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Articles of NoteIs the electorate stupid? No, just human, and thus predictably irrational. Of course, that in itself may be bad enough... more» Biodiversity. Life is more varied in the warm climes near the equator. Making sense of that has confounded biologists for 200 years... more» Does religion make people nicer? Only if they think Big Brother in the Sky is watching. Ronald Bailey explains... more» French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... more» ... more» ... more» If the Nobel Committee lived in an alternative universe... more» “This is the most important election in American history.” Yeah, they say that for every election that comes along... more» Bernard-Henri Lévy and his friend Michel Houellebecq have had enough: “France has vomited on us for too long”... more» In 1947, a Bedouin herder tossed a stone in a cave on the Dead Sea, and heard the shattering of pottery. This led him to some dark parchment fragments... more» The 9/11 Truthers have found some new friends, as the Russian government warms to their psychotic conspiracy fantasies... more» “Classical music audiences are going gray and will soon die.” Yeah, sure. And when was it not so?... more» ... more» What has long been known to all who pay attention is now official: the Nobel lit prize committee doesn’t have a clue... more» ... more» ... more» The idea of a pristine Amazon jungle, untouched by humans, is a myth, a creation of the Western imagination... more» Why does loneliness feel cold and sin feel dirty? Our inner emotional states touch deep metaphors that stretch across cultures... more» Yes, men are hopeless on dates, and tend to say the most idiotic things. On the other hand, women can be stupid too. Why not try a little humor?... more» We’ve been around for two million years, says Stephen Hawking. To last another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before... more» Nietzsche knew best. Morality comes not from society, not from pure reason. It is innate. To know it, we need experimental philosophy... more» Iliad and Odyssey: Homer’s tales of pride and rage, massacre and homecoming, have insinutated themselves in our minds and culture... more» It’s the office China’s writers and artists dread and hate most: the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. Ha Jin explains... more» When you were a kid, were automobile headlights eyes for you? Was that chrome grill a set of teeth? You were not alone... more» Where do old clothes end up? They may not be worth much at the Salvation Army, but they are big business in Haiti... more» A scorched-earth policy toward museums and monuments of historic and artistic value is the Russian way in the attack on Georgia... more» Rupert Murdoch is utterly without charm. He does not do introspection. He’s right there before you: what you see is what you get... more» Do you hate those wretched, sweet floral perfumes? Try a dab of “Wet pavement” or “In the library” behind the ear... more» Philosophy is not for everyone, says Kelly Jolley. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic”... more» Group cohesion may be one reason for the global reach of story telling. Another is that fiction is a proving ground for vital social skills... more» Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, with its statistics, anecdotes, and horror stories, still makes a compelling case... more» If there’s anyone unaffected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it’s the Lehman family. They’ve moved on... more» ... more» Piano recitals in the 19th century often resembled The Ed Sullivan Show more than the serious, hushed concerts of today... more» Democracy on the wane? In country after country, democratic reforms are in retreat. Blame the middle class... more» The book business as we know it will not live happily ever after. Even this era of decline may one day look like the last great golden age... more» Creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view, says the Royal Society of Great Britain... more» ... update ... Reiss resigns The more women and men have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their Mars and Venus personalities seem to diverge... more» First move for a con man: tell your victim a story that reveals your similar anxieties, and forge a “mutual understanding”... more» David Foster Wallace, writer of dark, manic irony, has committed suicide... NYT ... NYT appraisal ... WP ... LAT From Casanova’s first orgasm to Bob Hope’s last jokes, history is a series of landmarks, both inspiring and absurd... more» A Tiger’s Tale. In Texas, where you can own a pet tiger, the booming exotic animal trade has grim consequences... more» There’s a 1/1000 chance that you, your family, and the whole human race will die. So where’s the precautionary principle when you really need it?... more» Ben Franklin liked to present himself as a small-town boy bewildered in the big city. This urbane, highly intelligent man was anything but... more» South Bend, Indiana is an unlikely place for a thriving