I’m no TV critic. My best TV watching days were over twenty years ago. But a slot on my blog here might as well be reserved for my weekly thoughts […]
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Peter Beinart writes that “particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal.”
Adam Thirwell writes that despite all the geographical accidents to have befallen Central Europe, a cogent literature can still be defined and it turns out to be of very high quality.
An L.A. Times editorial argues that Major League Baseball should move its All Star game out of Phoenix in protest against Arizona’s new immigration law.
Gary Becker and Richard Posner look at what created the housing market bubble of the previous decade and why financial institutions couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it.
Dozens of new species including the Pinocchio Frog, Gargoyle-Faced Gecko and Strange Pigeon have been discovered in Indonesia’s remote Foja Mountains on the island of New Guinea.
According to Einstein, the universe should be equal parts matter and anti-matter; in other words, we shouldn’t exist, so why do we? Some physicists in Chicago may have the answer.
Frank Kermode tries to suss out what Eliot meant by having “a shudder” while reading, a standard by which Eliot defined good poetry and prose, such as in Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
The Boston Globe finds a dangerous irony in Israel’s decision to keep Noam Chomsky from speaking at a Palestinian University in the West Bank.
“What we’re bequeathing our children is a childhood designed by lawyers,” says Lenore Skenazy who thinks pedantic caution is replacing common sense.
Charles Krauthammer congratulates himself for independently reaching the same conclusion as the Attorney General on loosening Miranda rights when public safety is at risk.
Nestle has been forced to change its environmentally-destructive business practices after a social media coup; what can netroots activists learn from the victory? After it was revealed that the Swiss […]
Today, we’re doing something a bit different. Instead of focusing on a specific design-for-good product or idea, let’s focus on why it’s important to talk about these products and ideas […]
The New York Times has introduced a new blog, on philosophy. It’s called Stone. The first piece/post is written by the very elegant and, philosophically, compelling Simon Critchley, and addresses […]
Ross Douthat writes, “from Washington to Athens, the economic crisis is producing consolidation rather than revolution, the entrenchment of authority rather than its diffusion.”
The L.A. Times reports that “for most of the 1920s, a patient could get a prescription for one pint every 10 days about as easily as California patients can now get ‘recommendations’ for medical marijuana.”
The recent intervention of government bailouts in the world economy has made markets more complex by introducing a new political risk to be managed, writes The New Yorker.
Jasper John’s (American) “Flag” sold for a record price in New York with other American artists taking top dollar in a reversal of a trend that has favored international artists.
A new generation of Islamic community leaders familiar with the American experience are reaching out to younger community members in order to offer religious advice.
Dramatist Friedrick Schiller and the late David Foster Wallace both wanted to lift their audience up instead of write down to them; their opinions are excerpted in Lapham’s Quarterly.
A medical company wants to offer over the counter genetic tests whose results show genetic predispositions to certain diseases, but the FDA is crying foul.
New neurological research suggests that each time a memory is recalled, it is subject to slight alternations; the implications could benefit sufferers of PTSD.
According to performance psychologist Jim Taylor, we must give up our democratic pretensions and focus education reform on poor and disadvantaged schools.
Conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to a Court of Appeals by George W. Bush was blocked by Democrats, has written a letter supporting the confirmation of Elena Kagan.
You might have heard me speak about the equation that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life: the one-inch equation that will in a sense summarize everything we […]
I don’t know a whole lot about Cory Booker. My cousin who lives in Jersey, who I trade emails with from time to time, has never mentioned Booker’s name once, […]
A New York Times piece by Andrew Rice about the economics of Internet startups gives a seemingly accurate and sad account of the state of information, which was once known […]
Australian vet Gabor Vajta predicts that as has occurred with cattle, artificial human reproduction will become 100 times more efficient than sex.