How the rhythms of the day—even time itself—used to vary from place to place. Hyperactive moderns, running late and never quite catching up to their schedules, are apt to fret that there is simply not enough time in the day. Howard Mansfield would argue that there is too much time—too much consciousness of time, anyway, [...]
Archive for August, 2010
The Tyranny of the Clock
Posted in Living on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
End of the Net Neut Fetish
Posted in Computers, Economy and business on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
What the Google-Verizon deal really means for the wireless future. Historians, if any are interested, will conclude that the unraveling of the net neutrality movement began when the iPhone appeared, instigating a tsunami of demand for mobile Web access. They will conclude that an ancillary role was played when carriers (even some non-wireless) began talking [...]
The Obsolescence of Barack Obama
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
The magic of 2008 can’t be recreated, and good riddance to it. Not long ago Barack Obama, for those who were spellbound by him, had the stylishness of JFK and the historic mission of FDR riding to the nation’s rescue. Now it is to Lyndon B. Johnson’s unhappy presidency that Democratic strategist Robert Shrum compares [...]
The Economist’s unforgivable silence on Sayyid Qutb’s anti-Semitism
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
I always read the Economist magazine. I like many things about it, but I particularly cherish its book reviews. They are cogent and snappily written, and they often deal with books that I don’t find reviewed elsewhere. An example is a forthcoming biography of one of contemporary Islam’s most important thinkers, Sayyid Qutb. The book [...]
Portrait of a revolutionary
Posted in Conflicts and wars on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Locked up in an Egyptian prison in the early 1960s, Sayyid Qutb wrote a book that has inspired succeeding generations of radical Islamists Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism. By John Calvert. Hurst & Co; 256 pages; £25. PRE-EMINENTLY among the pioneers of 20th-century Islamism, Sayyid Qutb has come to be seen as [...]
Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
During my tenure as the dean of a college, I determined that an underperforming program should be closed. My wife asked me if I had ever set foot on the premises, and when I answered “no,” she said that I really should do that before wielding the axe. And so I did, in the company [...]
Berlusconi’s Long Hot Summer
Posted in Politics on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Silvio Berlusconi has easily survived a series of corruption and sex scandals. Now a revolt by a former ally could pose a serious threat to the Italian prime minister, who many feel is on his last legs politically. Berlusconi has the summer recess to plot his survival. The scene last Wednesday evening in Italy’s Chamber of Deputies [...]
Closure of 9/11 Mosque ‘Was Long Overdue’
Posted in Law on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Police officers guard the entrance of the Taiba mosque, which is in the second floor, following the closure of the mosque on Monday. Monday’s closure of Hamburg’s Taiba mosque, where Mohammed Atta and other members of the 9/11 terror cell worshipped, was long overdue. Media commentators argue that the legal wrangling that preceded the ban [...]
German Millionaires Criticize Gates’ ‘Giving Pledge’
Posted in Economy and business on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Negative Reaction to Charity Campaign Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Germany’s super-rich have rejected an invitation by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to join their ‘Giving Pledge’ to give away most of their fortune. The pledge has been criticized in Germany, with millionaires saying donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by [...]
Naomi Campbell and the ‘Blood Diamond’ Hoax
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on August 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Diamonds aren’t a major reason for Africa’s conflicts, and the Kimberley Process is no guarantee of a stone’s pedigree in any case. Thanks to Naomi Campbell’s clueless testimony before the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, the manufactured nonscandal of “blood diamonds” is once again being trundled before the collective gullibility of [...]
Are Americans Bigots?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Attacking the motives of those who disagree with elite opinion has become all too common. When in 1983 Ronald Reagan characterized the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” the reaction from his betters was swift. Writing in the New York Times, Anthony Lewis called it “primitive”—and wondered (naturally) what the Europeans would think. A headline [...]
The Fine Art of Crime
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Jane Rosenberg has to choose carefully to whom she tells what: “When I go to a party, if I tell people I’m a painter, they say, ‘That’s nice’ and then they walk away; but if I tell them I’m a courtroom artist, they say ‘Wow’ and want to talk to me all night. It’s so [...]
From Gutenberg to Zoobert
Posted in Other on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
The final chapters in the history of the printed book have yet to be written. In the hit 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail,” Meg Ryan’s independent bookstore couldn’t compete with the big chain-store competitor. Underdog-rooting moviegoers couldn’t have known how lucky the independent stores were, having enjoyed so many decades of being the only booksellers. [...]
Canada, Land of Smaller Government
Posted in Economy and business on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Its corporate income tax rate is 18% and falling. America’s is 35%. When Americans look to Canada, they generally think of an ally, though one dominated by socialist economic policies. But the Canada of the 1970s and early 1980s—the era of left-wing Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau—no longer exists. America’s northern neighbor has transformed itself economically [...]