Russian community with a high percentage of piano virtuosos, but history has strange twists... more» Jimmy Slyde was not just a tap dancer: his slides were an expressive idiom for him to tease the beat, to delay and then catch up... more» ... video Beyond boozy comradeship felt toward strangers in bars, and a few moments of euphoria, what’s to be said for being a sports fan?... more» They don’t read Paul Theroux in English departments. “I’m too rude about people,” he says. We do live in a sensitive age... more» Behavioral economics is not just a gizmo added to traditional economics; it is a big departure that will deliver a new way of seeing the world... more» After a full day at the office, Franz Kafka had dinner and got to writing about 11:00 PM. And what if he’d had more time?... more» Why are kids so unimaginative? Yes, that was the question Teresa Belton asked. For an answer look at TV and daydreaming... more» Otto Preminger, hearing a group of fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, “Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.” He had a point... more» Ossetian hero: Victor Kaloyev murdered the air controller he felt had killed his wife and children. Now out of prison, he finds new fields for revenge... more» International terrorism, for now, is but a puny apocalypse. But at any moment, with the right weapon, it could go from nothing to everything... more» In the 1949 Revolution, a few Americans went to China to help build the Maoist dream. Sixty years later, one of them is still there... more» Is there a performance drug that could actually increase the fairness of sports contests? Yes, there is. Carl Elliott on beta blockers... more» The Cuban judge sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book. The sentence for opposing the Revolution: thirty years... more» The mini-cow is the solution to rising food prices. No taller than a German shepherd, it gives 16 pints of milk a day. Plus, it mows the lawn... more» Hans Monderman loved cars. But he wondered if mature automobile societies could, in essence, act like adults. He was the Traffic Guru... more» Save the Males: feminism today has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society, says Kathleen Parker... more» “She’s imaginative, clever, educated,” says Karl Lagerfeld, who has used Carla Bruni as a model. “She knows how to behave”... more» Human brains evolved to be belief engines: we want to explain everything, including our deepest mystical experiences... more» Con men call it, “taking off the touch” – the point in the con when they take the mark’s money. But he had such an honest face... more» In the long history of the cinema, how many movies, let alone violent boxing movies, can have been based on a poem? Yet one was, a 1949 RKO release... more» The Chinese discovered America, says Gavin Menzies. Now he claims that they also sparked the Renaissance... more» How unpredictable is the Kremlin? For Walter Laqueur, leaders of Russia have tended to be more predictable than the White House... more» Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats’ paw of the West... more» ... Putin makes his move ... brew for a blowup ... Black Sea watershed ... Shaakashvili speaks ... stand up to Russia ... power politics ... Vladimir Bonaparte ... blame the victim ... Russia heading for a fall ... grudge match ... back to the 19th century ... Yukos, now Georgia ... the Great Game ... hard landing for Russia ... Putinism wins ... perils to come ... resurgent bear ... Russian resentment ... Georgia’s problem ... wanna-be superpower ... Putin warmonger ... ominous doctrine ... not Hitler or Stalin ... historic turning point ... Russia does not want war ... back to ’68 There was huge drop in semicolon use from the 18th through the 19th centuries, from 68.1 per 1000 words to 17.7. And that’s just the start of the trouble... more» Dr. Malthus, thou shouldst be living at this hour, with the birth rate in Britain at all-time lows. It’s the real population problem... more» Major world powers are unlikely to take any significant steps against Robert Mugabe because Zimbabwe exports neither oil nor international terrorism... more» A Truman for our times. President Bush has successfully rolled back jihadism, and placed the U.S. to benefit from Asian growth... more» No one yet knows how to disarm bacteria enough to allow the human body to naturally and consistently defend against them. And we still have superbugs... more» Size matters, when it comes to IQ. The bigger your brain, the better. But most important is that certain areas of the brain be larger... more» Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose books told the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, is dead at 89 ... UPI ... Globe & Mail ... Chicago Tribune ... Philly Inquirer ... FrontPage ... Rutland Herald ... last interview ... LAT ... American Spectator ... Wash Times ... Irish Times ... neighbors speak ... Telegraph ... AP ... AFP ... London Times ... Irish Times ... BBC ... Guardian ... NYT ... Der Spiegel ... 