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“I always said I wasn’t going to write about Norman because no one would believe it,” Norris Church Mailer once said, but now she has written a memoir about her marriage to the novelist.
Garrison Keillor is feeling especially powerless these days: “As the Gulf turns dark and the polar ice cap melts, I intend to listen to Bach more and listen to the news less,” he says.
“For the first time, physicists have confirmed that certain subatomic particles have mass,” writes the L.A. Times. The mass could account for the mysterious existence of dark matter.
“Do people really die of broken hearts?” asks the Times’ health blog. Elevated stress hormones following an emotionally trying event may cause cardiomyopathy, a.k.a. broken heart syndrome.
While artificial intelligence has yet to realize its often dramatic promises, the development of brain science has led thinkers to prioritize the mind over the body as the center of the self.
“‘Democracy’ in the abstract misleads us. Living in a democracy—and it is lived experience that must be our theme—becomes a different thing in each generation,” begins Kenneth Minogue.
P.J. O’Rourke has a clever idea for reviving newspaper sales—the pre-obituary: “official notices that certain people aren’t dead with brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.”
A new book examines the lives of the Romantic poets in their well-intentioned but ultimately ambiguous morality. It is a case of life imitating art, writes Laura Miller for Slate.
“While taking a more relaxed attitude towards the pursuit of wealth may make sense as a personal philosophy, it is an uncertain guide to public policy,” says the Financial Times.
THERE is an exhibit more ghastly and gruesome than the tatty stuffed Alsatian dog, awarded the Gustav Husak medal for sinking its teeth into a record number of attempted defectors […]