Author

• LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., May 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Prelude Corporation (PreludeDx®), a leader in precision diagnostics for early-stage breast cancer, announced the appointment of Dr. Pat Whitworth as its new Chief Medical Officer.
• Dr. Whitworth's extensive clinical and research expertise across the multiple stages of the breast cancer patient journey will bring invaluable leadership as PreludeDx expands its diagnostic portfolio.
• "I'm thrilled to join the PreludeDx team during this important growth period and contribute to the mission of improving breast cancer outcomes," said Dr. Whitworth.
• "The company's commitment to personalized medicine with innovative tests like DCISionRT and patient-centered care aligns perfectly with my values."

• PHOENIX, April 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Arizona's newest luxury hotel, The Global Ambassador , delivers guests a convergence of hospitality, wellness and culture, complemented by seamless technology solutions from SONIFI , hospitality's largest guest technology provider.
• The 141-room Phoenix hotel is inspired by Fox's international travels and passion for authentic hospitality, with every detail meticulously chosen to create a guest experience like no other.
• The guest rooms, in particular, are designed to feel residential, welcoming guests with impressive features.
• "Every touchpoint throughout the property is designed to deliver memorable guest experiences, and we believe guest technology should do the same," said Amber Madsen, Senior Corporate Sales Manager at SONIFI.

• A man named Hadi Matar has been charged with second-degree attempted murder.
• He is an American-born resident of New Jersey in his early twenties, whose parents emigrated from Lebanon.
• Review: Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape) Knife is very good at recalling Rushdie’s grim memories of the attack.

• “Let me offer this piece of advice to you, gentle reader,” he says: “if you can avoid having your eyelid sewn shut … avoid it.
• Here, for a number of reasons, Rushdie is not on such secure ground.
• Read more:
  How Salman Rushdie has been a scapegoat for complex historical differences

  Rushdie, who studied history at Cambridge University, described himself in Joseph Anton as “a historian by training”.

• Indeed, a speech he gave at PEN America in 2022 is reprinted in the book verbatim.
• For these intellectuals, principles of secular reason and personal liberty should always supersede blind conformity to social or religious authority.

Old-fashioned liberal principles

• In Knife, though, Rushdie the protagonist confronts a world where such liberal principles now appear old-fashioned.
• He claims “the groupthink of radical Islam” has been shaped by “the groupthink-manufacturing giants, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter”.
• But for many non-religious younger people, any notion of free choice also appears illusory, the anachronistic residue of an earlier age.
• Millennials and Generation Z are concerned primarily with issues of environmental catastrophe and social justice, and they tend to regard liberal individualism as both ineffective and self-indulgent.
• A new book traces how we got here, but lets neoliberal ideologues off the hook

Suffused in the culture of Islam

• The Satanic Verses itself is suffused in the culture of Islam as much as James Joyce’s Ulysses is suffused in the culture of Catholicism.
• In their hypothetical conversation, the author of Knife tries to convince his assailant of the value of such ambivalence.
• He protests how his notorious novel revolves around “an East London Indian family running a café-restaurant, portrayed with real love”.

Attachment to past traditions

• Rushdie discusses in Knife how, besides the Hindu legends of his youth, he has also been “more influenced by the Christian world than I realized”.
• He cites the music of Handel and the art of Michelangelo as particular influences.
• Yet this again highlights Rushdie’s attachments to traditions firmly rooted in the past.
• Part of James’s greatness lay in the way he was able to accommodate these radical shifts within his writing.

‘A curiously one-eyed book’

• Particularly striking are the immediacy with which he recalls the shocking assault, the black humour with which he relates medical procedures and the sense of “exhilaration” at finally returning home with his wife to Manhattan.
• Yet there are also many loose ends, and the book’s conclusion, that the assailant has in the end become “simply irrelevant” to him, is implausible.
• He insists he does not want to write “frightened” or “revenge” books.

• This was despite several brave comeback attempts by Milburn that likewise cited Pataudi as an example.
• Knife, by contrast, is a curiously one-eyed book, in a metaphorical, as well as a literal sense.

Paul Giles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• From a distance the paint aligns behind a pollarded cherry tree, creating the timely impression of spring foliage.
• TV coverage revealed onlookers wedged amid a growing assemblage of security fencing in attempts to capture the perfect angle.
• By the end of March, a whole structure of wood and Perspex surrounded the work to protect it from damage.
• The artwork had been splattered with white paint only a couple of days after it was created.

Analysing Banksy

• A 2014 Guardian article quotes the artist stating that: “a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts.
• Many of those who celebrate Banksy hold contradictory positions on precisely the themes his works seem to address.
• The Daily Mail were happy to join MP Jeremy Corbyn in celebrating the Islington “masterpiece’s” symbolic engagement with the climate emergency.
• A 2015 film of work Banksy made in Gaza ended with a quote attributed to Brazilian philosopher, Paulo Freire: “if we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful – we don’t remain neutral”.

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Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.