1978 Harvard speech ... Putin & Gorbachev ... old Buckley column ... Daily Mail ... Guardian ... Moscow Times ... Open Democracy ... Time ... Nat’l Post ... Slate ... Ottawa Citizen ... Boston Globe ... Nat’l Post ... Forbes ... BBC ... Heritage.org ... Christian Post ... German papers ... New Statesman ... Economist ... Wall Street Journal ... Khrushcev’s daughter ... ever the optimist Coddled from infancy and raised to be academic stars, China’s only children buckle under pressure of their parents’ deferred dreams... more» Blue sky thinking, pushing the envelope: office-speak is just so brainless. Going forward, Lucy Kellaway dialogues... more» Who framed George Lakoff? This noted linguist’s foray into Democratic politics has been, well, a little bit exciting... more» Kay Ryan, America’s new poet laureate, is a miniaturist. Her poems, like pearls, take shape “around an aggravation”... more» Literary critics often use “voice” to mean “style.” But real writers have real voices too, and they have been recorded... more» Frédéric Bourdin had invented scores of identities, in five languages, and he played them to the hilt. But his favorite was the abused child... more» Like every force of nature, lightning gives and takes away. It exudes nitrogen for plants. It is also deadly: it chars, explodes, sears... more» Visiting Harvard to teach is like visiting Disney World. The magic dust induces a light narcosis. The mind goes incontinent... more» ... more» ... more» So globalization, by making nations richer, will make them democratic? Not if we enrich entrenched, anti-democratic powers... more» Quiet! Sleeping Brain at Work. The brain can get a lot done, and leave you a little smarter, when it sleeps... more» The lower types, Nietzsche dared to think, wallow in pity as swine do in mud, their pity for others just pity for themselves. But what of real compassion?... more» What is art criticism today? It’s sure not Harold Rosenberg or Clement Greenberg. Some might call this progress. James Panero calls it a shame... more» Obama needs time to think, McCain needs time to think, and so do you. But how can you find the time, or make the time?... more» Brideshead Revisited is a misfit of a book, loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax’s new film version shows... more» Last year, 194 people killed themselves on the tracks of mass transit systems in the U.K. It’s a theatrical way to die... more» At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Herbert Hoover had his aides pick up every stray bit of paper left on tables or thrown out. Smart move... more» Even Arts & Letters Daily readers have been known to bluff about classic books they’ve not really read. What’s your shameful secret?... more» Writing in Paris just six months before his death, Walter Benjamin produced for Max Horkheimer in New York a report on the literary situation in France... more» The Chevrolet Volt is a new kind of electric hybrid GM wants in showrooms in late 2010. It is a gigantic risk for the company... more» How many of us are aware that when we look into a mirror we see an image on the mirror surface that is exactly half life size?... more» When the U.S. pioneered universal access to high school, the whole economy benefited. Today it needs the same for college... more» Who would guess that Lord Keynes was “deeply moved” by Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and called it “a grand book”?... more» Just what his ideological enemies might wish for: Christopher Hitchens has been tortured in a waterboarding session... more» The New Yorker was “one of the greatest money pits in magazine history.” Then it got a new editor, David Remnick... more» What about southern Iraq’s important archeological sites – the ones that had been looted? Well, the looting was an urban myth... more» Persia’s Cyrus II was a great defender of human rights. Just like the late Shah, who gave proof of the wisdom of both men to the United Nations... more» Obsessive stalker, an impotent husband, lover of young boys: to some, the creator of Peter Pan was an evil genius. But to others... more» John McWhorter’s artistic pantheon has room for Brahms, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Billy Strayhorn. As for Rap... more» Monkeys may not care about money, but they are mad about marshmallows. And to them, marshmallows can begin to look a lot like money... more» Beijing: flat, sprawling, smoggy, jammed with traffic, and nearly all new. A kind of People’s Republic of Houston... more» “All poets’ wives have rotten lives.” The words of Delmore Schwartz were not directly about Elizabeth Hardwick, and she might not have agreed. Still... more» Is fan fiction legal? Fans are nervous. A copyright owner’s rights extend explicitly to derivative works based on the original... more» Homosexual behavior is common in nature, and it plays an important role in survival. Consider Roy and Silo, Central Park’s gay penguins... more» Move over, Noam. A new survey of the world’s top intellectuals shows they are mostly Muslims you never heard of... more» ... more» Shoppers at farmers