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Not In My Backyard! As Local Government Attacks on Women’s Health Increase, Citizens Are Fighting Back House VAWA Bill is Racist, Elitist, Homophobic, and Anti-Victim Tied To “Cult-Like” Order, Former Vatican Analyst For CBS News Steps Down Amid Sex Scandal Abu Ghraib and Hiroshima by PowerPoint and Lectern House Bill on Violence Would Hand Power to Abusers of Immigrant Women and Allow Criminal Prosecution of Victims VAWA Saved My Life. Now House Republicans Are Pushing For Changes That Will Leave Others Like Me Vulnerable Republican Partisan Bill H.R. 4970 Will Make Life More Difficult for Domestic Abuse Victims How Big of a Liar is David Barton? You Ain’t Even Gonna Believe This One! Watergate Revelations: The Coup Against Nixon, Part 3 Of 3 In All the Debate About Breastfeeding, Where Is the Support For Mothers? Occupy Jail, Occupy Big Banks The Bank vs. America Showdown Obama’s Declaration, North Carolina’s Gay Marriage Ban, and Next Steps in LGBT Organizing Can “7 Days of Sex” Save a Marriage?MORE

Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins If We Clear Out Our Ideological Cobwebs, Perhaps Americans Can Have a Long Overdue Discussion German Radiation Expert: Fukushima “Atomic Bomb” Possible Strange case of Kentucky soldier charged with espionage Petition to Stop Foreclosures, Hold Banks Accountable! The Great Rice Shortage Occupy Wall Street? No Problem! Occupy everything…but after the anger, then what? Remember, Joe, There Is No Tea Party A real Social Network.MORE

Malaika Brooks and her baby.

Tasing a Pregnant Woman in Front of Her Kid? The Outrageous -- And Dangerous -- Abuse of Tasers by Police

10 Frightening Things That Happen at Conservative Christian Schools That May Be Funded With Your Tax Dollars

Ehrenreich: How Corporations and Local Governments Rob the Poor Blind

TED: Even More Elitist Than We Thought

Journalists, Wiki-Leakers, Anti-War Activists Overturn Domestic Military Detention in Major Civil Rights Victory

Giant Tax Loopholes and Tax Breaks: All About the Multi-Billion Dollar Facebook IPO WORLD

10 Cool Discoveries You Should Know About

Occupying Farmland for Organic Food and Fairness Exposes University Elitism

GOP Version of Violence Against Women Act Tries to Push Women Back Into the Home

MEDIA Press Freedom Declines in the US With Arrests of Journalists at Protests--and More Will Likely Come

PERSONAL HEALTH How Big Pharma and the Psychiatric Establishment Drugged Up Our Kids

NEWS & POLITICS 5 Things the Science Doesn't Say About the Conservative Brain WORLD

Why Obama and Romney Will Compete to be Cheerleaders for U.S. Imperial Dominance BELIEF

How the Christian Right's Homophobia Scares Away Religious Young People FOOD

5 Ways to Make America Less Fat ECONOMY

Memo to Mayor Bloomberg: JP Morgan Blow-Up is Not a ‘Hiccup’ -- It's a Giant, Ugly Warning

ECONOMY Bill Clinton, Boehner, And Some Other Rich White Guys Had A "Summit" And Agreed: It's Your Fault

Chicago's Cracking Down on Protests but Nurses Union Still Planning Huge Rally with Tom Morello

CIVIL LIBERTIES NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Lawsuit Ruled a Class Action Suit NEWS & POLITICS

Wells Fargo Has Blood on Its Hands: Desperate Man Commits Suicide After Shocking Foreclosure Mistreatment NEWS & POLITICS

5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage NEWS & POLITICS

Don't Look Now -- Banks Are Still Ruining America: 6 Harsh Lessons from the JP Morgan Fiasco TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT

Why Do Conservatives Hate Freedom?

VISIONS Future Tech: How 3D Printing Will Change the World

ECONOMY 1%er Facebook Co-Founder Runs Away to Evade Taxes? Here's What Eduardo Saverin Owes America

Will America’s Premier Hub for Black Music Research Fall Prey to Drastic Budget Cuts?SEX & RELATIONSHIPS

Why I Love Weird Porn CIVIL LIBERTIES

Student Activism Is Alive and Well Among Arizona's Minority Population ECONOMY

What Happened When I Got a Job at a Soul-Crushing, Abusive Warehouse TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT

Conservatives: Giant Bullies Who Abuse the Weak

WATER 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water

ECONOMY Let's Put Jamie Dimon on Trial And Ask Him What the Hell JP Morgan Does for America

NEWS & POLITICS 5 Things That Put America to Shame

Grandmothers' Social Security Garnished for Student Loans? Time to Fix the Broken Student Debt System

Predator Nation: How Endless Drone War Is Turning the Promise of America into a Promise of Death SEX & RELATIONSHIPS

Can More Sex Save a Relationship?IMMIGRATION

Justice Department Says Alabama Immigration Law Disrupts Access to Public Education

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: IXQUICK, Simon Strandgaard, bulletproofbra)

CIVIL LIBERTIES America's "Throwaway People": What Kind of Country Imprisons an Abused 14-Year-Old Girl for Life?

FOOD How Corporations Like Monsanto Have Hijacked Higher Education

ECONOMY Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane SEX & RELATIONSHIPS

How Casual Cyber Sex Became My Most Intoxicating Drug DRUGS

Tale of Two Cities: NYPD's Racist Arrests Create Class War in New York FRACKING

Meet the Christian Right-Wing Multi-Billionaire Out to Frack Our World

Can You Still Get Elected to Congress With Only Small Donors?

Time's Breastfeeding Cover is Pure Shock Value, No Substance

Occupy Isn't About Electing Democrats--It's About Exposing a Broken System

Workers Battle ExxonMobil Over Safety at Baton Rouge Refinery GENDER

Forget Flowers This Mother's Day: 11 Ways to REALLY Help Mothers WORLD

Empty Stomachs, Clenched Fists: How Palestinians Are Fighting Israel's Unaccountable Prison System

4 Worst Media Misrepresentations of North Carolina's Anti-Gay Amendment One FOOD

Confessions of a Cheating Vegan More Top Headlines Utah Oil Sands Project Challenged Over Groundwater Pollution Video of Trayvon Martin Buying Skittles and Iced Tea Surfaces Ya Es Oficial: White Births No Longer a Majority in the U.S.Influential Ex-General: Cut US Nukes Now Drug Approval Faster In U.S. Than Canada, Europe: Study After Palestinian Prison Deal, A Push For Nonviolence West Virginia Funds Pro-Coal Attack on Obama Admin.Elizabeth Warren Expresses No Confidence in Current Bank Accountability Measures MORE

Journalists, Wiki-Leakers, Anti-War Activists Overturn Domestic Military Detention in Major Civil Rights Victory

Giant Tax Loopholes and Tax Breaks: All About the Multi-Billion Dollar Facebook IPO

Tasing a Pregnant Woman in Front of Her Kid? The Outrageous -- And Dangerous -- Abuse of Tasers by Police