Ten of the best dragons in literature
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes This Greek epic poem tells the tale of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece. The fleece is guarded by an unsleeping dragon; Jason enlists the help of the sorceress Medea, who gives him a magic potion with which to spray the dragon. It falls asleep on the spot. But then [...]
What, Me Study?
Posted in Other on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Why so many colleges are education-free zones. If you have a child in college, or are planning to send one there soon, Craig Brandon has a message for you: Be afraid. Be very afraid. “The Five-Year Party” provides the most vivid portrait of college life since Tom Wolfe’s 2004 novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” The [...]
Ten of the best motorbikes in literature
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Setting Free the Bears, by John Irving It is the 1960s, and Hannes and Siggy, fellow idealists and dropouts, set out on a picaresque tour of Austria on a 700cc Royal Enfield motorcycle. Siggy is killed in a motorcycle accident, but we get to read his journal, detailing his father’s involvement with a Wehrmacht motorcycle [...]
Greg Baxter’s top 10 memento mori
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
From St Augustine to Nietzche, the author chooses the fearless autobiographical writers who taught him how to write his own, A Preparation for Death A Damien Hirst print is added to Michael Landy’s Art Bin, is a giant container for disposing of ‘failed’ works of art at the South London Gallery in 2010. Greg Baxter [...]
The Great Guy Theory of History
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Charlie Rangel forgot that America’s voters want more than a great guy. We consider today the sad case of Charlie Rangel, the beloved 20-term Congressman from New York City. You’ve probably heard of the Great Man Theory of History. The Charlie Rangel story can be explained by the Great Guy Theory of History. Men have [...]
The First Church of Robotics
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
THE news of the day often includes an item about some development in artificial intelligence: a machine that smiles, a program that can predict human tastes in mates or music, a robot that teaches foreign languages to children. This constant stream of stories suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of [...]
But Will It Make You Happy?
Posted in Living on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
SHE had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.” So one [...]
Poem of the week
Posted in Poetry on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Schubertiad by Fiona Sampson Details of the composer’s life are weaved together with themes from his work and echoes of his music in Fiona Sampson’s deft sequence, Schubertiad Out of time … Franz Schubert. This week’s poem, the four-part sequence, “Schubertiad”, by Fiona Sampson, seems, at first glance, a kind of translation – of music [...]
Ali Shaw’s top 10 transformation stories
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Tales of metamorphosis are not only ancient, says Ali Shaw, but tap into the deepest recesses of human consciousness. Here he picks ten of his favourite transformations, from Ted Hughes’s Ovid to Roald Dahl’s Royal Jelly ‘My position is a very strange one’ … Frederic March as Dr Jekyll Ali Shaw was born in 1982 [...]
Patrick Cramsie’s top 10 graphic design books
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
From the extraordinary visual dexterity of Alan Fletcher to Jan Tschichold’s experiments with typography, Patrick Cramsie picks the books that have shaped our visual culture Art of seeing … Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways. Patrick Cramsie studied graphic design at London’s Middlesex University before going on to work in an Anglo-Japanese design company [...]
The Marriage Ideal
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, Living on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Here are some commonplace arguments against gay marriage: Marriage is an ancient institution that has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, and we meddle with that definition at our peril. Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. The nuclear family is the universal, time-tested path to forming [...]
The Rigor of Love
Posted in Religion on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Can the experience of faith be shared by those unable to believe in the existence of a transcendent God? Might there be a faith of the faithless? For a non-Christian, such as myself, but one out of sympathy with the triumphal evangelical atheism of the age, the core commandment of Christian faith has always been [...]
Poem of the week
Posted in Poetry on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Two in the Campagna by Robert Browning Published a few years before The Origin of Species, Browning’s paradoxical love poem seems to anticipate the Darwinian outlook The Italian countryside Robert Browning’s “Two in the Campagna” is a study in paradox. It’s a love poem that deconstructs love, a pastoral that has seen not only death [...]
Ten of the best nameless protagonists in literature
Posted in Literature on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Roxana by Daniel Defoe Defoe’s “memoir” of an invented 17th-century courtesan has acquired a title that is but one of his anti-heroine’s pseudonyms. “The Fortunate Mistress” (as the novel was originally called) keeps her true name secret, masquerading as a “woman of quality” in order to beguile rich men. The Aspern Papers by Henry James [...]
Op-Classic, 1982: A Soviet Fable
Posted in Other on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
Comrades: As is well known, I, Leonid Brezhnev, unlike President Reagan, have no obligation to report annually on the state of the union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. This shows the wisdom of Marxist-Leninist thought, for the state of our union is not quite as good as we would like it to be. We have [...]
Spies, secrets and smart-phones
Posted in Computers on August 9, 2010 | Comments Off
SOME sort of a deal seems to have been thrashed out over the weekend, according to reports from Saudi Arabia, under which its spooks will be able to snoop to their heart’s content on messages sent over BlackBerrys within the kingdom. All last week, as it negotiated with the Saudi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and [...]
