The Education of Henry Adams By Henry Adams (1918) With its narratordolefully pointing the way toward modernism, insistently (and convincingly) writing in the third person, “The Education of Henry Adams” is a one-man kaleidoscope of American history: its politics and pretenses, its turn from a patrician, Victorian society toward the unknowable chaos of the 20th [...]
Archive for September, 2010
Five Best Groundbreaking Memoirs
Posted in Literature on September 28, 2010 | Comments Off
What Ahmadinejad Knows
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Iran’s president appeals to 9/11 Truthers. Let’s put a few facts on the table. • The recent floods in Pakistan are acts neither of God nor of nature. Rather, they are the result of a secret U.S. military project called HAARP, based out of Fairbanks, Alaska, which controls the weather by sending electromagnetic waves into [...]
So wrong it’s right
Posted in The Word, tagged September 26 2010 on September 28, 2010 | Comments Off
The ‘eggcorn’ has its day Over the past 10 days, language bloggers have been exchanging virtual high-fives at the news of an honor bestowed on one of their coinages. In its most recent quarterly update, the Oxford English Dictionary Online announced that its word-hoard now includes the shiny new term eggcorn. An eggcorn, as regular [...]
The Non-Economist’s Economist
Posted in Economy and business on September 28, 2010 | Comments Off
John Kenneth Galbraith avoided technical jargon and wrote witty prose—too bad he got so much wrong The Dow Jones Industrials spent 25 years in the wilderness after the 1929 Crash. Not until 1954 did the disgraced 30-stock average regain its Sept. 3, 1929, high. And then, its penance complete, it soared. In March 1955, the [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged September 26 2010 on September 28, 2010 | Comments Off
A surprise benefit of minimum wage The minimum wage has been politically controversial for most of the last century, even though it affects a marginal share of the labor force and evidence of significant job loss is inconclusive. Now one economist would like us to consider another effect of the minimum wage: finishing high school. [...]
‘Busted’
Posted in The Word, tagged September 26 2010 on September 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Randy Britton e-mails: “I’ve noticed in much of the coverage of the BP oil spill that the press has taken to calling the oil well ‘busted.’ Since when is ‘busted’ the proper way to describe a broken oil well? It seems very colloquial and not a form I would expect to see in proper journalistic [...]
Unpacking Imagination
Posted in Living on September 27, 2010 | Comments Off
In an age of childhood obesity and children tethered to electronic consoles, playgrounds have rarely been more important. In an age of constrained government budgets, playgrounds have rarely been a harder sell. Fortunately, the cost of play doesn’t have to be prohibitive. In creating the Imagination Playground in Lower Manhattan — a playground with lots [...]
New England’s hidden history
Posted in History on September 27, 2010 | Comments Off
More than we like to think, the North was built on slavery. In the year 1755, a black slave named Mark Codman plotted to kill his abusive master. A God-fearing man, Codman had resolved to use poison, reasoning that if he could kill without shedding blood, it would be no sin. Arsenic in hand, he [...]
A short history of presidential primaries
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Although a Niagara of vitriol is drenching politics, the two parties are acting sensibly and in tandem about something once considered a matter of constitutional significance — the process by which presidential nominations are won. The 2012 process will begin 17 months from now — in February rather than January. Under rules adopted by both [...]
How to Raise Boys Who Read
Posted in Living on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes. When I was a young boy, America’s elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can’t read. According to a recent report from the [...]
Pepper…and Salt
Posted in Pepper and salt on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
__________ Full article and photo: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499604575512441917378202.html
Visigoths at the gate?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats’ private prayers, but I do hear the stories they’re telling themselves. The new meme is that there’s a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove [...]
Can a president lead with Woodward watching?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Question of the day: Why do presidents give the White House keys to Bob Woodward? I ask this with all due deference, respect, hat in hand, cape over puddle and other sundry gestures owed by ink-stained wretches like me to the Most Famous Journalist on the Planet. Through several administrations, Woodward has become president ex [...]
Homo administrans
Posted in Economy and business on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The biology of business Biologists have brought rigour to psychology, sociology and even economics. Now they are turning their attention to the softest science of all: management SCURRYING around the corridors of the business school at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in his white lab coat last year, Michael Zyphur must have made an [...]
Ten of the best disguises in literature
Posted in Literature on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The Odyssey, by Homer Odysseus arrives back at his island of Ithaca disguised as a beggar. He is recognised only by his old dog Argus (animals always see through disguises), which dies of joy on the spot. In his disguise, our hero is able to see who has been loyal to him and who has [...]
The Enraged vs. the Exhausted
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
If you thought the 1994 election was historic, just wait till this year. All anyone in America who cares about politics was talking about this week was the searing encounter that captured, in a way that hasn’t been done before, the essence of the political moment we’re in. When 2010 is reviewed, it will be [...]
