By ROBERT FLORENCE [New Statesman] – In Umberto Eco’s brilliant Foucault’s Pendulum, we watch as characters play with global conspiracy theory and occultism as a satirical, intellectual game. This game leads the characters down a dark path, but we understand completely why that path is worth following. Games are important. They are important when we’re children, and then we forget how important they are for a while as we chase adult pleasures. Then we recognise that those too were games, of a sort, and having won and lost and won and lost we return to more obvious and literal games. Ones we can play on our TVs and place on our tables. Ones that hurt less when we fail. Continue reading “The pleasure of games on boards.” »
By MICHAEL WOODLEY [Intelligence] – The Victorian era was marked by an explosion of innovation and genius, per capita rates of which appear to have declined subsequently. The presence of dysgenic fertility for IQ amongst Western nations, starting in the 19th century, suggests that these trends might be related to declining IQ. This is because high-IQ people are more productive and more creative. Continue reading “‘The Victorians were indeed substantially cleverer than modern populations’.” »
Today is designated ‘Europe Day’ in the EU. – Ed.
By NIALL FERGUSON [Il Sole 24 Ore via PressEurop] – Europe has to be judged in economic terms, since its own terms have always been economic. And how did it do? In the 1950s the economy of integrated Europe grew at 4 per cent. In the 1960s, it was about the same. In the 1970s, growth was 2.8 per cent; in the 1980s, it slid to 2.1 per cent; in the 1990s, it was only 1.7 per cent: and so on, down to zero. Continue reading “It’s Europe Day – and night.” »
By ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER [in the translator's note from the new English edition of Algerian Chronicles
] – After listening to Camus lecture, the writer Julien Green described him in terms that one might apply to a secular saint: “There is in this man a probity so obvious that it inspires almost immediate respect in me. To put it plainly, he is not like the others.” This quality of authenticity is unmistakable throughout the pieces collected here. Continue reading “Camus, the Mediterranean man…” »
By JOHN LAUGHLAND [The Spectator] – The French political system is terminally sick…For more than 30 years, every French government has lost every election. With a single exception, you have to be over 50 today to have voted in the last election, in 1978, when the incumbent majority held on to power: Nicolas Sarkozy managed to get a conservative majority re-elected in 2007 only because he profiled himself, dishonestly, as a new broom and as a rebel against the roi fainéant, his former mentor Jacques Chirac. Add to this the fact that in 2005 the referendum on the European constitution produced a ‘no ‘vote — that is, a disavowal of the entire political establishment — and you are confronted with a bitter reality: the French electorate hates its politicians and takes every chance to vote against them. Continue reading “‘For more than 30 years, every French government has lost every election.’” »
From an interview with DONALD KAGAN [Wall Street Journal] – “The essence of liberty, which is at the root of a liberal education, is that meaningful freedom means that you have choices to make,” [Donald] Kagan says. “At the university, there must be intellectual variety. If you don’t have [that], it’s not only that you are deprived of knowing some of the things you might know. It’s that you are deprived of testing the things that you do know or do think you know or believe in, so that your knowledge is superficial.” Continue reading “Engineered ‘equality’ and the ‘menace to liberty’.” »
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Most British policy makers of the time had no real grasp of economics: no idea what caused inflation; no idea how to run state-owned enterprises (much less that government shouldn’t run businesses at all); no idea—beyond increasing civil-service rolls—how to create jobs. Worse, the cluelessness was bipartisan. “The Tories loosened the corset of socialism,” Thatcher wrote in her memoirs. “They never removed it.” Continue reading “Instincts transformed ‘into practical theories of governance’.” »
By JEANNE EMMANUELLE HUTIN [Ouest France] – À force d’explorer l’univers en remontant le temps grâce aux gigantesques télescopes, les chercheurs ont fait, ces jours derniers, une découverte époustouflante : quelque chose a précédé le big-bang….Et voici, que de nouvelles pistes de recherche s’ouvrent pour déchiffrer la grande énigme de la création de l’univers. Du même coup, la certitude que le « grand boum » expliquait tout s’envole pour laisser place à de nouveaux questionnements et à de nouvelles découvertes. Continue reading “La révolution de Pâques.” »