Google World

Diplomats: Nuclear Agency Chief May Visit Tehran - ABC News Largest protests yet in Syrian city of Aleppo - The Associated Press G8 and Nato summits: will our world leaders get anything done? - The Guardian To reward Myanmar for reforms, US eases economic sanctions, names ambassador - Christian Science Monitor Who is Chen Guangcheng? - Christian Science Monitor Tehran rally: Bahrain-Saudi union 'US-Zionist plot' - Ynetnews Queen's Jubilee Guest List Raises Eyebrows - ABC News 34 killed, 21 injured in central Vietnam bus accident - Xinhua Chinese Tycoon Gets Life Sentence for Smuggling - New York Times Merkel urges Greece to resolve political instability - CNN

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Blind activist set to leave China Castro visa sparks controversy Student sues over law school failure Survival manual can be eaten Historic diamond sold for $12m 2 Gays and lesbians given housing in serbia Man with babies' corpses arrested Quake rattles Tokyo Roil Around the World: Amy's roving Blog: US/NZ - a cultural conversation The Omnivore: Jeremy Taylor on food Ready or Knot: Greer's getting married Game Junkie - Gerard Campbell's gaming blog 3 2

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Boing Boing

Astronomical fidget ring made from a meteorite Zombie baseball comic on Kickstarter Raising money to free classic volume on Africa's oral literature Man arrested for fetus possession Space Hijackers create Official Protesters programme for the London 2012 Olympics Vileness of cilantro explained Crap cellphones Ukiyo Link $22,000 routers "economical"HP to axe 30k jobs Sponsor Shout-Out: Watchismo UK civil servants routinely snoop on citizens' private financial and health information Contemplating the urban design of Lego City Gweek 052: Mystery in Space Coffee associated with the opposite of death, according to new scientific study 3D printer trading cards from the future Princess awards First Amendment lawyer "Defender of Internet" medal for SOPA fight J. Coulton and J. Scalzi talk science fiction and music every day for two weeks Impromptu klezmer show on a delayed Air Canada flight from Lemon Bucket Gonzo futurism SF in SF this Saturday: Ysabeau Wilce, Marie Brennan & Erin Hoffman Private-equity driven dentists accused of "dentally abusing" poor kids on Medicaid with painful, unnecessary procedures Live nude planets!Germany: Riot police clear Occupy Frankfurt (photo)State Dept. snubs blog of Foreign Service spouse in breast cancer treatment for using n-word: "nipple."Sky Alchemist: steampunk puzzle game with a gender twist Pentagon declassifies Styrofoam model of bin Laden compound, at last In the NYT, a judge who has cancer argues for the legalization of medical marijuana The beautiful shapes of neurons Donna Summer, RIP

The Register

RIM-Moto sketch THIRD nanoSIM design as peace offering Ethernet sales slump punches Brocade in the wallet Is it time for enterprise PC outfits to carry Apple Macs?ICO on new Cookie Law: 'Don't expect torrent of enforcement action'UK.gov: ICT in schools ain't dead, it's just resting UK prosecutions for hacking appear to be be dropping Big Issue sellers could soon be flogging QR Codes Apple scrubs dirty iCloud data centre with second solar wash Iran threatens to chuck sueball at Google over missing gulf <i>Vulture 2</i> trigger triggers serious head-scratching GM snatchback of $10m Facebook ad cash = amateur move Shoreditch's sparkle smokescreen leaves BBC journo 'tech-struck'Facebook's Eduardo Saverin: I'm not a tax-dodger The Register is rocking on Windows Phone 7 Hands on with the Motorola Razr Maxx 'Facebook ads are very boring and not very imaginative'Amazon drops planned 8.9in Kindle Fire for 10.1in job Senator probes NASA airfield deal for Google's jets Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Mealy pudding v migas Txt-speak is a sign of humanity 4 U The Great El Reg Private Cloud survey: Results are in!Inside Nvidia's GK110 monster GPU SpaceX Dragon to smuggle SECRET package to the ISS IK Multimedia iRig Mic Cast Scotland considers dishing out more iPads to schoolkids CSC's UK techies get one extra month to find new jobs iPad factory towns in China to finally get Apple Stores Will UK.gov crack down on itself for missing Cookie Law deadline?Atlassian warns of critical security flaw Diablo III Hey big spender: China set to take Asian IT spending crown Chinese 3G users top 150 MILLION but most still on 2G Twitter signs up for Do Not Track Anonymous turns its DDoS cannons on India $US38 share price values Facebook at US$104b Stanford boffins create light-powered artificial retina Governments may hit social networks with cyber attacks Hybrid computing just like FLESH-EATING bacteria Symantec releases software as Amazon Machine Image Whitman said to be planning massive HP job cuts Dell forges GPU-enriched virty rack workstation Seagate, WD need to get a firm grip on solid disks You can feed 800 VMs off 1 of our boxes, startup brags Mutant number-crunchers win cluster popularity contest Seeing ads on Wikipedia? Then you're infected Acronis creates new roles for biz and M&amp;A hotshots SGI skips future Xeon E7s, lobs E5-4600s into UV2 supers Finally a real use for NFC: Heart monitor in a credit card BBC shrinks Red Button: Loses 8 channels after the Olympics Nvidia drops veil on game-changing might of VGX