markets have ten times as many conversations with other people as those at supermarkets. And as for the food... more» The routes of humans from Africa to the Americas over millennia can be mapped as if they were moving over superhighways... more» Paleolithic cave art shows no sun, moon, or plant life, and hardly a human being. It is rather about magnificent animals... more» The downside of natural disasters is so sad and so obvious. Yet, like losing wars, disasters can have an upside... more» “Mother Russia,” or “Mother India.” Men may leave, fight, be compromised, but women represent purity, continuity, home – and babies... more» Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%, far more than previous estimates, says a secret World Bank report... more» As everyone knows, Socrates spoke for all skeptics when he said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” But is that what he really said?... more» “Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too.” What did Mencken mean?... more» The Architect of Brasília? Yes, it was urban planning gone badly wrong, but the city still contains some graceful modernist government buildings... more» Woodrow Wilson talked of “a common order, a common justice and a common peace” for America and the world. His is an idea ripe for revival... more» |
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New BooksSam Johnson defined a lexicographer as “a harmless drudge.” He never foresaw the armed and dangerously funny Roy Blount Jr.... more» Much of the perfume-buying public sprays itself with high-priced smells that are the fragrance equivalent of airport novels... more» In the well-scrubbed West, it’s easy to assume that personal cleanliness is an objective matter. So try a visit to India... more» For the uninformed youngster who thinks easy sex was ever the way, Philip Roth’s strange new novel may be the perfect back-to-school gift... more» ... more» For Dostoevsky, murderers, suicides, child molesters, and blasphemers actually quicken the deepest Christian faith... more» Madame de Staël brought to the world a mixture of self-regard, self-delusion, and raw, overpowering intellect. And other charms as well... more» Patrons can make life easier for artists. But while the money may be good, it tends to come with strings, or even handcuffs, attached... more» Star, raconteur, mensch. Cheeta has at last told all, and you’ll never again think of Hollywood memoirs in the same way... more» Yes, he’s a celeb who wears pricey suits. But Bernard-Henri Lévy is a real-deal philosopher, too, one who gives us much to ponder... more» One of the saddest stories of the 20th century is the fate of air travel. In 1900 it was a dream. By 1999 it was a tedious chore... more» Can we ever know what was in the hearts of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, the man who owned her?... more» China was once thought to have no great tradition of science and invention. The reversal in thinking on this question is owed to Joseph Needham... more» “Libertarian paternalism” is a phrase with more than a whiff of paradox about it. Is it a third way for politics and economics?... more» Richard Rorty said no standpoint outside human descriptions exists from which to decide truth or falsity. He was a corrupter of the youth... more» A man must be adaptable to win in life, he said. Yet Niccolò Machiavelli, the ultimate expert in winning, lost it all... more» Simon Schama’s hero in his latest book is America, vindicated by history as a land of everlasting optimism... more» Han Van Meegeren: a second-rate painter who turned to forgeries for easy money in the 1920s. And what money he made... more» We live in an age of autobiography. Yet what twenty-something has earned the right to publish her spiritual journey?... more»
In the summer of 1857, an emigrant wagon train from Arkansas was massacred as it crossed Utah. The killers were not Paiutes, but Mormons... more» Pompeii: a city where dogs howl, late-night drunks carouse, there are not enough lavatories, and everyone has bad breath... more» Oscar Wilde was a man made of books, from Plato to Pater. The story of his libraries is the story of his life... more» Proust can keep his madeleines. For some people, nothing brings back childhood like the inky smell of Batman comics... more» White Castle created the template in 1916 for all fast-food restaurants in the world. And thus was the hamburger born... more» Sushi is just what “White People” want: foreign, expensive, healthy, and hated by the uneducated. White People are not snobs or anything... more» It’s not enough to be antifascist; one must also be in principle antitotalitarian. That about sums up Bernard-Henri Lévy... more» In Heinrich Himmler’s view, Slavs were “Mongol types” to be replaced with blond Aryans in the east. Russians were mere “redskins”... more» Every unhappy book launch is unhappy in its own way, except when it involves Islam. Then the plot is rather familiar... more» Benjamin Disraeli wrote 18 novels. They abound with ambitious young men who are convinced of their