Artist seems to think he invented the image of a woman with snakes for hair, accuses Damien Hirst of plagiarism for depicting Rihanna as Medusa.

"It's always fun to take a pop at Hirst, but... the charge against Hirst is not plagiarism – it is sheer artistic ordinariness."

Neither he nor [Jim] Starr have added anything original to the image of Medusa. The GQ cover is as insipid as some late Victorian mythic erotica. Compared with the great Medusas of the classical and baroque ages, Rihanna with snaky hair is just plain dull.

"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

Edward Snowden answers questions, including "Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?" His answer is such a conundrum...

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

... that the questioner comes back and demands "a flat yes or no." He says:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

I still don't know the complete answer to the first question, however, which asked if he will provide — that is, in the future — classified information to the Chinese.
He gives the flat "no," but I see that the followup question was "Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?" That refers only to the past: have you given info. He says "no" only to that, and the sentence after the "no" also refers only to the past. The next sentence is in the present tense: I only work with journalists. There is no flat no about what he might do in the future. Even assuming that he's scrupulous about truth-telling now — we can infer that he wasn't scrupulous about the promises he made to gain security clearance — he has not made an assertion about the future.

Also "I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now" could be read as a clue that he's making things up, since there is no such beast as a phoenix. I check "phoenix" at Urban Dictionary:

3. Phoenix      128 up, 98 down
Coolest person you will ever meet. They're smart, funny, and extremely good-looking. In a nutshell they're the one everyone wants to be friends with and date.

You could pet that. (Miscellaneous: Urban Dictionary definitions #1 and #2 relate to the city in Arizona. Factoid discovered in Googling "phoenix": "Image of Jesus appears on floor tile at Phoenix airport... The smudge in Terminal 3 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has become a pilgrimage site in recent weeks, as visitors have come to see for themselves whether the Lord and Savior flies coach or first-class.")

Back to Snowden. Asked why he didn't stay in this country, he expresses complete mistrust for the legal system:

[T]he US Government...  immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Perhaps another way of putting this — without calling the legal system corrupt — would be to admit that you know you have committed serious crimes and the evidence is so clear that you are nearly certain that you will be convicted in a perfectly fair trial.

The final clause can stand as an independent opinion: Even with full justice, it's foolish to volunteer to go to prison if you think you can do more good outside of prison. In classic civil disobedience, one accepts the law's punishment. Volunteering to go to prison is portrayed as admirable and courageous, and not foolish. He is calling Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr. foolish, except to the extent that he's got a loophole: The question whether you do more good in prison than out of prison.

For Thoreau and King, perhaps being imprisoned does good — it's an important gesture. But for Snowden — he's done the cost benefit analysis and he can do more good if he stays free. That strikes me as ludicrous, but there's also the out of saying you're not doing old-fashioned civil disobedience. You're redefining it for a new era.

"Hummingbird on the Left."

"Huitzilopochtli, Aztec God of Sun and War."

Huitzilopochtli's name is a combination of two Nahuatl (or Aztecan) words, huitzilin, meaning hummingbird, and opochtli, which means left — the god's name translates literally as "Hummingbird on the Left." This resulted in Huitzilopochtli often being depicted as a blue- or green-colored hummingbird or as a warrior whose armor and helmet were made of hummingbird features....

More here:

Huitzilopochtli's mother was Coatlicue, and his father was a ball of feathers....

His sister, Coyolxauhqui, tried to kill their mother because she became pregnant in a shameful way (by a ball of feathers). Her offspring, Huitzilopochtli, learned of this plan while still in the womb, and before it was put into action, sprang from his mother's womb fully grown and fully armed. He then killed his sister Coyolxauhqui and many of his 400 brothers. He tossed his sister's head into the sky, where it became the moon, so that his mother would be comforted in seeing her daughter in the sky every night. He threw his other brothers and sisters into the sky, where they became the stars.

"According to... Brunei's national epic poem, the present-day sultanate originated when Dewa Emas Kayangan descended to earth from heaven in an egg."