Fark

Really want to quit smoking? Give me your money, and I'll give it back to you once a blood test proves you're nicotine free It's your official Let's Pity Chicagoans Affected by the NATO summit discussion thread The four personality styles of drivers and what it means about how they handle a car. Hint: three of them translate to "asshole"Florida evangelist "Apostle Tito" is targeted by members of "Satan's team", or as the rest of us would put it, is arraigned in federal court on child molestation charges Time Warner Cable employee absolutely shocked to find his co-workers watching porn. Hopes $2 million will help him get over the trauma Six shot, three dead in Louisville. If only there had been an armed citizen nearby we could have prevented this tragedy Florida lowers passing grade for state writing exam. Mississippi: "We can do that?"Tiny state famous for being tiny spends $75 million on a baseball player to develop a video game. Game over, man, game over Republican committee, many of whose members live hundreds of miles from DC, hold meeting to discuss DC abortion rights. Bonus: Do not allow DC's only (non-voting) representative to speak. Super bonus: She's a woman Has anyone seen my Spiro Agnew collector's edition cufflinks? They were here yesterday. They didn't just get up and walk away people. They are worth a lot of money you jerks Hell hath no yard sale like a woman scorned Photoshop a recruitment poster for Fark South Carolina's war on testicles continues Exceedingly creepy man arrested for hanging plastic bags full of porn & dildos on young women's doors, then standing outside their apts and fogging up their windows with his breath. Bonus: He looks vaguely like a grown up Butt-head Hot woman arrested for having sex in a taxi. With pic of the kind of woman who likes to do it in a taxi Gladiator Fire now at 6500 acres. Nitro, Zap, Blaze inconsolable Man gives sucky TED talk. TED opts not to publish the talk. Man goes full media censorship outrage troll. Internet falls for it hook, line, and sinker The sex-tourism capital of the world protests Lady Gaga's shows as too provocative. Wait, what?32 years ago today, Mount St. Helens really lost it Not News: The Yankees and Red Sox are fighting for a spot in the AL East Standings. News: Last place Facebook trading a sign of hope for investors Facebook trading a major red flag for investors San Francisco fire chief declared a deadbeat and has a court ordered garnishment of her wages... wait it's a she... checks photo... wait it's a she?Oceans full of "dead zones" where nothing lives could only be 40 years away - and in some places that is already reality Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the quikrete. We have the capability to build the world's first living statue Grooming tips from the owner of a 14-foot-long mustache Infographic of what the average American eats every year. Mmmm...29 lbs of french fries and 23 lbs of pizza...mmmm It's nice to know that even in this crazy, mixed-up world, a picture of a miniature toy horse can still bring two young lovers together Fulton County 911 center is pro-choice. Female employees have the choice to get pregnant, or keep their jobs Desmond Hatchett of Tennessee is pleading with the state to help him pay for child support. Hatchett, 33 has fathered 30 children. "I had four kids in the same year. Twice"And today's tough lunch choice, real boiled pigs ear or fake boiled pigs ear?Running a half-marathon on a treadmill aboard a hot-air balloon proved harder than expected If you're on death row, it's kind of pointless to ask the state to pay for your expensive hip surgery Two Tennessee dudes take their Mickey D's very seriously It's not a hero, it's FARKMAN (some NSFW language & semi-NSFW animated images)Woman's Center = Groundbreaking. Men's Center = "A room with a PS3 and a bunch of douche bags playing video games"Support for President Obama amongst the U.S. prison population expected to rise, as the administration ordered federal, state and local officials to adopt zero tolerance for prison rape "Police search for three armed men in home invasion." STANDARD HANDCUFFS WON'T WORK, PEOPLE British MP is butt of jokes after seating accident with colleague. In related news: The British are easily entertained Warning, baby teeth may cause nightmares Photoshop this coal man smoking a cigar Sad: Puppy Mill. Weird: Run by senior citizens. Scary: The Mugshots. It is a Fark Tag Trifecta We were hoping it had gone away, but John Travolta's Gropegate lives on: He just couldn't resist a quickie with Kenickie LIRR train kills man. Earth on verge of war with Omicron Persei 8 81-year-old Detroit woman rescued from burning home by grandson. Everyone's happy until they realize that they still live in Detroit Happy ending for John Travolta Underwear bandit breaks through the backdoor, in Fruitland Idaho Thumbs, Dolphins And 98 Other Things That Will Not Exist In 1,000 Years Fed to study how banks manage deposits. Their timing is impeccable More than 53,000 dead people found to be on Florida's voting rolls, most thought likely to vote for BRAAIIINNNSSS Facebook is a Ponzi scheme Mercury for sale on Craigslist. What could go wrong?Photoshop this flaming mustache Pentagon reveals scale model of bin Laden's compound used to plan attack. Suck it, Hasbro Rodin Museum to reopen in July, Mothra Museum still on hold Hospital patient caught with pot and psychedelic mushrooms, demands to speak with giant lizard ATTENTION DC FARKERS: Betty White will be at the National Zoo tomorrow. Line up and take your best shot, boys Security experts claim that if you're carrying a laptop or a smartphone in Chicago this week, you might come under a cyber attack because people may think you're part of the NATO summit D.C. Tour Bus Driver: Numbskull tourists always ask for directions to Private Ryan's grave Google Earth: Product Placement Central A horse can run out to sea of course, but nobody can think a horse can swim of course, so we had to swim a mile out and rescue this poor horse of course If your neighbors refuse to close their windows while having sex do you C) record the act and post the audio file to Soundcloud for all the Internet to hear?The best part of waking up is "coffee tincture made by infusing grain alcohol and rum with cracked coffee beans "Babylon's Hanging Gardens--one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World--is about to get boned by oil whores Those silly hippies of the "Occupy" movement have never done anything worthwhile--except get half a dozen major cities to pass the most signficant bank "transparency" laws enacted in a generation If you're traveling in Northwest Iowa today, be advised that a massive buffalo breakout happened earlier today and now more than 200 buffalo are roaming around five separate counties Man accused of paying prostitutes with heroin and food from the McDonald's dollar menu. That stuff could kill a person, what with all the grease and salt Will Smith's kung fu son gets right to the point and asks President Obama about the space aliens 96 percent of the meals that you can get in any restaurant fail to even get close to meeting USDA standards for nutrition. Uh, maybe we should lower the standards? It works for education Not news: Bartender walks female patron home. News: Thief tries to steal her purse. Fark: Bartender fights him off, gets stabbed eight times. Totalfark: He has no health insurance; the bar is hosting a fundraiser to pay his bills. Can we help?The rainbow flag flies at half-mast. RIP Donna Summer Eduardo Saverin says that he is not dodging taxes by renouncing his US citizenship, in the same way that subby discovered table salt "His voice is so high, it sounds like a ringtone." Reporter meets the new, improved, manly Bieber 2.0 on his 18th birthday Greek government denies there is a run on the bank as everybody looks to cash out euros now instead of taking drachmas later Azithromycin may increase the likelihood of sudden death in adults, especially those who have heart issues. Hey, my dentist prescribes that for me, because of my heart operation. Seriously she does. THUD Saggy Pants Bill falls on Alabama Senate floor A 19th Century Bart Simpson placed history's first prank phone call to Mo's Funeral Home It turns out getting a pedicure by allowing tropical fish to gnaw off dead flesh from your feet may give you an antibiotic-resistant disease. Who would have guessed?If you are French, and your man is making more love to the new Diablo III game than you, you may be eligible for a free vibrator (Not safe for work pic of woman's second-best friend)FYI: JP Morgan's $2 billion loss is now $3 billion Team trainers to player hit by wild pitch: "Who are you?" Player to trainers: "I am Batman"Newest urban scourge? Geese. Department of Natural Resources: They'll be handled by the coyotes, which will be handled by the gorillas, which come winter, will simply freeze to death After decades of being largely ignored, Atlanta's sizable group of transvestite prostitutes have decided to start group muggings to get themselves back in the spotlight As new revelations and charges surface, it's looking more and more like Bigus Dickus was the lead centurion of "The Legion of Christ"Remember the fine print of the Verizon contract that states they can change the terms any time they want? Well, it's that time If you're going to send someone a text inquiring about buying some illegal moonshine, make sure you don't accidentally text a state trooper Don't you hate it when the rocks you collected at the beach spontaneously combust...in your pocket?Uh, North Korea, just a little tip? When there is only one country in the whole world that will even speak to you, it's probably best not to hijack their fishing boats and hold their crews for ransom 16th century home for sale. Exposed wooden beams, oak-panelled dining room, fire place and swimming pool that has been drowned in once. Oh, and Pooh. Lots of Pooh When you buy your Facebook stock today, understand that Goldman is selling 1/2 of their stock in Facebook, and sit smug knowing you're smarter than Goldman Majority of US Children now being born to minorities. EVERYBODY HISPANIC Photoshop this reflection You know how your doctor calls HDL 'good' cholesterol? Yeah, about that After two years and a $1.5 million stimulus, study on erectile dysfunction doesn't stand up For once, Arby's sandwich found to contain real meat City employee finds gun while mowing. Does he: A) sell it to a 14-year-old who robs a 7-11, B) pawn it and get arrested as it was used in a murder, or C) Turn it in and get fired for possessing a weapon while on the job?Fisherman's body found at lake. He was ten feet tall and 700 pounds "One in eight students at Iowa State University didn't realize they would have student loan debt after graduation"Naked woman walks into lumber store, causes customers to sport wood Coffee that was once good for you, then bad for you, then good, then bad, then good, and then bad again is now once more good for you Theme of Farktography Contest No. 367: "Scavenger Hunt 2". Details and rules in first post. LGT next week's theme 2