genius but who feel they are strangers... more» Fables for children work not by pointing to a moral but by complicating moral thinking. Consider Babar the Elephant... more» In 1940, Churchill sent a group of young, handsome British officers to Washington to charm the power elite and... more» Feeling a sense of loss for a God you don’t believe in anyway? Isn’t the idea rather soppy, Mr. Barnes?... more» The entry of Britain and France into the Greek War of Independence is the first humanitarian intervention. It wasn’t the last... more» A black hole is a kind of one-way gate in the universe: Stuff can fall in, but nothing comes out. Easy, eh? Not exactly... more» Whatever divides religion and atheism, much more important is the potential of both to promote a sense of compassion ... more» Wittgenstein family: among the richest, most talented and eccentric in Europe, a family of geniuses and suicides... more» In 1904, Max Factor huddled in a forest with his wife and children, hunted by the Czar’s men. Hollywood was still a long way off... more» Intelligent Design tries with evidence and logic to show that life was designed by an intelligent agency competent to the task... more» Why are some countries rich, others poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England? Why is Africa still mired in poverty?... more» “Interface” for “meet”? Maybe soon the word it will become a synonym for “kiss,” as in: “Interface me, baby!”... more» What are lies, and what do they mean in political life today? Jacques Lacan has no answers, just dinner party anecdotes... more» A great contribution of the 20th century was to let the chaos and cadences of the world, the sounds of the street, into music... more» Josef Stalin hated genetics: if genes are physical structures passed down through generations then nature isn’t changeable... more» Except for issues of cleanliness, sex, and food, the British are just like Yanks. Oh, yes, and then there’s language... more» “Organic food” may bring to mind hairy people peddling goat cheese. But we also might think back to Edmund Burke and the 18th century... more» Bernard-Henri Lévy, a Sartre in billowy, unbuttoned white shirt, has his finger on the geopolitical zeitgeist like no other philosopher... more» Julian Barnes is not frightened about dying but not happy, either. “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”... more» Bacardi Rum had been a patriotic firm with a long history of supporting social welfare reforms in Cuba. Then along came Castro... more» When Giordano Bruno mounted the pyre, a crucifix was held to his face. A witness says that he turned away angrily... more» Emily Dickinson’s gnomic poems go down like shots of triple-distilled whiskey. After the jolt, they radiate... more» The tabloids create an alternative universe each week for four or five million people clutching their quarters at supermarket check-out racks... more» Most conquerors try to convert their subjects. Hitler’s empire was built on the idea of exterminating the natives... more» Going Off the Rawls. How libertarians have adopted the liberal left’s favorite modern philosopher... more» Samuel Pepys: intelligent, curious, decent, and diligent, with an abiding interest in music, food, women and the life of the city... more» The Caucasus is haunted by the ghost of freedom: ethnic groups like the Abkhaz and Ossetians try to break away from an independent state... more» E.M. Forster was a tricky bugger, a man of many contradictions. He made a faith of personal sincerity, but his career was disingenuous... more» Julius Caesar stands for so much in our culture. Even John Wilkes Booth took up the mantle of Brutus against the Caesar Lincoln... more» The novelist Elizabeth Taylor is best known for not being the person eveybody thinks she is. Ben Schwarz explains... more» Heinrich Heine was half-blind at life’s end, but his prose darted like a sparrow between youth and maturity, personal delight and political indignation... more» How excellent to see a physicist taking philosophical problems seriously. Alan Sokal has even won a battle or two... more» Moral panic over Salomé, and a financial panic on Wall Street. Gustav Mahler’s New York was a frenetic, overheated city... more» The blight that killed billions of American chestnut trees was a catastophe unrivaled in the history of ecological disasters... more» Allan Konigsberg was already in high school writing jokes for New York gossip columns. He needed a better name, so he called himself “Woody Allen”... more» For the human eye, the face of a woman or a man is the most sign-packed surface in the universe. It tells more about us than we may wish... more» The spellbinding quality of Saki’s stories looks mawkish when put in plain words because he wrote about children and animals... more» The tragedy of commons is that it leads to overuse and destruction; the tragedy of the anticommons leads to underuse and waste... more» Leopold and Loeb: it was long ago, but their cold viciousness remains a major event in the annals of human depravity... more» Philosopher Giordano