The Carter-Obama Comparisons Grow
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Walter Mondale himself sees a parallel. Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats. Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter’s vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s “just turned against us—same as with Obama.” As the [...]
Val McDermid’s top 10 Oxford novels
Posted in Literature on September 26, 2010 | Comments Off
What to read? … Students walk past the Radcliffe Camera building in Oxford city centre. Val McDermid is the award-winning author of numerous crime novels, including a series of books starring her most famous creation, clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – at 17, one of [...]
The Best of Enemies
Posted in History on September 23, 2010 | Comments Off
Leaked documents, dirty tricks, nasty rumors: Richard Nixon and Jack Anderson deserved each other. The Cliffs Notes version of The Fall of Richard Nixon is straightforward enough: The most corrupt president in American history was brought down by courageous young newspaper muckrakers who rescued the republic. But there is a supple revisionist narrative that adds [...]
Democrats Run From Pelosi
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 23, 2010 | Comments Off
And the GOP prepares its ‘Pledge to America.’ Sometimes the impending loss of power can cause people to say strange things. Consider House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told reporters last week, “I don’t really even have the time to pay attention” to the attacks on her. “This is what campaigns are about. I sort of, [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged September 19 2010 on September 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Simple steps to happier politics It’s easy to be discouraged by our polarized political environment. A new study suggests there may be an easy way out. Right before the 2008 presidential election, prospective voters were asked to complete an online survey. Some of the participants were assigned a brief self-affirmation exercise, where they had to [...]
Lost libraries
Posted in Other on September 19, 2010 | Comments Off
The strange afterlife of authors’ book collections A few weeks ago, Annecy Liddell was flipping through a used copy of Don DeLillo’s ”White Noise” when she saw that the previous owner had written his name inside the cover: David Markson. Liddell bought the novel anyway and, when she got home, looked the name up on [...]
The me-sized universe
Posted in Other on September 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Some parts of the cosmos are right within our grasp If you happen to think about the universe during the course of your day, you will likely be overwhelmed. The universe seems vast, distant, and unknowable. It is, for example, unimaginably large and old: The number of stars in our galaxy alone exceeds 100 billion, [...]
Limning a controversy
Posted in The Word, tagged September 19 2010 on September 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Hate that headline? You have company It is probably a bit too harsh to call those upset by The Baltimore Sun’s recent use of the word limn in a headline word-haters, but I assume they’d be even more offended by the fancy word misologists. If you didn’t catch the (admittedly brief) controversy, it went a [...]
Aren’t We Clever?
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 19, 2010 | Comments Off
What a contrast. In a year that’s on track to be our planet’s hottest on record, America turned “climate change” into a four-letter word that many U.S. politicians won’t even dare utter in public. If this were just some parlor game, it wouldn’t matter. But the totally bogus “discrediting” of climate science has had serious [...]
Chunking
Posted in On Language, tagged September 19 2010 on September 18, 2010 | Comments Off
My ebullient 4-year-old son, Blake, is a big fan of the CDs and DVDs that the band They Might Be Giants recently produced for the kiddie market. He’ll gleefully sing along to “Seven,” a catchy tune from their 2008 album “Here Come the 123s” that tells of a house overrun by anthropomorphic number sevens. The [...]
The Pen That Never Forgets
Posted in Computers on September 18, 2010 | Comments Off
In the spring, Cincia Dervishaj was struggling with a take-home math quiz. It was testing her knowledge of exponential notation — translating numbers like “3.87 x 102” into a regular form. Dervishaj is a 13-year-old student at St. John’s Lutheran School in Staten Island, and like many students grappling with exponents, she got confused about [...]
Harvest Moons and the Seeds of Our Faith
Posted in Religion on September 18, 2010 | Comments Off
How the fall equinox, and the science of ancient astronomy, helped shape religions Next Wednesday heralds the official end of summer—the autumnal equinox —when the length of day and night are equal (circa 11:09 p.m. ET). In the 21st century, this astronomical event is little more than a passing curiosity. But rewind by about three [...]
The Foreign Devil’s Dictionary
Posted in Language on September 18, 2010 | Comments Off
The Oxford Chinese Dictionary is a fresh, modern bridge between two languages that can still seem a world apart. Chinese were hardly enthusiastic about learning the language of the English barbarians when East India Company ships first turned up on the shores of the Celestial Kingdom. Only in the 18th century did traders begin to [...]
Boxing Lessons
Posted in Other on September 17, 2010 | Comments Off
I offer training in both philosophy and boxing. Over the years, some of my colleagues have groused that my work is a contradiction, building minds and cultivating rational discourse while teaching violence and helping to remove brain cells. Truth be told, I think philosophers with this gripe should give some thought to what really counts [...]