Sci-tech Daily

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Techmeme

Facebook Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering Status update: Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button Eduardo Saverin congratulates Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell Samsung gets 9 million preorders for new Galaxy phone: report Facebook Sued For $15 Billion In Suit Over User Tracking RIM, Motorola told Apple they could find a nano-SIM compromise: here it is J. Crew CEO, Apple Board Member Mickey Drexler Reveals Steve Jobs' iCar Dream, Confirms “Living Room” Plans GM ad move followed failed Facebook pitch: sources Exclusive: Yahoo Finally Set to Strike Alibaba Share Deal — Half Now, Then Half of What's Left After Eventual IPO Reticent Rich: Preferred Style in Silicon Valley Amazon to Sell Ads on Kindle Fire Welcome Screen — If You Have $600K Verizon Clarifies: Unlimited Data Plans Will Die Slow Death Groupon Stock Spike Probed The Top 10 tech startups best positioned to strike engineering gold New tailored suggestions for you to follow on Twitter UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data 2012 Venture Capital Funding to Facebook Mafia Up 137% vs. 2011. Greylock is Most Active VC FB Mafia Investor So Far.More Start-Ups Join the $1 Billion Club of Valuations Sony hires Woz as advisor to Steve Jobs film, which Sorkin says won't be a ‘straight ahead biopic’Book Excerpt: The Creative Destruction of Medicine PayPal handles 60% of web transactions, leaves Google in the dust Building the Next Facebook a Tough Task in Europe What app problem? Microsoft is developing a service to migrate all your Android apps to a new Windows Phone Book Excerpt: The Creative Destruction of Medicine Cloud Foundry Improves Support For Background Processing Developing Windows 8 Metro style apps with C : Live Streaming at 0900 PDT, May 18 Try out the new DISQUS 2012 Between a rock and a hard place - our decision to abandon the Mac App Store 2