Bruno wrote about the universe as infinite and containing other inhabited worlds. Too much for the Inqusition... more» Joseph Banks: generous and insatiable for knowledge. Carl Linnaeus: manipulative and mean-spirited. But they both loved plants... more» She was a woman who clung to New York literary life, or its fringes, by her talented fingernails. Not as herself, but as Louise Brooks... more» Rap is about striking a pose. It is a pose, as John McWhorter observes, that amounts to “the upturned middle finger”... more» When D.H. Lawrence saw “the brilliant, proud morning shine up high over the deserts of Santa Fe,” something stood still in his soul... more» “Nationalism and the nation itself,” Robert Kagan writes, “far from being weakened by globalization, have now returned with a vengeance”... more» Doris Lessing hated her mother. That was in real life. But in her newest fiction, her mother has become a true moral heroine... more» Ernst Haeckel’s imagination, daring, and inventive ideas should have made him Darwin’s rival. But he was too much a popularizer... more» Hard to imagine, given our obsession with TV, Facebook, and blogs, but literature was once at the center of American cultural life... more» There are too many cynical, strutting views of sex, says Cynthia Macdonald. They never explain one gender’s foibles to the other... more» During the Depression, many Americans were lured by Soviet propaganda to migrate to the USSR to help build socialism.” What a sad story... more» History – the rational and methodical study of the human past – was invented by a single man, Herodotus... more» While Evelyn Waugh was chatting up the aristocracy, his contemporary, George Orwell, was down there with coal miners and tramps... more» Till death do us part. Can anyone, in or out of a marriage, explain it? A mystical melting of man and woman into “one flesh”?... more» Americans like their grog. By 1810 six states distilled twice as many gallons of whiskey per annum as the total populace... more» The luminous details in Vermeer’s paintings open like his diamond-paned windows onto a wider world... more» Evolution isn’t perfect: it goes with what works and tinkers with it later. So the retinas of vertebrates are installed backwards, blind spots and all... more» Our conscious life is a constant flow, or integration, of an immediate past and the present. Brain science shows it’s so... more» Not all baby boomers are still fighting the fights of the sixties. But they still tend to the same sixties narcisscism... more» Scotland: fake history, phony epics, and fraudulent tartans. Those ancient clans are a pile of rubbish, and as for the kilt... more» Maxim Gorky’s hopes for the Russian Revolution were Promethean: man would acquire qualities of the gods and gradually replace them... more» “Yesterday this picture was worth millions,” Han van Meegeren said. “Today, it is worth nothing. But the picture has not changed. What has?”... more» “Remember, many girls are pretty, but few are radiant.” Why not virtue and dignity for girls? Why is it always about sex?... more» It’s no sense of duty that makes people read James Wood’s essays huddled in doorways, coats and keys still in their hands... more» She was the new Chomsky, the young woman to re-invent politics for a new generation. Then came 9/11... more» Animal cruelty today is not as barbaric as in the 18th century, but with factory farming it is more widespread... more» The divine Homer. So how will you have him? In the earthy, rough-hewn words of Fagles, or with the nobility of Pope?... more» American lawns cover an area about the size of New York State. Every year, $40 billion is spent on their upkeep... more» Maybe the most damning criticism that can be made of Castro’s revolution is not that it is repressive but that its repression was for naught... more» So what has the feminist revolution really given women? Sisterhood, empowerment, and eight hours a day in a cubicle... more» If you think that one dead shark is as good as another, then your grasp of the art market is, as they say, dead in the water... more» “So what is the difference between a Hungarian and a Rumanian? Each will sell you his grandmother, but...” more» ... more» Booze: it is a lubricant for business deals, marriages, and talk. It inspired the Greeks to invent not only democracy, but comedy and tragedy... more» Ugly? To the contrary, a slime mold seen under a microscope can be an object of beauty – in the eye of the scientist... more» We still repair urgently to Durkheim and Weber, while we safely forget about phlogiston. Social theory’s history lives still... more» In the 2020s, perhaps 10% of Chinese males will not find wives. By then, China will be no country for young men... more» Some recent political clichés are older than we think. Henry IV, not Herbert Hoover, coined a chicken in every pot... more» The dumbest generation. They want it all, and they want it now, without toil, and especially without any boring reading... more» U.S. leadership often emerges out of crisis: Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Maybe