By DAMON KRUKOWSKI [Pitchfork] – The origin of The Phoenix, like many alternative newspapers, lies in the underground press of the 1960s. But that link can be misleading. Just as the underground music subcultures of the 80s morphed into the alt rock of the 90s, the alt weeklies of the 70s drew from the same pool of talent and readers as their more radical predecessors, but treated that community as a marketing demographic rather than a potentially revolutionary body. Information about drugs, cops, and music were replaced by articles (and ads) about food, the movies, and… music. The necessities for a drop-out life were swapped with the needs for a lifestyle dependent on free time (students), disposable income (young urban professionals), or both…. Continue reading “Ashes to ashes, Phoenix to dust.” »
Friday, February 22, 2013
ONE DOESN’T NEED to be an American Doctor Educationis to comprehend this answer to that question: Continue reading “In America, are students ‘unprepared for college’?” »
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
By ROBBY SOAVE [Daily Caller] – With record numbers of college graduates underemployed in jobs that don’t actually require degrees, economists are joking that even aspiring janitors may soon have to get master’s degrees to compete for jobs. Continue reading “Mop up that spill with your diploma, will you?” »
By KENNETH W. JOHNSON [the text of a message sent to James Taranto and excerpted in The Wall Street Journal] – The expected announcement of expanded combat roles for women by the outgoing Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, has resulted in a fairly predictable debate. This debate largely revolves around legitimate views of giving women more opportunities in military service, since they are already near combat in their current occupational specialties (a classic case of boot-strapping) and maintaining, let alone improving, military effectiveness and efficiency…
As a Marine Corps veteran of three combat tours, the first as a Marine Rifle Platoon Commander during the Vietnam War, my concern is what this policy will contribute to further breaking down the already-troubled relationships of men and women in our society. Continue reading “‘What kind of a man is it who can send women off to kill and maim?’” »
By OVIDIU PECICAN [Romania Libera] – It is high time that someone once again took a stand to say that “translations do not make a literary culture,” and that they cannot and should not be substituted for freely undertaken original production in the language of this country and in the name of an ethos, which is ours alone.
It is once again time — even if it is tiresome to repeat history — for a Mihail Kogălniceanu [the nineteenth century liberal politician, prime minister and cultural figure] to speak out against writing that comes to us from Potomac, St Petersburg or Tokyo, which, no matter how exciting and interesting it may be, and regardless of the universal values it may transmit, can never express our joy and suffering like simple tales from such breeding grounds for creative ideas as the Obor Market, the Bega Canal, or the Apuseni mountains. Continue reading “Translations ‘do not make a literary culture’.” »
By JANE MERRICK [The Independent] – David Cameron’s pledge to give Britain a referendum on Europe has given him a five-point “Brussels bounce” in a poll for The Independent on Sunday today.
The Conservatives have narrowed Labour’s lead to six points, down from an 11-point gap last month, in the first comprehensive survey of public opinion since the Prime Minister’s speech on Wednesday. Continue reading “In England, Cameron promises a referendum on the EU…” »
By JANE NARDIN [from "...Five Things Jane Austen Can Teach Us" in The Wall Street Journal] – Many of the plots and themes in Austen’s works resemble or have inspired some of our most beloved “chick lit” and “rom-coms,” including “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Clueless.” In honor of the 200th anniversary of “Pride and Prejudice” this month, let’s take a look at the following five lessons from Austen classics and decide for yourself if they still resonate today: Continue reading “Five (more) reasons you don’t have to read Jane Austen.” »
Writers Museum, Dublin: tat and ephemera.
The youth tactic. | Edward Dorn – a two-part review. | What’s happened to ‘working-class’ poetry? | The ‘infinitely expandable’ minimalism of Anthony Barnett. | The prosaic declarations of ‘world poetry’. | Books received: Summer 2012. | Alistair Noon and the English Sonnet. | Peter Hughes and Oystercatcher Press. | Poetry Prize Culture and the Aberdeen Angus. | Denise Riley and the force of bereavement. | Poetry beyond the cults and enclaves.