Arts and Letters Daily

Belgium is a shotgun marriage of Dutch speakers in Flanders and French speakers in Wallonia. Maybe it�s time for the divorce... Frankly, we still give a damn about a movie that has just turned seventy. Adjust for inflation, and its box office is the most spectacular in film history... Before the Bauhaus, modernism was a volatile, centrifugal affair: Cubist, Futurist, Constructivist. After the Bauhaus, it gained a coherent focus... It�s the holiday season again, and time for cheerful women and their men to go out shopping together. Usually a big mistake, and Darwin tells us why... Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history, giving the West a better understanding of its adversary. Today, we need a jihadology... Faux friendship. We�re all on a first-name basis, and when we vote for president, we ask ourselves whom we�d rather have a beer with... In the 1980s and 90s, both Russia and China opened farming to private profit. For China, it turned out well, for Russia, not. Therein lies a story... Why is December 25th Christmas? If Jesus had been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later... Attacks by critics left poet John Keats much more uncertain and deeply wounded than his admirers then, or even now, have been willing to admit... As Twilight shows, not all that girls like is good art � or good feminism. But the backlash against Twilight should matter to feminists, even as they shudder... Jean Sibelius lived through difficult and politically ambiguous times in WWII Finland. But did he have more to do with the Nazis than we�d expect?... With all the hijacking off Somalia, how can pirates finance new ventures? And what do they do with their profits? They need a pirate stock exchange... Geoff Smith has invented a piano with a kind of micro-tuning that can make it useful for playing Persian music or North Indian ragas... David Guttenfelder is chief photographer for the A.P. in Asia. He offers a close-up look at the lives of U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan... Because entry barriers are so low, the web is a medium for journalistic experiments, says Nicholas Lemann. But we still need big news organizations... Franklin D. Roosevelt, after falling victim to polio, was in the business of concealing his diseases from the public. So did he die of cancer?... With more grandmasters than China and many more per capita than Russia, let alone the rest of the world, Armenia is a chess superpower... Reality TV has not only helped to debase the networks, it has even trashed the time-honored art of bad acting. James Wolcott explains... The stereotype of the sports-playing, emotionally illiterate, sex-obsessed boy keeps being regurgitated. Time to rethink boyhood... Caster Semenya won the 800-metre title by nearly 2� seconds, cruising past the other runners like a machine. Then her problems began... Mikhail Khodorkovsky�s fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?... Dogs do it, lions do it, even babies in the womb do it, and though weird theories abound, nobody really knows why we yawn... Lew Wallace, General in the Civil War, a man Billy the Kid wanted to kill, wrote a favorite 19th-century novel, made into a 20th-century movie: Ben-Hur... Should historic art be repatriated to its land of origin? Imagine the Renaissance without the spell of “looted” antiquities from Greece... Wherever they go, Michelin guides smile on restaurants that are fussily French. Can they adapt their exacting critical criteria to American fare?... Religion reduces corruption and acts to increase respect for law in ways that boost economic growth in societies where it is present... more� ... Religion is blamed when it promotes such evils as persecution or warfare, but gets less attention when it patches up the moral fabric of society... Some of Shakespeare�s plays, in the view of Edward Albee, could do with a bit of a trim. Just don�t suggest that to Albee about his own plays... Albert Einstein’s first trip to the U.S. in 1921 evoked a mass frenzy we associate with rock stars. He also split American Jewry down the middle... The instant a warm wave of Chinon red splashes over the taste buds followed by pink chunk of lamb just off the coals can never be replicated... Jane Austen was such a subtle reader of her characters’ manners, flaws, and virtues, yet was herself a mysterious presence, hard to imagine in the flesh... Should Martin Heidegger�s books be pulled from library philosophy shelves and placed in history of Nazism? For Emmanuel Faye, it�s a good idea... Max Weber and Talcott Parsons may just be social scientists in your mind. But they are enemies of the state in Tehran... California has over 5000 public servants whose state pensions exceed $100,000. For that lucky group, it is the Golden State. Meanwhile, in Texas... Livestock and poultry farms give out 500 million tons of manure yearly. Where does it all go? Ask Rick Dove, whose Cessna is equipped with cameras and a GPS device... Whacky tabloid headlines can be quite literally true � but very misleading all the same. John Allen Paulos explains... Yamaha�s new electronic piano looks like a cheap and nasty baby grand, but delivers the sonic wallop of a nine-foot Steinway. Or so it says here... Having escaped from Germany in 1933, Hannah Arendt stayed for the rest of her life loyal to the philosophic tradition that had helped lead to Hitlerism... The secret of the Mona Lisa�s enigmatic smile is a matter of which cells in the retina pick up the image and how they channel it to the brain... Science may at last help us to answer the eternal political question: really now, are liberals smarter than conservatives?... From curator to benefactor to docent, the art museum is a natural home for women, young and old. Polly Frost provides a field guide... Muslims who see themselves as having mastered technology and the modern world are often people for whom creationism has the most appeal... Ayn Rand was proud, grouchy, vindictive, insulting, dismissive, and rash � the Evel Knievel of leaping to conclusions... Was a golf ball ever sliced into potato chips? Well, says a skeptical Clive James, suppose a golf course lies near a potato field... Bobby Fischer was one of the world�s great chess geniuses. He was also, Martin Gardner explains, close to being a complete moron... If a portrait of George Washington based on Gilbert Stuart was painted by a Chinese artist in 1800, should it be in a museum of American art?... Even Richard Dawkins knows �an English nostalgia for village life, including church. I never go ... but still, I have some nostalgia for evensong�... Grape foam injected with walnut milk and covered in powdered Maytag blue cheese. It�s the American food revolution... What do F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns tell us? For starters, his popular reputation as a careless spendthrift turns out to be untrue... Moral in tooth and claw. Animals have rich social lives. Cooperation has shaped their evolution as much as competition... more� ... more� ... more� ... There are many argumentative Indians, but very few who can hold your attention in quite the way Amartya Sen can... Let us now praise � the cliché. It’s a form of speech that is concise, time-tested, and instantly familiar. What’s not to love?... Americans are becoming less nomadic, with aging, stay-at-home baby boomers wanting to be close to family, friends, clubs, and churches... No one has ever summed up the longing for the warmth of family life and a front porch more eloquently than Christopher Lasch when he wrote... How did overly enthusiastic homebuyers in the U.S. manage to sink the global economy? Time to step back and take a long, clear view... At Arts & Letters Daily we never endorse anything except our own T-shirts and coffee mugs. We�re not up for an $11,000 FTC fine. But how about you?... For centuries Germans united around the tale of Hermann, the hero who defeated the Roman army. Does Germany dare go back to this founding national myth?... Poker combines Puritan values of self-control, diligence, and slow savings with a cowboy desire to get rich quick. How very American... For China�s growing economic elite, life is sweet. For the dissidents and peasants of China, it�s quite a different story... Trying to decipher nonsense makes you smarter. At least for a while. So should John Cage be taught more in schools?... With trials, harassment, and other forms of thuggish intimidation, Russian authorities are striking out against trouble-making curators and artists... Who me? Strident? Richard Dawkins is a little incredulous. If some people don�t like him, it�s only because he loves truth even more than he loves them... A nonalcoholic sequel to the Whiskey Rebellion is brewing and it is gaining adherents. You might call it the Fresca Rebellion... Rachmaninoff? Alfred Brendel says he wrote �music for teenagers. He was a composer who knew his craft.... But for his time he was a reactionary�... Ghost writers: posthumous books by Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, and Ralph Ellison raise thorny questions about what the writers intended... The Asian tiger mosquito has traveled from its home in Southeast Asia to the ends of the earth, one of the world’s most invasive species... Michael Sandel grasps the risks of taking his Harvard justice course to TV. He might even end up challenging his own moral and political convictions... The kindest cut. Raymond Carver was one of America�s greatest writers. But was his razor-sharp style created by his editor, Gordon Lish?... Is yonder cloud not in the shape of a camel? Methinks �tis a whale � yes, very like a whale. So hath that painting the signature of Jackson Pollock?... more� ... Why do we still need to read the novels of Charles Dickens? Because they tell us, in the grandest way possible, why we are what we are... Metaphors that we put in daily use are often viewed as mere ornaments of speech. In fact, metaphors are keys to the structure of thought... Ever notice how many fine writers are just terrible at giving speeches and interviews? You are not alone. Arthur Krystal proposes an explanation... Vasily Kandinsky�s aesthetic DNA lives on in the history of art right up to the present day. Peter Plagens shows how... Vladimir Nabokov�s revisions matter. They are not mere blottings out, but a window into the greatness and humanity of an author... Our melting brains. From the pencil to the typewriter to the computer, every change in media has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing to save the old ways... Rural