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  • The Agent of Change, the Barbarian

    Richard Nash at the Virginia Quarterly Review has a long piece that is ostensibly about the business of literature, but really gets at the heart of what the book means to civilization. I just loved it. The two bits I’ll highlight have to do with the book’s resilience as a piece of both technology and…

  • The Blood Will Not Come Off, Ctd.

    There is a torrent of Iraq War soul-searches in the media right now, and they continue to stick in my craw for their evasiveness, especially after the brutally self-critical tone of Andrew Sullivan’s professed regrets for his support. I was looking forward to something similar from former Bush speechwriter — Mr. Axis of Evil himself…

  • The Blood Will Not Come Off

    This feels like an academic debate. But it isn’t. I have blood on my hands. However many times I try to wash them, the blood will not come off. Andrew Sullivan, on the explanations and mea culpas given by those like himself who supported the Iraq War. Warning: Image that accompanies the above link is…

  • Mike Daisey vs. The View From Nowhere

    Mike Daisey, in a Facebook comment thread, confronts a former CNN vice-president with the press’s blindness to its own sickness, in the wake of CNN’s much-derided coverage of the Steubenville rape trial: This is an absolutely perfect example of a story that tells all the facts in front of these reporters, and they have totally…

  • A Population Equally Brave

    Jennifer Michael Hecht is one of my favorite writers, and in her review of Susan Jacoby’s new book on Robert Ingersoll, she leaves me with this haunting thought: There have been atheists and religious doubters throughout history, but the ones who remain famous after their deaths tend to have been equally famous for something else…

  • A Phase of Incestuous Contraction

    As a performing artist, here’s a thing I’ve definitely fretted over; doing art only for an audience of people who all do the same thing. Here’s Steve Almond at The New Republic writing from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (AWP): But there’s a larger and more unsettling truth. . . one that…

  • Hospitality Used to Scare Me (And a Humble Ask)

    I don’t know what to do in the face of hospitality. It confuses me, frightens me. Prime example: On our honeymoon, the wife and I were stranded by our cruise ship because our plane had mechanical trouble, so we had to instead fly to where the boat would meet up with us. Luckily, her mother…

  • Self-Flagellation over Books Not Read

    I was just complaining on Twitter that I feel genuine and physiologically-palpable anxiety over the idea that there are so many Important Books that I’ve never gotten to, and likely never will. (Read more about my struggles with particular aspects of the Western Canon here.) Then Bill Boulden (@Spruke) pointed me to this piece at NPR…

  • Augmenting Reality All the Way Down

    I sometimes think that if you could personify the current state of American society, and “film” our economic situation, it might look kind of like a Baz Luhrmann picture, with throngs of cavorting people all dressed to the nines-to-the-ninth-power, but all rotting on the inside. A glittery, sparkling, hedonistic, gala ball at which everyone secretly…

  • Hey Gandalf, Where Are the Freaking Eagles? [Updated]

    Sean Crist confronts a problem I didn’t even realize existed, but now sticks in one’s literary craw: Why didn’t the eagles just fly Frodo to Mordor, and skip all that unpleasant trudging about through a medieval hellscape and struggling with a demented jewelry addict bent on his demise? Essentially, because Tolkien just kind of screwed…

  • The Family Reunion You Can Never Leave

    There’s an interesting article at The Verge on why teenagers seem to be moving away from Facebook, the thing I loathe but feel compelled to use anyway. The takeaway is simply that what makes Facebook Facebook, sharing stuff about your life, is no longer hip. The fad, like so many pet rocks, has died: At…

  • A Suggestion for the Papal Conclave

    A classic idea, might be the way to go. Just a thought. “Find the Pope in the Pizza” from George Nimeh on Vimeo.

  • John Kerry, Still Tolerating It

    Right wingers got all squirrelly in their pants the other day because Secretary of State John Kerry had the audacity to say, while visiting Germany, that in America we have “the right to be stupid.” because, UC, saying something like this obviously means that John Kerry thanks all Americans are stupid. Because he’s French, you…

  • When the Bullied Becomes the Bully (You Can’t Punch Up, So You Punch Down)

    A study from JAMA Psychiatry, as reported in Time, looks at the effects of bullying in school into adulthood, from the perspective of all parties involved, the bullied and the bullies themselves. First, I’ll say that I’m always glad to see any recognition that bullying has long-term effects, as I’ve lived my life being told…

  • It Apparently Doesn’t Take a Psychic

    You really have to watch this video of this mystical guy who really seems to know things he could not possibly know about the people he’s giving readings to. Watch to the end to have your mind blown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F7pYHN9iC9I