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Monthly Archives: September 2010

Noted: Edmund Gosse in the uncomfortable ante-chamber to an unexplored palace.

Coming at the end of his autobiography, Gosse’s outburst does not read like an atheist’s sermon preached from the high pulpit of Freedom and Reason.

Noted: How did the Victorian Age feel to the Victorians?

Fundamental to Houghton’s definition of the Victorian frame of mind was self-consciousness of its own historicity.

Noted: When will it be time to declare Stalin 'horrible officially'?

“Somehow Stalin gets a pass,” Ian Frazier wrote in a recent New Yorker article about the gulags. “People know he was horrible, but he has not yet been declared horrible officially.”

Noted: How bugbears devoured the mainstream media.

By CONRAD BLACK [The New Criterion] – The socio-cultural question that bedevils the future of newspapers is rooted in the decline of the prestige and credibility of the media. It is obvious and notorious that the traditional national media of the United States has fragmented in market share and lost ground heavily to newer forms […]

Noted: Jean-Luc Godard issues you a license to steal 'Breathless'.

Godard: An author has no rights. I have no rights. I only have duties.

Noted: Does China deserve to be called a 'beacon of meritocracy'?

According to Wen, a sound market environment with fair competition can only be created when the government uses laws and regulations to manage various market entities, provide services for them and ensure their rights.

Arvo Pärt: 'The soul yearns to sing it endlessly.'

Arvo Pärt discusses “Für Alina”

Noted: Winning hearts and minds with Rumi.

An additional advantage that the academies have over ROTC is their ability to respond swiftly to changing military challenges.

Noted: This 西方民主 of yours will only bring chaos and destruction.

I say to you as a Party member of twenty years, and as a citizen, that this “democracy” of yours will only bring chaos and destruction to us all.

Noted: Autism, a six-foot putt, and a sweet old age.

The needs of those with lower-functioning varieties of autism will be profound and constant. How we respond to those needs will be shaped in great measure by how we choose to view adults with autism.

Noted: Does the professoriate know what students need to know? No.

We can infer that, for Ortega, it is the economic principle that leads students to the wisest choice regarding the curriculum.

Noted: Famous author goes, 'No more present-tense narrative, please.'

What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate.

Noted: Maybe calling evil "bad" is just another example of hate speech.

After a century that saw the slaughter of more than a hundred million souls, we seem to be insisting on one more casualty: the word evil.

The father of natural selection does not pick. He strums.

Ramona Falls: ‘I Say Fever,” by Stefan Nadelman.

Noted: The kind of antihumanist atheism a man can believe in.

…the result of the death of God was the divinization of Man. But having witnessed the atrocities committed in the name of such anthropocentrism, midcentury theorists sought to displace humanism.