"He had children with a number of aboriginal maidens, and one of these children converted to Islam and became the first sultan. However, the state continued to be multicultural. The second sultan was either Chinese or married a Chinese woman. The third sultan was said to be part Arab, who are seen in South and Southeast Asia as the descendents of Muhammad.... The sultanate was a thalassocracy, a realm based on controlling trade rather than land. Situated in a strategic location between China and the trading networks of southeast Asia, the state served as an entrepôt and collected tolls on water traffic."

Brunei is today's "History of" country.

Today's vocabulary words are:  thalassocracy and entrepôt.

The Bnei Menashe — one of the "lost tribes" — immigrate from India to Israel.

BBC reports:

"The members of this tribe have never forgotten where they came from and we are excited to be able to help them come back," [said  said Michael Freund, chairman of the Shavei Israel group which helped organise the journey for the Bnei Menashe members.]

But some critics say the Bnei Menashe's link to Judaism are "historically untenable". They accuse the community of using their status to escape poverty India.

There were 10 lost tribes in all. Were these people one of them? They maintained an oral tradition — dating back to the 8th century B.C. — telling of their migration through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China, and ultimately to settle in northeastern India. Should skepticism be aimed at these people, or is it better to honor them and welcome them as symbolizing the idea of the lost tribes — which itself may be only a myth?

Here's the Wikipedia article on the 10 lost tribes, including details of all the various claims and speculations. There are so many candidates — in Africa, all over Asia (the Pashtuns, the Japanese), in Europe (the Irish), and even in the Americas. The Book of Mormon goes into this topic:

In the Book of Mormon, Lehi (Hebrew לחי Léḥî / Lāḥî "jawbone") was an ancient prophet who lived around 600 BC...

Shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, Lehi escaped with his family, along with his friend Ishmael and his family, and another man named Zoram. Together, Lehi led them south down the Arabian Peninsula until they reached a fertile coastal region they named Bountiful. There, they built a ship, and sailed across the ocean to the Americas. Lehi's sons Nephi and Laman are said to have established themselves and to have founded Israelite nations: the Nephites and the Lamanites....

Many Mormons consider Native Americans to be descendants of the Lamanites. Officially, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints appears to accept this position....

Katie Roiphe tries to fathom the depths of why she's buying really expensive shoes.

She writes about herself in the second person saying things like: 

You have read Adorno. You are able to think critically about your desire for the shoes. Furthermore, you have a healthy class-hatred for people who dress habitually in clothes from this store...

And:

If you do walk out with the shoes...  they work like a drug—the anxieties that were plaguing you before you enter the store have lifted. As you step out into traffic, the still and stagnant city is suddenly charged with possibility

The parties you have scribbled in your calendar seem more glittery or interesting or fun, and you in the shoes, more daunting, more sylphlike, more free, more invulnerable....

Do you want to be the kind of person who sacrifices, overreaches, for a pair of shoes, who imbues them with a romantic overlay that a material object cannot possibly sustain?

That's where the internal argument ends up, and obviously she buys the shoes. Obviously, there's a huge mental element to consumerism, both before and after the purchase. Note that anxieties must be stirred up to provide an additional argument: I need to dispel these anxieties! She gets off on the purchase.

My question: Why shoes? There's some discussion of how shoes "will transform you into someone else" — special shoe magic. (See "The Wizard of Oz.") There's oddly little reference to sex. Roiphe ignores Freud, who famously saw shoes as vagina symbols. Roiphe wants — or wants "you" — to be daunting, sylphlike, free, and invulnerable.

A sylph is a female fairy. In Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," "women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies." (Here is "The Rape of the Lock," with the illustrations by Aubry Beardsley, for only 99¢ on Kindle!)

So, maybe, why shoes? Why not dresses, jackets, jewelry, sweaters? I think it's that you've got to specialize — unless you're actually rich — if you're going to shop in the really expensive places. You can trick yourself into thinking you've been indulged. Still, why specialize in shoes?