FOR GRANTED
Working on the voice-over for a documentary on autistic children and elephants that cameraman Michael Glowacki and I are doing for our prospective series on Asia, once again it struck me how much stimuli we ˜normal humansâ” process in one day, in one hour, in one conversation.
In an age when we [...]

My deeply analog orientated brother-in-law walked into the studio today and watched bemused as images were digitized across the computer screens, pixels healing, colors adjusting. He commented that it reminded him of Soviet propaganda days when those who had fallen out of favor were “disappeared” from official photographs.
It got me thinking about the power of [...]