Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine
Three Monkeys is committed to producing interesting and eclectic material online, but also to the finding and highlighting of great online content. The Monkey's Digest is our own small contribution to rewarding the thousands of sites that are committed to producing intelligent, interesting, and unique material online, that too-often gets hidden behind the rubbish heap of dancing-chimpmonk videos or the latest Britney Spears/ Paris Hitlon/ Knut the bear headline.
Our writers take note, as they scour the net, and post links here to interesting articles/essays & interviews - along with a brief description. We post links in good faith. If your page appears here, and you'd rather it didn't, just let us know and we'll take it down asap.
Will Self takes a trip to and up Mont Ventoux, listening to Bob Dylan, whilst reflecting on the fact that "Woody in 'Toy Story' remains the archetypal film character of the past 20 years."
It would appear that the English FA want to bring on board a spindoctor, preferably with experience of high level politics or business communications, to steer Fabio Capello and team through the upcoming World Cup Qualification rounds
For John Kerry, speaking four years after his defeat, the main mistake was financial. While the swiftboat attacks on him spread widely his campaign presumed his version would prevail - they should have put their money behind that conviction says Kerr
Katha Pollitt, in the Nation, examines the continuing backlash against women's rights in the States, from Grand Theft Auto IV through to the decision of Washington University to honour Phyllis Schlafly. The backlash continues.
The latest edition of Drawbridge magazine, on the theme of Opulence, features an extract from John Berger's booker nominated novel From A to Z, entitled Across the Prison Walls. "You asked me to send some soap – the nearest we can get to swimm
Oliver Kamm at the Times salutes Obama's choice of running mate, but wonders whether it will be a re-run of the Michael Dukakis campaign of 1988
A slow food conference in Tokyo's Sophia University highlights the tensions in a movement that is at once anti-globalisation, and yet a growing global brand.
Walter Laqueur outlines why Russia's action in Southern Ossetia and Georgia was so predictable, and predicts further actions. Lacquer is the author of a number of notable works on European history and the Cold war period
Evan Osnos, author of a piece about Chinese nationalism, answers questions at the New Yorker. The hot topic is media bias/prejudice when dealing with China.
Jim Johnson, in Art.Signal magazine, discusses the dichotomy imposed by critics that forces photographers to choose between "art" and "documentary"
Chet Raymo, at the age of 71, muses on what he remembers and the things that he must have forgotten. We may now be in the position to lengthen life, but because the Brain is biologically intrinsically limited, our 'remembered lifespans' will remain t
Indie band Fall Out Boy, who played Al Gore's Live Earth jamboree, failed in a world-record bid to play on all continents within a two-week period. That darn global warming interfered with their plans to play on an ice shelf in Antartica
At least when it comes to religious superstition or other discourses which don’t even pretend to be rational, we can point to an objective standard of proof and evidence through scientific enquiry in response. When it comes to the very corruption of
Terry Pratchett talks frankly about being diagnosed with Alzheimers. "I'm confused, irascible, disjointed, just as I always have been," Pratchett tells the Guardian
The nine billion names of God, by the late Arthur C.Clarke, printed in full."Luckily it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn an
Nick Hornby takes a swipe at cultural absolutists, and argues that nobody who's ever listened to a particular early Springsteen bootleg has ever bombed a country
Novelist Laila Lalami, at The Nation, tells the story of Fouad Mourtada, a software engineer tortured and jailed for having created a Facebook profile of Morocco's Prince Moulay Rachid
Yonatan Mendel, in the London Review of Books, goes through the words Isaeli journalists do and don't use when reporting on relations between Israelis and Palestinians
Reflecting on Ian Paisley's political legacy, Oliver Kamm (via Slugger O'Toole) reminds readers of an emblematic incident between Paisley and the BBC's Martin Bell
"Online publications can't possibly be cheaper when our metric for preservation is not years but centuries. Paper lasts and is far cheaper in the long run", says Cathy Davidson while writing about the open access plans for Gutenberg
Stephen Marche profiles the late Alain Robbe-Grillet, the most famous novelist in history to never have written a famous novel
How do Muslim bio-ethicists face up to the challenges of developoing technologies? Wired magazine asked that very question, and got some answers involving in-vitro fertilisation and gene-therapy
The solution to climate change is to view the atmosphere as a commons, and introduce carbon caps and emissions-trading, argues Peter Barnes
EU legal experts have issued a report warning of the dangers of a special treaty between the Slovak state and the Vatican, stabilising terms, amongst other things, for Doctors to deny abortion & contraception on grounds of conscience
A.C.Grayling takes on the Theists, arguing that to suggest a variation on the popular mortal-girl-impregnated-by-the-gods theme is solely responsible for Western Civilisation merits no more than a horse-laugh
Though 61 per cent of Americans polled would find it difficult to vote for a Presidential candidate who doesn't believe in God, more and more person are parading their non-belief on social networking sites like Facebook
Bad Science's Ben Goldacre argues , in the wake of publication of studies suggesting a number of anti-depressants have clinically insignificant benefits, that drug companies be forced to publish all trial results publicly
French President Sarkozy's recent proposals on how to teach the Holocaust to schoolchildren provokes debate and a reconsideration of how the subject has thus far been taught
Is there a book in this blog? is a group blog to discuss books. Our writers post on books they've read, are reading, or, perhaps have no intention of reading. Literary news, and debates over narrative voices are not uncommon.
Latest Post:George and Martha by Karen Finley
I feel more than a little sullied, having finished George and Martha by Karen Finley, and I've a feeling that this is one of the desired effects by the author as she pits George W. Bush and Martha Stewart as fictional acerbic lovers holed up in a motel attempting to pleasure themselves in oedipal hi-jinks. It'...
If Three Monkeys is worth reading, it's because of the calibre of our contributors. A small regular group of writers publish in Three Monkeys, but much of the work is submitted by emerging writers worldwide. If you have a piece that you think would fit well in the magazine, check our submission guidelines here. We'd love to hear from you.
The View from Bologna is a regular blog column on Italian politics, culture and society, written from a vantage point by our Monkey in Bologna.Latest Post:Newsweek adopts the 'Italian school' of modern journalism, and beatifies Berlusconi
Newsweek, last week, carried a quite astonishing piece on Silvio Berlusconi's first 100 days in office. The glowing tribute stopped short of suggesting that Trenitalia now runs on time, but only just (coincidentally, despite the fact that it was a major election issue, Al...
Notes and reflections from the capital of the Celtic Tiger. Brendan Coffey reports on what it's like to live somewhere between Boston and Berlin.
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Our Man in Gdańsk is Three Monkeys Online's long running blog on Polish politics, media and mores.
Latest post:Translation Studies
"Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication. It is language in actu (enunciation, positionality) rather than language in situ (énoncé, or propositionality). And the sign of translation continually tells, or "tolls" the different times and spaces between cultural authority and its performa...
Three Monkeys reviews a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books. We're not concerned, in our reviews, with whether a book is new or old, on the best-seller list or not. What concerns us most is whether we like/dislike a title, and whether we've anything interesting to say about it.