A murder investigation disguised as a teacher-pleasing ‘oral history project.’ Sam Munson’s “The November Criminals” is either a very short novel or a very long college application essay. “You’ve asked me to explain what my best and worst qualities are,” Addison Schacht, the novel’s narrator and main attraction, writes in its opening sentence. His answer [...]
Archive for June, 2010
Dear Dean, How to Start?
Posted in Literature on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
What George Washington Heard
Posted in History on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
As Americans prepare to celebrate the nation’s birth, it’s safe to say that the most familiar figure connected with that birth is George Washington. Although he didn’t actually sign the Declaration of Independence—he had been in New York since March, commanding the Continental troops there—his image is more completely bound up with the revolution and [...]
Obama and the Fiscal ‘Road to Hell’
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
G-20 leaders don’t agree with the president that more spending will revive the economy. Nor do most Americans. At last week’s G-20 meeting, President Barack Obama achieved a two-fer. He suffered a significant international defeat, and he increased the chances his party will suffer a major domestic one this fall. Mr. Obama’s international defeat was [...]
A Plague of Vagueness
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
How about a void-for-vagueness doctrine for the U.S. Congress? Just when you’re thinking all hope is lost, along comes the “void-for-vagueness doctrine,” invoked this past week by the Supreme Court to restrict a hopelessly vague law. If our era needs a bumper sticker, this is it: Void for Vagueness. Paste it on the 2,000-plus pages [...]
Espionage History and the ‘Russian 10′
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
The arrest of ‘sleeper agents’ on U.S. soil is the stuff of spy novels, not the Cold War. The Justice Department’s arrest this week of 10 Russian spies posing as American citizens is not stranger than fiction; it mirrors fiction. Innumerable Cold War novels and films focused on “sleeper agents,” professional Soviet espionage officers superbly [...]
The Ugly Party vs. the Grown-Up Party
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
My political friendships and sympathies are increasingly determined not by ideology but by methodology. One of the most significant divisions in American public life is not between the Democrats and the Republicans; it is between the Ugly Party and the Grown-Up Party. This distinction came to mind in the case of Washington Post blogger David [...]
To Tweet, Or Not to Tweet
Posted in Computers on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable—at times—seem all the digital distractions of this world. A catastrophic event unfolds. A seemingly healthy professional embarks on his daily commute, only to come to the frightening realization that his battered and beloved BlackBerry lies vulnerable and unused in a distant corner of his home. An unwholesome panic descends. [...]
Another Dead-End Summit
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Going up the garden path, again. Barack Obama accompanied by fellow ramblers Jose Manuel Barroso, Silvio Berlusconi, Angela Merkel at Nicolas Sarkozy during the G-8 summit in Canada on June 25. Marked by the EU-US divide over the best way out of the crisis, the world leaders at the G-20 summit in Toronto spurned Europe’s [...]
Owning the news
Posted in Law on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Copyrighting facts as well as words FACTS, ruled America’s Supreme Court in 1918 in the “hot news doctrine”, cannot be copyrighted. But a news agency can retain exclusive use of its product so long as it has a commercial value. Now newspapers, fed up with stories being “scraped” by other websites, want that ruling made [...]
Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works
Posted in Living on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Some 1.2 million people belong to one of AA’s 55,000 meeting groups in the US. The church will be closed tomorrow, and the drunks are freaking out. An elderly lady in a prim white blouse has just delivered the bad news, with deep apologies: A major blizzard is scheduled to wallop Manhattan tonight, and up [...]
Bill Wilson’s Gospel
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
On Dec. 14, 1934, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson was struggling with alcoholism at a New York City detox center. It was his fourth stay at the center and nothing had worked. This time, he tried a remedy called the belladonna cure — infusions of a hallucinogenic drug made from a poisonous plant — [...]
Published and Perished
Posted in Economy and business on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Glossy magazines—and parties—for the shiny time before Wall Street’s fall. If a hustling Candide had told the story of the Great Wall Street Meltdown, it might read something like this book—a not-so-innocent’s chronicle of crafty charlatans and vulpine finaglers who left the hero dazed and diminished in the bankruptcy of his dreams. Randall Lane’s notion [...]
Afghanistan: Eyes Wide Shut
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on June 29, 2010 | Comments Off
President Obama’s ambivalence toward the war is energizing our enemies and undermining our allies. With a wink of its left eye, the Obama administration tells its liberal base that a year from now the U.S. will be heading for a quick Afghan exit. “Everyone knows there’s a firm date,” insists White House chief of staff [...]
Philosophy App
Posted in Other on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
In his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the science fiction writer Douglas Adams introduces Deep Thought — a computer the size of a small city, designed millions of years ago by a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings searching for the meaning of life. The super computer is described as a “so amazingly intelligent that even [...]
Lost in the Clouds?
Posted in Other on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Those in the ivory tower might think themselves enlightened; those on the ground find them irrelevant. — Mahmood, Richmond Philosophers are little men in little offices who write unreadable papers about symbolic logic or metaethics. That’s all. — Ace-K These sentiments — posted by readers in response to “What Is a Philosopher?” by Simon Critchley [...]