a vigilant foreign policy will require yet another calamity... more» Because we must decide if some means can be justified by their ends, moralists will always be in work. Consider the history of the CIA... more» Sex is interesting, even when it’s bad, says Jessa Crispin. Sex memoirs, on the other hand, can be boring beyond belief... more» Artist of wondrous Vermeers? Except that they were not so wondrous, and they were most certainly not Vermeers... more» China: both proud and resentful, open and closed, like us yet not at all like us. Still, the onetime sick man of Asia is in exuberant health... more» “Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine.” John Keats knew her intimately, and delight as well... more» Readers are incurable fabulists. Take that ordinary chap, Franz Kafka. We prefer him as a man of metaphysical mystery... more» Richard Gatling invented a mechanized seed planter: seeds dropped from a hopper one by one into the furrow. Why not use the same idea for a gun?... more» Man goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, my penis is burning.” Doctor explains, “That means somebody is talking about your penis.” What is it about jokes? ... more» ... more» ... more» | |
Essays and OpinionWhen it comes to waging war, as Ralph Peters explains, passion trumps practicality, while pride overrules rational self-interest... more» American Carol is yet another message movie: this time the conservative answer to all the efforts of Hollywood liberals. It is also a very bad film... more» The progressive, rights-based political thought of today may feel it has no use for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. It ignores this great work at its intellectual peril... more» In the U.K., alcohol is a relaxant, an emollient, a crutch, a relief, an excuse. Sarah Lyall has many British friends who in the U.S. would be viewed as functioning alcoholics... more» False Apology Syndrome: a rich but poisonous mixture of condescension, self-importance, bad faith, loose thinking, and indifference... more» The victimization of blacks is America’s original sin, and privileged blacks have milked it without shame, says Gerald Early. It’s a sucker’s game... more» Will Russia again become a rich and influential nation? No time soon, says Murray Feshbach. Russia is not just sick, it is dying... more» In Albania, lawsuits fly over who owns or can complete buildings. Thus among Greek and Roman ruins, a new style is seen: Unfinished Brutalist Post-Communist... more» Students starting college this year likely never dialed a telephone. So began the first Mindset List, meant to show how remote students’ experience is from their teachers’... more» The White House was a mess. Drunken revelers in the lobby. Boozers romping through the bedrooms. And all this 140 years before JFK moved in... more» When people talk about today’s financial troubles, they often invoke 1929. Better that they might think back a little farther, to the Panic of 1873... more» Without beauty, art becomes a kind of fetish or idol, untested by the rest of life. Only an authentic sense of beauty can animate aesthetic experience... more» John Stuart Mill was a feminist, and there is no doubt that the engine of his feminism was his friend, lover, collaborator, and wife, Harriet Taylor... more» Sha Na Na, with greased ducktails and cigarettes rolled into T-shirt sleeves, did not so much describe the sock-hop 1950s as invent it... more» When your mortality swings into view, you can be thankful for life – and whiskey. P.J. O’Rourke has cancer, in the most humiliating place... more» Hudson River School artists wanted to paint God as manifest in nature. So can you have a Hudson River School revival without a revival of God? James Panero asks an awkward question... more» Intellectual fashions fade. “Deconstruction,” “postmodernism,” “hegemony.” The use of these words tracks their cultural importance – and they are in decline... more» Travelers want authenticity in foreign lands. But hasn’t this search become a fool’s errand? Rolf Potts is a travel writer without illusions... more» David Foster Wallace’s voice was the voice in your own head. But what was the voice in his head?... A.O. Scott ... Morgan Meis ... Joshua Ferris ... Tim Kreider ... Michiko Kakutani ... Monica Hesse ... Colby Cosh ... Mark Caro ... Sam Anderson ... Christopher Hays ... Richard Woodward ... Tim Martin ... Steve Almond ... Peter Craven ... Julian Gough ... Lev Grossman ... Sven Birkerts, Joyce Carol Oates, et al. ... Fritz Lanham ... Elizabeth Wurtzel ... Verlyn Klinkenborg ... Alex Rose ... satire When a baby is about to be born, you must boil a lot of water. And people in Biblical times had ragged clothes but perfect teeth. Yes, it’s movie wisdom... more» Leona Helmsley learned the hard way that money does not buy happiness. Nor will it buy it for her cute little dog, now also a rich bitch... more» Atheism may not be easy, but it offers the honor of facing our condition without despair or wishful thinking – with good humor, but without God... |
