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Outdoor gym, Al-Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq (2009); detail of a photo by Richard Mosse,

Saddam's Palaces: An Interview with Richard Mosse at BLDBLOG. Photographer Richard Mosse returned from Iraq with shots of

the imperial palaces of Saddam Hussein converted into temporary housing for the U.S military. Vast, self-indulgent halls of columned marble and extravagant chandeliers, surrounded by pools, walls, moats, and, beyond that, empty desert, suddenly look more like college dormitories. Weight sets, flags, partition walls, sofas, basketball hoops, and even posters of bikini'd women have been imported to fill Saddam's spatial residuum. The effect is oddly decorative, as if someone has simply moved in for a long weekend, unpacking an assortment of mundane possessions. The effect is like an ironic form of camouflage, making the perilously foreign seem all the more familiar and habitable--a kind of military twist on postmodern interior design.

Test Your News IQ at Pew. 12 questions.

Dylan disses distraction: Just caught this, in Rolling Stone last month (Dylan on Dylan):

"It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets."

Cereal port::

No Grapes, No Nuts, No Market Share: A Venerable Cereal Faces Crunchtime. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal I can cross of one more childhood mystery as solved: What this cereal is made of, and how.

Hat tip to Kate Imbrie for this one.

 Tags  architecture

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2 Comments

Jorn said:

Aced the quiz, yo!

Link | June 2, 2009 4:26 AM
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Sheila Lennon said:

I'm not at all surprised, Jorn. Me too, although I guessed at one.

Link | June 3, 2009 1:57 AM
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