brain drain. Small town America is being hollowed out, losing talented young people while new farming transforms the land for those who stay... Why is music in particular nice to listen to, blessed with a gigantic industry, while there is no market for “easy listening” speech sounds?... Does reading absurdist literature make you smarter? How about Kafka? Beckett? Giraffe carpet cleaner, it seems that it does... When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency theory was about as popular in American military circles as tank warfare is today. But things change... Saving China from its kitsch: Brian and Jeanee Linden want to restore a Yunnan village with an eye to historic authenticity. They�ll need a lot of luck... Muslim creationism, built on an idea of superior Islamic science, is becoming increasingly visible and confident... Norman Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution that saved millions of lives, is dead... more� ... The Minsky meltdown. One economist saw years before anyone else exactly what the financial system is going through right now: Hyman Minsky... Typos can be an annoyance for both book authors and readers. Now in the e-book future, we can alter and correct without end... The guards at Abu Ghraib, like the guards in the Stanford Prison experiment, were victims of place and time. Weren�t Cheney and Rice victims in the same way?... Libya isn�t the most brutal regime in the world, but it remains a grotesque entity, the state as a protection racket... When buildings collapse or trains crash, special rescue teams can bring out trapped people often in a matter of minutes. This is an ancient calling... As things stand, no blow is low enough, if the president comes from the other side. Consider Obama�s school speech... Arts & Letters Daily�s Tran Huu Dung, visiting Giverny a few weeks ago, took a picture proving that Claude Monet was a photo-realist... Most of us know only one version of Little Red Riding Hood, the one we heard as a child. But there are dozens of versions of this fairy tale... Drugs will soon be on sale to improve everything from memory to our trust in others. David Edmonds describes the coming Age of Enhancement... Children everywhere stew in the same pot of family conflict, with local cultural seasonings added for flavor. But basic moral values remain similar... If we ever again experience a solar storm similar to the extreme event of September 2, 1859, damage may be staggering... more� ... Google�s book search has become a running scholarly joke, as Geoffrey Nunberg explains, with delicious examples. But it�s not beyond repair... Barack Obama�s mother, S. Ann Dunham, did solid anthropological research on village economics in Indonesia. Her work is at last coming into print... Did the Trojan War really happen? If so, did it flare at the archeological site that some scholars call Troy? Skepticism is slowly giving way... Stieg Larsson�s serial killers and torture fanciers are capitalists in league with hideous fascist bikers and meth runners. Not just crime, it�s politics... English may well be one of the biggest, most imaginative and attractive languages on the planet, but people just won�t leave it alone... With his health failing at the end, it is no surprise to discover Vladimir Nabokov was losing his writerly powers. For son Dmitri, there is no such excuse... Facial expressions do not communicate so much as enjoin us to imagine what it feels like to make the expression. Music is empathic in a similar way... Sofia Tolstoy was a woman of strength and spirit. She understood the high price she would pay to live next to one of the greatest writers in history... Van Gogh was fascinated by Japanese prints, loved nature, and was obsessed with portraiture, which he viewed as a crucial genre for modern artists... What might it mean to hate the Roman Empire with all your heart? Think yourself into the murderous soul of Mithradates, and maybe you�ll understand... Henry Fowler did not waffle: there are right ways and wrong ways to use words. A new edition of his classic guide takes us back to the original Fowler�s... For collaborators, life in Vichy Paris was sweet. Even for the likes of Sartre, Camus, and Cocteau it was hardly unlivable... Charles II loved theater, music, women, hunting, tennis, and gambling � and he gambled for a more tolerant England... Leonardo�s oeuvre was whittled down from some 90 paintings in the 19th century to the dozen or so accepted today. Plus that one in Kansas... Umberto Eco is fascinated with lists, lists of lists, and the infinite regress of adding up and counting down anything and everything. Etcetera, etcetera... When Rilke died of leukemia, he did not want to know the name of his disease. For him, all that was worth knowing was in his poems... Engrossing, energetic, and compelling, Van Gogh�s letters dramatize individual genius while throwing light on how the creative mind works... We live in the age of the memoir, a time of �more narcissism overall, less concern for privacy, a strong interest in victimhood, and a therapeutic culture�... A writer lives monkishly, coddling a loss, dead wife, whatever. Violent accidents, maybe a man is beheaded, plus B-movie dialogue. It�s Paul Auster�s fiction... Before Facebook, few of us ever asked others to be their friends, nor did we count the number of friends we had as a status indicator... There are beautiful passages in Vladimir Nabokov�s The Original of Laura, but they are few and scattered. This is a major book � for specialists... Loyalty to your workers, customer care, and giving back to the community made Baton Rouge�s favorite department store, created by Jews who fled the Nazis... In 1807, a Broadwood square grand piano, no. 10651, was taken by canal from London north to Lancaster for a John Langshaw, organist. Therein lies a story... Françoise d�Aubigné: born in a prison to a murderer, was a child beggar, then later on governess to Louis XIV�s children, and finally his mistress and wife... Friedrich Nietzsche cultivated the alien form of Dionysus on the soil of his native Pietism. In truth, he never overcame his childhood religion... He was a skeptic? Oh, spare us, puhleeze! Arthur Koestler was a man suckered by an endless line of political, intellectual, and paranormal con jobs... Malcolm Gladwell�s little cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry, and false dichotomies do annoy. But when he stops playing social scientist... Tuscany. Provence. Sigh! Last outposts of love, wisdom, healthy food, great wine, warm people, and the good life. Really now, what twaddle... Roland Barthes is still here. Like Cole Porter, he was the author of phrases and rhythms that for some of us will not go away until we do... The research of Bell Labs� Jan Hendrik Schön was so hot that editors of Nature and Science competed to publish it. He was, of course, a fraud... The Peloponnesian War can be used to guide thinking about our own problems of peace and war, argues Donald Kagan. He might be right... Maybe it�s great, post-Eve Ensler, that we’re now so garrulous on the topic of vaginas. Kathleen Parker doesn�t think so, and she is America�s most-read woman columnist... Events of 1989 are often depicted as a failure of socialism. Though this powerful view has served to discredit alternatives to capitalism, it remains in doubt... Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky�s Memories of the Future enlarge our conception of the zeitgeist that promoted some of the 20th century�s most limpid deliriums... Dangerously delicious food, designed by Big Food and by restaurants to taste so good, threatens public health. Congress needs to do something... Wikipedia writer/editors are 80% male, 65% single, 85% without children, about 70% under the age of 30. Does that tell us anything?... John Maynard Keynes offers us today not so much a well-defined economic doctrine as the attitude and the tools with which he attacked economic problems... From the Salem witch trials to W.E.B. Du Bois to Linda Lovelace, A New Literary History of America covers a lot of ground. Maybe too much... Atlas Shrugged was published 52 years ago, but in the Obama era, Ayn Rand’s angry message is more resonant than ever before... Benjamin Britten abhorred Brahms, whose First Symphony was found to be �ugly and pretentious,� while his Second was �dull, ugly, gauche�... Email has its faults, but it has also been, like journalism early in the 20th century, a cleansing agent for prose, inhibiting dull, abstract wordiness... What if you could fix global warming with a balloon, a few miles of hose, and a benign stream of sulfur dioxide? Good news? NO!... more� ... For a man so haunted by the horrors of history, Daniel Goldhagen�s geopolitical views are either willfully naive or just plain idiotic... People find it easier to get pleasure from modern art than avant-garde music, and it�s not just a matter of conservatism and a love of Mozart... History of cities: Londoners have long been willing to live in filth. Orientals wasted time building sanitation systems and bathing, but Brits preferred making money... Malcolm Gladwell says his work succeeds or fails by �its ability to engage you, to make you think." On that basis, his new book is a success... Kati Marton�s parents were brave people who paid for their courage in communist Hungary by being sent to prison. Yet it is a story with a happy ending... Heil Heidegger! Isn�t it time we saw what a creepy little buffoon this guy was? He should be the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations... As the humanization of dogs hits absurd levels (56% of owners buy their pets Christmas gifts), we�re still eager to know about real dogginess... E.B. White didn’t hate grammar, but his patience was tried by various “outraged precisionists and comma snatchers.” ... William Butler Yeats’s work touched the greatest discoveries in modern physics and psychology. But he was also a poet of violence and horror... The year 1989 was perhaps the very best year in European history. It also may have been the last occasion when world history was made in Europe... Lionel Trilling: English prof, critic, and one-book novelist, he still generates interest long after his death, while his contemporaries are forgotten... Set against Napoleon, the Imperial Russian state was far from being a ramshackle despotism. It could fight with power and determination, and win... The Somme was the darkest hour not only in death, but in the life it gave later to class conflict and the rise of Nazism in Europe... In the shark-tank that was Henry