February 2009
January 2009
“New York Times science reporter Natalie Angier recently called for renewed...”
– Heather MacDonald
“Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices....”
– Pope Benedict XVI, November 2008
“Failed presidencies are one of our last thriving industries. If the president...”
– Joel Achenbach
future text →
Friends, chances are that I will continue to pursue the themes of this blog at my old homestead, The American Scene. Reihan thinks we could even add a “technology” category just for me! Cool! I…
“Gladwell’s overarching thesis in Outliers is so obviously correct that it...”
– Isaac Chotiner in TNR
what we read when we read →
At a working library I read this:
In ancient days, written texts were inscribed on long pieces of parchment that were then rolled up on either side. The reader could unroll a short segment at a…
Off the Shelf - In ‘Grown Up Digital,’ the Virtues... →
Mr. Tapscott decries the widening educational gap between the “thriving” and “failing” segments of the Net generation. Although the percentage of young people enrolling in college rose sharply from…
The Triumph of the Readers - WSJ.com - Ann... →
In these new and improved numbers of readers given to us by the NEA, the most heartening rise is in the 18-to-24-year-old group, the ones who seem to have been born with iPod buds stuck in their…
Terry Eagleton: Milton's republic →
At the heart of Milton’s political vision lay a belief in liberty and self-government. Pressed to an extreme, this doctrine could appear anarchic: grace freed humanity from law and authority. He thus…
Gods and Monsters - Ross Douthat →
But if you want to understand what, if anything, a person means when he says he believes in demons or angels or ghosts, the simplest baseline answer is this: He means that if confronted with an…
“Farmelo believes that the cause of [Paul] Dirac’s condition was not...”
– here
“The real shame about the inappropriate utterances coming from royals and...”
– other examples here
Shouldn't All Students Learn Economics? →
The current upheavals in the financial markets have left everyone confused. But in the midst of all the confusion, one thing has become crystal clear: A free country simply must be an economically…
So Deep a Wound: Home, and the novels of Marilynne... →
Perhaps it is Robinson’s profoundly Calvinist sense of the all-sufficiency of Grace, the ultimate irrelevancy of anything we might call merit, that permits her to pull off what amounts to a great…
“What is rational control? In the brand new building where I work at Harvard, the...”
– Harvey Mansfield, quoted by Patrick Deneen in an excellent post here
the enemy of thought? really? →
About three years ago I wrote an essay in which I claimed that “Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.” Well, don’t I…
forget that earlier Facebook post, just watch this →
A friend sent me this.
but everybody can see me! →
Speaking of a lack of solitude, how would you like to try writing while the contents of your computer’s screen are being projected onto a series of very large screens for anyone who passes by to…
“I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand or if you...”
– Sweeney, in T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes
it’s Google’s world; we’re just living in it →
Much of the Robert Darnton article I linked to in an earlier post is concerned with the power that Google now has over access to books, through its massive digitization project and, especially,…
addendum on Nicholas Carr →
Regarding the post just below: Carr refers to Wikipedia as “a single source of information” — but is it? It’s a single conduit of information, but a conduit is not a source. What are the sources…
the sound of silence →
There appears to be no end in sight of essays deploring what Modern Technology is depriving us of. Some of these are right, but not many of them, and the vast majority that are wrong — or greatly…
“This point about manufacturing things that last is important. Say, stricken with...”
– Brian Appleyard on Andrew Price
Les Murray, "The Instrument"
Who reads poetry? Not our intellectuals:
they want to control it. Not lovers, not the combative,
nor examinees. They too skim it for bouquets
and magic trump cards. Not poor schoolkids
furtively farting as they get immunized against it.
Poetry is read by the lovers of poetry
and heard by some more they coax to the café
or the district library for a bifocal reading.
Lovers of poetry may...
the end of book reviews? →
By which I mean not the reviewing of books but the kind of newspaper section called a book review, as in the New York Times Book Review or the Washington Post Book World, which may be closing…
more atheist bus slogans →
the Republic of Letters →
Here’s an excellent article by Robert Darnton, about which I will have more to say later. But for now here’s a taste:
The eighteenth century imagined the Republic of Letters as a realm with no…
teaching people how to use books →
David Parry at academhack, in a post called “Teaching in the Age of Distraction,” writes, “Let’s be clear: I think wireless access in a classroom is at this point a necessity, any space which…
New Scientist interview with James Lovelock
NS: Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
JL: Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.
NS: What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
JL: That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.
NS: Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?
JL: It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.
NS: So are we doomed?
JL: There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.
in the reign of King Josiah →
For people interested in the relations between orality and literacy, there’s a fascinating passage in the Biblical book that Christians call 2 Kings. You may read the whole passage here. When…
“Mother Teresa recited the simple prayer of Saint Francis every day. Margaret...”
– NYT
Jane Kenyon, "Let Evening Come"
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the...
apologies →
Hey everybody, I have been away — from this blog, and from everything else — for the past few days because of the death of my father. It was not altogether a surprise (he had lung cancer) but he…
a new life for old books →
Over at boingboing, a very interesting post by Steven Johnson in which he discusses, among other things, the research he did for his new book on the great…
“It’s true, I did break bread with Obama. It was amazing. He was carried into the...”
– David Brooks
“Mon père s’appelle Albert Uderzo et m’a élevée avec sa potion...”
– All Gaul is once more occupied, says the daughter of the creator of Astérix and Obelix: he has sold the rights to his creation to Big Business (“les pires ennemis d’Astérix : les hommes de l’industrie et de la finance”). Story from Le Monde; summary in English here.
against Facebook fascism →
I was a reasonably early adopter of Facebook — after it was opened to people as old as I am — though I can’t remember precisely when I got on board. But I do remember that I lasted about six months…
evicted! →
One of my first posts on this blog was about the rather sudden and unexpected shutdown of two web services, Stikkit and Sandy, and the anger that shutdown prompted against the services’ providers….
“Even moderate amounts of [caffeine] can lead people to hear voices and see...”
– Here. This explains a lot.
“kill your word processor” →
Word, Google Office and OpenOffice all come with a bewildering array of typesetting and automation settings that you can play with forever. Forget it. All that stuff is distraction, and the last…