The Psychology of Bliss
Posted in Living on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
In 2003, a German computer expert named Armin Meiwes advertised online for someone to kill and then eat. Incredibly, 200 people replied, and Meiwes chose a man named Bernd Brandes. One night, in Meiwes’s farmhouse, Brandes took some sleeping pills and drank some schnapps and was still awake when Meiwes cut off his penis, fried [...]
The Muslim Past
Posted in Religion on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
In the United States, a country saturated with instant punditry, serious scholars rarely attain celebrity as public intellectuals. Yet Bernard Lewis, a professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Princeton, has long radiated influence far beyond his specialization in Ottoman studies. A friend of Henry Kissinger and a mentor to subsequent cohorts of conservative policy [...]
An empire gives way
Posted in Computers on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Blogs are growing a lot more slowly. But specialists still thrive ONLINE archaeology can yield surprising results. When John Kelly of Morningside Analytics, a market-research firm, recently pored over data from websites in Indonesia he discovered a “vast field of dead blogs”. Numbering several thousand, they had not been updated since May 2009. Like hastily [...]
Why Friedrich Hayek Is Making a Comeback
Posted in Economy and business on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
With the failure of Keynesian stimulus, the late Austrian economist’s ideas on state power and crony capitalism are getting a new hearing. He was born in the 19th century, wrote his most influential book more than 65 years ago, and he’s not quite as well known or beloved as the sexy Mexican actress who shares [...]
When Words Go Lightly to Screen
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
How a ‘rather bitter’ novella became the film ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’ The metamorphosis from paper to celluloid is never smooth, and the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) presented Paramount studios with an array of difficulties. Sam Wasson’s account of the making of the movie covers them all. En route, “Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.”—as appropriately slender [...]
Petraeus and Obama’s Uncertain Trumpet
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on June 28, 2010 | Comments Off
There is a mismatch between the general’s Afghan mission and the president’s summons to his countrymen. The chroniclers tell us that Lyndon Johnson never took to the Vietnam War. He prosecuted it, it became his war, but it was, in LBJ’s language, a “bitch of a war.” He fought it with a premonition that it [...]
Henry James Walked Here
Posted in Other on June 27, 2010 | Comments Off
The 13th-century basilica dedicated to St. Francis as seen from the fortress above Assisi. IT was love at first sight. Henry James was 26 when he crossed the border from Switzerland and made his way, on foot, down into Italy — “warm & living & palpable,” as he wrote ecstatically to his sister on [...]
Out of line
Posted in Other on June 27, 2010 | Comments Off
An insubordinate general. A soccer mutiny. Why hierarchy matters, even in an egalitarian world. It’s been a bad week for the chain of command. First, international soccer fans witnessed the petulant meltdown of the French World Cup team: Star player Nicolas Anelka was kicked off the team for profanely insulting the head coach in the [...]
Language police
Posted in The Word, tagged June 27 2010 on June 27, 2010 | Comments Off
A failure I’d love to watch You may have missed this news, but The Queen’s English Society, self-appointed defenders of proper speech and writing since 1972, recently announced plans to set up an Academy of English. The goal is to guard against “impurities” and “bastardizations” by ruling on what in English is correct, and what [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged June 27 2010 on June 27, 2010 | Comments Off
How to get Johnny to study How do we motivate kids — especially kids in rough situations — to want education? Researchers at the University of Michigan studied middle school students in Detroit and found that, while almost 90 percent expected to go to college, only half wanted a career that actually required education. And [...]
Too Complicated for Words
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on June 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Are our brains big enough to untangle modern art? Literary types recently celebrated Bloomsday, a “holiday” not generally recognized by those who haven’t read James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” a novel whose principal character is named Leopold Bloom and that takes place in Dublin on June 16, 1904. As always, the celebrations included a marathon bash at [...]
Ponte Vecchio, a Bridge That Spans Centuries
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on June 26, 2010 | Comments Off
This marvel of medieval construction provides a lens on Florence’s layered history In the 1850s, the city architect for Florence, Giuseppe Martelli, proposed a redesign for Ponte Vecchio with Art Nouveau facades and, inspired by London’s Crystal Palace, a glass roof overhead. The project was never built. Expense was the cited reason, but one senses [...]
On the Surly Bonds of Marriage
Posted in Literature on June 26, 2010 | Comments Off
A debut novel ponders marital life—and ‘Rear Window,’ Sam Sheppard and a salty snack After 13 years of marriage, David Pepin, a videogame entrepreneur, finds that a perverse daydream has come true: His wife, Alice, is dead—not from any of the violent ends he imagined for her but from anaphylactic shock after eating peanuts. And [...]
The Feuding Fathers
Posted in History on June 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Americans lament the partisan venom of today’s politics, but for sheer verbal savagery, the country’s founders were in a league of their own. Ron Chernow on the Revolutionary origins of divisive discourse. In the American imagination, the founding era shimmers as the golden age of political discourse, a time when philosopher-kings strode the public stage, [...]
Ghoti
Posted in On Language, tagged June 27 2010 on June 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The spelling of English is a bizarre mishmash, no doubt about it. Why do we spell acclimation with an “i” in the middle but acclamation with an “a”? Why do we distinguish between carat, caret, carrot and karat? For those who feel strongly that something needs to be done, there’s no better place to vent [...]