VIII�s court, Thomas Cromwell was as deadly as any. But Hilary Mantel at least gives us a Cromwell we think we understand... A god whose existence you can prove is a god to whom you cannot pray, and prayer � not proof � is where religion rises or falls... Charles Dickens created force fields of imagery and thought as each new novel came to life, feeding the process along the way... Richard Dawkins devotes his latest book to showing the deep explanatory power of evolution while hammering creationists at every turn... Some little magazines carried poetry and fiction by unknown writers. Others shaped intelligent opinion to combat puffery in literary journalism... Inhumanly ruthless in his dealings with non-Bolsheviks and inept with Stalin, Leon Trotsky was too vain and self-deceiving to merit the status of tragic hero... The invention of cooking put us on our feet, shrank our guts, gave us silly teeth and small jaws, and ballooned our brains to a gigantic, fuel-inefficient size... Anatomist William Harvey claimed in the 17th century that the uterus is a second seat of intelligence. Odd, but perhaps he was onto something... Anglo-Saxons view the French with mixed amusement and horror. France is a land the English love to hate, hate to love, and can�t get enough of... Let us face the unappetizing facts and just recognize Knut Hamsun for what he was: a pivotal figure in the literary canon and a disgusting human being... Thomas Hobbes: a hero to some, but to many philosophers the source of a malignant liberalism, Jacobinism, or even Bolshevism... It may have started nicely enough, but in the end Henry Wellcome�s will to collect artifacts over the whole of human history was an unhealthy obsession... The poetry was great, but Rilke in person could be vain, self-pitying, obsessive, whining, arrogant, childish, lachrymose, and neurotic... In a clean-shaven town, the barber shaves all and only men who do not shave themselves. Was Georg Cantor driven nuts wondering who shaves the barber?... Andy Warhol wasn�t just an artist. He was, in Arthur Danto�s words, �the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced�... William Golding knew his own capacity for evil, and he was uneasy. “I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature”... Woodstock: sex, drugs, music, and mud. It now all looks so drab and dated. It�s an event in history that is really, really over, says P.J. O�Rourke... That racist domination was the true basis for the British Empire has been repeated so often we forget how deeply false it is. Enter historian James Belich... James Joyce�s Ulysses : more venerated than read because it has been so long held in academic captivity. Declan Kiberd wants to set it free... J.R. Ackerley�s Hindoo Holiday (1932) deserves an honored place in that literary genre of witty, campy, opinionated travel books by young colonials... Richard Dawkins compares creationists to Holocaust deniers and spoons an acid sauce of mockery onto their absurd confection of half-baked ideas... For half a century, Paul Nitze and George Kennan wrestled with the USSR, the Cold War, the nuclear threat, and with each other... It all began long ago with the death of the Prophet, but the Sunni/Shia split still haunts Islam and the world today... Many could not abide him, but if you care about the English language and questions of human nature, you must love Samuel Johnson... How does a culture that has become unmoored from its own past cope with an influx of newcomers? That�s Europe�s problem... Green Metropolis. A place where people drive, pollute, consume, and throw away much less than the national average: New York City... Darwin�s sexual selection theory, Gould�s Birds of Australia, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The connection is a real one... Were the original pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries socialists or capitalists at heart? For us, of course, it’s becoming harder to tell the categories apart... The Islamic burka is a disputed but very potent human symbol. Many insist it stands only for piety. Marnia Lazreg disagrees... more� ... John Rawls�s ideal of justice may be best realized not with abstract liberalism, but with appeals to emotion, patriotism, and religion... Dogs are Aristotelians, but with their own doggy teleology. Their goals are not only very different from ours, they are often invisible to us... The global financial crisis had made some leftists in the West go all nostalgic for the Soviet Union. John Gray can only smile... Sarkozy wants Muslim integration based on real respect: “When I enter a mosque, I take off my shoes,” he says. “When you enter a school, take off your veil”... Just as in the Great Depression, members today of the middle and professional classes wonder what the new normal will be. Not like the old... Linda Lovelace and James Fenimore Cooper, together at last, along with T.S. Eliot and Mickey Mouse. It�s the wacky New Literary History of America... Dictatorships behind the Iron Curtain were destroyed not by monolithic force, but by myriad human beings impulsively reacting to the idea of freedom... Wrestling with Moses. That�s what Jane Jacobs did, and the war between her and city-builder Robert Moses was a struggle of titans... Did Thomas Jefferson father any � or all seven � of Sally Hemings�s children? It�s entirely possible. But the DNA evidence... Thomas Hobbes’s gloomy claim was that man’s existence is “nasty, brutish and short.” Frans de Waal shows this is rather unfair to the brutes... R. Crumb�s version of Genesis is as full of sexualized violence as Tales from the Crypt and as disrespectful to cultural icons as Mad magazine... Starved of adjectives, thinned to a nervous set of verbs, intense almost past bearing, Louise Glück’s dark poems are hard to look away from... more� ... Most of us are genetic dandelions: able to survive anywhere. Others are more like orchids: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming if given hothouse care... The history of the South is a dark little corner of the American past. Can light be thrown on it without seeming to defend slavery? Donald Livingston thinks so... Japanese: an excruciatingly difficult language with subtleties few foreigners can ever master. It is being simplified by the web � even dumbed down... The august tutelage of Emerson, Thoreau, and her father made Louisa May Alcott acutely conscious of unseen, spiritual realities. Still, she could play them for laughs... Always with the complaining! Possibly the most noble and eloquent kvetch in the history of English poetry is Ben Jonson. Robert Pinsky explains... For many people, the moral life is based in religion, or at least in wisdom given to us by religion. No, says Marc Hauser: the moral sense is evolved... Kandinsky�s circles. Are they yeast cells budding, a haloed blue sun and candied satellites, or life itself escaping a careless primordial stew?... The struggle for equality between the sexes keeps coming down to motherhood, over and over again. Kay Hymowitz on men, women, and evolution... Art moves on, but essential qualities of decent critics do not change: knowledge, courage, and a way of finding aphorisms with good headline potential... Christopher Alexander: an architectural theorist who has inspired counterculture DIY-ers, smart-growth advocates, computer programmers, and more... Jessica is a plucky lass who, with mum and dad�s blessings, is determined to sail solo around the world. Might it all end in tears? Roger Sandall looks at a little history... Andy Warhol�s 200 One Dollar Bills goes up in price by tens of millions, while 200 actual one dollars bills become more worthless. James Panero on mysteries of the art market... For John Tierney, there is blame enough to spread around all sides in the debates over global warming. But the pilfered East Anglia emails still give us a lesson or two about science... more� ... Martin Heidegger, a thinker many regard as the most important philosopher of the 20th century, was a bona fide, arm-saluting Nazi. How much should we care?... The Renaissance imagination reached farther across the globe than the ships of Spain or Genoa. Consider Petrarch and Boccaccio as geographers... Telling the taxi driver he was Cuban always elicited a warm reponse: “Ah, Cuba! Fidel Castro!” Taxi drivers of the world need to know about the Cuban Revolution, says Jos� Prieto... Thanks to Best in Show, dog shows now have to go forward in an age of dog-show ridicule. How fair is that? Jesse Smith wonders... Little acts of social thuggery. The screaming kid on the airplane and the iPhone babbler in line at the bank exploit our patience and goodwill, says Amy Alkon... Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is so dumb you want to cheer, Die Cusack, Die! Amanda Peet and their kids, too. It�s the end of the world, so please meet death like everyone else... The world has too many Malthusians, and what�s worse, they are multiplying like rabbits, becoming a burden to clear thinking about human population growth... There are 36 arguments for the existence of God, each with some persuasive power. But every one of them has buried within it some kind of flaw... The fetishization of change is a symptom of a deep intellectual malaise in modern education theory, where truth, knowledge, and meaning have merely a provisional character... When Jane Austen doesn�t like a character in one of her novels, she ceases to be the subtle, witty ironist everyone adores and turns into a vicious moral harridan... The Mumbai attacks: sixty harrowing hours. Jason Motlagh�s minute-by-minute account shows us scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty... Louis Armstrong, even as a little boy, �could easily see the ungodly treatment White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family I worked for”... Journalism and philosophy: how is it that the two humanistic intellectual activities that most boldly proclaim devotion to truth are barely on speaking terms?... The Arabian Nights, Brahma, Zoroaster, the Turkish Pasha: Mozart�s operatic orientalism was part of a European tradition of tireless intellectual curiosity and scholarship... The Prodigal Son, his father said, �was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.� Along with Goldilock and Snow White, this is the first story Mary Gordon remembers... It is oppressive for math teachers to “transfer” their knowledge to students. Instead, they must help students construct their own understanding of math and find their own math solutions... Umberto Eco, himself on most people�s list of top world intellectuals, enjoys lists. �I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have preferences”... Isaiah Berlin was a sublime raconteur, �a trapeze artist, soaring through every imaginable subject, spinning, flipping, hanging by his heels�... With huge student debt and more young people than ever failing to complete a degree, it�s time to ask and honestly answer, Are too many students going to college?... Velázquez�s Las Meninas is shown in a Prado gallery that often teems with people. This great work of art was painted, however, for an audience of one... In all cultures, music unfolds in time, with natural rhythms of respiration and pulse, says David Goldman. Tonal music of the West, however, adds a new element... Click, tweet, email, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the intellectual habits of internet life are killing storytelling, says Ben MacIntyre... Spaceship Jesus: Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of sixteen novels represents everything that is most deranged about religion. Frank Schaeffer explains... Scientists seem addicted to predictions lately, the more ominous or hysterical, the better. Science didn�t used to be like this, says Stuart Blackman. What�s going on?... From Lascaux to the Louvre to Carnegie Hall, human beings crave to see skillful artistic performances. Then there�s the shark in the tank... Russia’s historical misfortune � and its tragic fate � is its obsession with imaginary dangers and neglect of real ones, argues Walter Laqueur. Just look at its relation to Islam... Story-loving isn�t just culture, it�s biology. The human brain has evolved to make and enjoy narratives. So as we enter the Age of Twitter... Dying languages. Would it be inherently evil, John McWhorter asks, if there were not 6,000 spoken languages, but only one? And what if it happened to be English?... Women are often the cruellest critics of other female writers. Where does this anger come from, and at what expense? Emily Gould wonders... Even if the beauties of a peacock’s tail, the Art of Fugue, and a stunning landscape have deep Darwinian roots, the pleasures they give us are quite different... Monsters stand for human vulnerability and crisis: zombies, vampires, and serial killers are imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace... What panics critics of historic fiction, says Hilary Mantel, is not knowing for sure which bits are true. So just remember: when the author writes, �He thought that,� she�s making it up... Indian novelists who write in English have often been accused, especially by readers and critics at home, of being inauthentic, sellouts. Times are changing... Great works of musical art always contain elements of ambiguity. Masterpieces don�t push you around. Will the guys in white coats who study music ever get it?... Wisdom in medical treatment does not mean cookbook medicine. It needs a genuine partnership between doctor and patient, with complexity and uncertainty both recognized... FDR�s Four Freedoms were depicted in 1943 in four uneven paintings by Norman Rockwell. Today, it is only Freedom of Speech that remains impressive... With the Internet, we create culture for ourselves, says Tyler Cowen. Maybe the book is less central now, but our daily lives can still be filled with beauty, suspense, and learning... James Fallows survived China. If you think that is but a minor achievement, consider a few health and pollution facts about life in that bustling land... In mournful tones, both Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy at the end blamed not only Johnson and his military for Vietnam, but also themselves... Okay, so let�s assume for argument�s sake that women have become less happy relative to men since 1972. Has feminism ruined their lives? Barbara Ehrenreich wonders... Copernicus needed evidence to support his new theory of the cosmos. When he saw America on the map, he knew he had found what he was looking for. Toby Lester explains... Ah, today�s youth. The brightest do-gooders in history? Shallow narcissicists? A bunch of illiterate knuckleheads? All of the above, and more... Peter Paul Rubens, painter of those fleshy, pink nudes, was a man in control. In fact, he was a secret diplomat and spy, his artistic work a perfect cover... The saintly, white-haired Einstein was once the symbol of nuclear physics as most prestigious of all the sciences. Then, somehow, it all went wrong... Joseph Stiglitz claimed the current crisis was for market capitalism an equivalent of the Berlin Wall collapse. All analogies are imperfect, says Jagdish Bhagwati, but that was very dicey... Michael Vick’s fighting dogs were not put down: that would be a betrayal of loyalty. Professional football players, too, are selected for their loyalty to team and game... When Time magazine�s Henry Luce coined the phrase �The American Century,� it was already 1941. He turned out to be right � in spades. So what about this century?... Herta Müller knows what it means to be a target of state terror. The Nobel Prize winner tells what the Rumanian secret police did to her... My Ardi, myself. There�s a lot to say about the new human ancestor, observes Lionel Tiger. And much of it has to do with how we prefer to see ourselves... There are in life three kinds of fools: real fools, professional fools, and unsuspecting fools. The professional fool, a staple of Shakespeare, is in reality nobody’s fool... Ridicule the Great Books, if you will, but do not forget they stood for the value of hard work to achieve understanding. Not the passive entertainment model college students now expect... The looming collapse of the U.S. entitlement system casts a giant shadow over the country’s future. How did America get itself into this mess?... Theodore Dalrymple was a prison doctor. So when a philosopher argues that prisons must be closed down, replaced by centers for reintegration, expect him to have an opinion... African-American Studies departments tend to hold front and center the idea racism is immensely influential in American life. John McWhorter does not disagree, but... Almost a year after AIG’s collapse, and despite a tidal wave of outrage, there was still no clear view of what toppled the company. Until Michael Lewis got on the case... Cultural warriors from the past have turned Roman Polanski into either a ventriloquist’s dummy or a voodoo doll to let off cheap moral steam. A plague on both sides, says Brendan O�Neill... A principal cause of U.S. educational failure has been the dominance of a misguided �how-to� theory of language mastery. Schools need to teach commonly shared knowledge... Polymaths are scarcer today than in times past, with branches of knowledge fenced off from each other. �Foxes used to roam free across the hills. Now hedgehogs rule�... The argument Samuel Johnson started over the dictionary’s public role, was an early battle in what has come down to us as the culture wars. Yet another way he was ahead of his age... more� ... California, fresh, lively, and forever oriented toward the future, has for more than a century been a model for the rest of America. So who killed it?... For undergrads, watching grad students in English struggle to gain Ph.Ds and find jobs is like watching young people in Rust Belt cities: the work isn’t there, the technology obsolete... We domesticated dogs, roses, and corn. Next in line are domesticated bacteria that will power reactors to give us unlimited clean energy... In Arles, Vincent planned to be methodical and determined: “more interesting as a man who knows what he is doing than as a mad genius, because everybody can be a mad genius”... Ted Kennedy, Victorian hero. You can tell good guys from bad on principles of Darwinian literary criticism. Kennedy was one of the good guys... There’s a lot of bad food in America, almost all of it eaten in god-awful chains. But in back streets and strip malls, you can also find uncounted small acts of culinary genius... Cultural studies may stand in some minds for �half-assed research, self-congratulation, farcical pretension.� Michael Bérubé sees in it the promise of an understanding that actually works... Art historical roads � from Virgil, Ovid, and Dante to Vasari�s Michelangelo � begin with Homer, who incites us to imagine magnificent Greek palaces and their art... The price of a scoop. New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell ignored advice and was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Saving him left his interpreter and a British soldier dead... Hatred of America and those evil Jews, along with intricate conspiracy theories, helps to unite Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and their new friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... You could hardly expect Plato to approve of Grand Theft Auto IV, with what he�d have regarded as its puerile shoot-�em-up values. But what about Aristotle?... American academics have shown little curiosity about conservative ideas. Will Berkeley�s Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements make any difference?... more� ... The professionalization of everyday life was a trend from the outset of modernity, and has grown hugely since the 1960s. It�s a tyranny of experts... At its therapeutic best, women�s shoe shopping takes place in hushed, carpeted salons, salesmen serving their Cinderella customers. Zappos has another idea... For Gail Hornstein, learning to write was a matter of sharply defining her ideas, making them vivid and pleasurable. How painful to unlearn nearly all she�d been taught as a professional... Stand Up and Cheer! was meant as a morale booster for 1934, using song, dance, and little Shirley Temple to sell optimism in support of President Roosevelt... After cloistering himself to bring dead flesh to life, Victor Frankenstein condemned his creature to a solitude that made monsters of them both. Mary Shelley knew this loneliness... Economics, says Douglas Rushkoff, is not a natural science. It is game theory, and its assumptions have little to do with genetics, neurology, or evolution... What is snark? Abuse in a public forum that is low, personal, teasing, rug-pulling, finger-pointing, snide, obvious, and knowing. As David Denby explains... Norman Mailer’s obsession with violence found its greatest expression in his superb, civilized focus on boxing�s great heavyweights. In other settings he was less successful... Seventy years ago today, WWII began in Poland. How differently countries party to the event commemorate it. The view taken by Russia is perhaps the most troubling... more� ...