I really like the moose.
… Winning Poems for 2013 October : IBPC.
… William Peter Blatty, writer of 'The Exorcist,' slips back into the light for its 40th anniversary - The Washington Post.
… What 20 years of best sellers say about what we read.
So there's a sense that he's always the outsider, that he's up against something, that he's incorrigible to some extent. And he carries on right until the bitter end fighting battles which really he didn't need to, maybe. And that is one side of his personality. And maybe it was a creative side because it — in his embattled state — fired him up to write the music that he did. On the other hand, there's a totally different side to him — the convivial family man who welcomed all visiting musicians and who took infinite pains to look after the musical education and the career steps of his children. So there is a fault line running right through his personality, I feel.
Or, as we say in the patent business, Switzerland had 500 years of peace -- resulting in the cuckoo clock.
Saul Bellow was first and foremost a novelist. By which I mean: he told stories. By which I mean: he was interested in characters, and their development, and their travails, and their anguish. And he wrote about these things over the course of hundreds of pages.
Henderson the Rain King is no exception: this is a novel. There's no doubt about it. It's not poetry (though it is poetic). And it's not modernist (though it does tackle modern topics). This is a book in search of "reality"; this is a novel in search of one man's identity. Like Herzog, it's preoccupied by what drives us toward insecurity, and what ultimately liberates us from the same.
I found Henderson to be an effective, if at times self-indulgent, book: the story works, and the characters attain some semblance of enlightenment. Maybe there's too much about the "power of love" toward the end of the book. But that's because reality for Henderson is built on the idea of compassion, of becoming your true self.
There's lots to like here when it comes to Bellow's treatment of that distinction - between becoming and being. Making the transition from the former to the latter is what Henderson is after: it's why he travels to Africa after all. And by the end of the book, he, like the reader, has recognized that suffering and sacrifice can lead to more than sorrow alone. They can lead, instead, to a renewed desire: an unabashed desire to live.
… AbeBooks: Book Collecting Guide — Best Books About Book Collecting.
… Bibliophile or Bibliomaniac? | Columnists | RIA Novosti.
… On Writer's Terror | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
… Overrated: Richard Dawkins | Standpoint.
I have to be out and about again today, so blogging will resume upon my return.
… Joyce Carol Oates' Robert Frost Story in Harper's Sparks Debate | New Republic.
See also Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Frost, and Robert Lowell.
… Inky Fires Brian Tierney | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog.
A few years ago, I stared in terror at what my life might become, at what I thought were the likely consequences of a decision from hell that I had to make, either way, either avenue, promising me and those I love nothing but pain, and hurt, and sorrow.
And now years later, having decided, yesterday was my birthday, and I received an outpouring of messages, of love, from my family and so many friends that I could never have imagined back then, when I lay shivering in bed, stricken with what I thought were the horrendous consequences of my choice.
trust and love, throw away that crap in your mind – and if you believe, pray, pray, pray.
Q. Did the biggest inspiration to write this book come from the outspoken atheism of writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens?
A. Not in the sense that I thought they made a case that deserved arguing with directly. "The God Delusion," "God Is Not Great," etc., are (as they say) not even wrong.
There were moments when Moore could have escaped, but she turned down such opportunities as came her way. She was never known to fall in love, have an affair, or contemplate marriage. Her mother, by playing the orphan child, by turning Marianne into a male ("he"), and by sleeping with her, had in effect made Marianne the man of the house. And the hovering protectiveness of Warner and Marianne confirmed this folie à trois.
I just started reading Spufford's book. It seems quite intriguing.
2:38 pm - Plantinga argues that contemporary evolutionary theory isn't incompatible with theistic belief. But instead is in conflict with naturalism. He also thinks that theistic religion could be rational even if science conflicted with it (this last is particularly controversial claim, to my mind).
3:24 pm - You can see where Plantinga is going in his arguments, which is a virtue. With Dennett, he is building up to a shock. This is also cool. I like both.
3:26 pm - A failure of imagination is not an insight into reality, a point Dennett makes against philosophers all the time.
Written primarily for health professionals, True or False Possession is nonetheless of interest to any educated Catholic, in that it recounts from a Catholic viewpoint genuine suspected demonic possession and helps the layman, priest, psychiatrist and even family members to distinguish the real thing from mental illness and fakery.
… Podcast: The Show Must Go On | Virtual Memories.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `The World is Not Like Ourselves in All Respects'.
My problem with the grand traditional novel—or rather traditional narrative in general, short stories included—is the vision of character, the constant reinforcement of a fictional selfhood that accumulates meaning through suffering and the overcoming of suffering. At once a palace built of words and a trajectory propelled by syntax, the self connects effortlessly with the past and launches bravely into the future. Challenged, perhaps thwarted by circumstance, it nevertheless survives, with its harvest of bittersweet consolation, and newly acquired knowledge.
She goes to two local meeting houses and found "a lovely one" in Cornwall. I check with her that this is not simply a therapeutic technique. No, she insists, it is real Christian faith.
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
… Detectives Beyond Borders: Strange Loyalties — William McIlvanney in words and a picture.
… don't bother; they're here: Inky Owners Square Off Over Bringing Back Brian Tierney | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Quite Unsuitable to a Lady's Reading'.
It's … not exactly a conventional novel. Its full title is an unwieldy mouthful: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. The author (or authors) writes under the ungainly nom de plume of The American Psychiatric Association – although a list of enjoyably silly pseudonyms is provided inside (including Maritza Rubio-Stipec, Dan Blazer, and the superbly alliterative Susan Swedo). The thing itself is on the cumbersome side. Over two inches thick and with a thousand pages, it's unlikely to find its way to many beaches. Not that this should deter anyone; within is a brilliantly realized satire, at turns luridly absurd, chillingly perceptive, and profoundly disturbing.
… I think there's some semantic game-playing in how... - more than 95 theses.
Journalist would do well to practice phenomenology. If one accurately and precisely describes one's experience of something, the subjective dimension will become without being overbearing.
"Frankenstein" is perhaps the first time in which the literature of the fantastic uses science to bridge the uncanny and the supernatural through the lens of the possible, of the scientific. That's the big chasm—the big break in the way we see the fantastic comes after the Age of Reason. Once the Age of Reason happens, fables, folklore and the fantastic start to be considered childish pursuits. Before that, they have equal weight. It's really revealing that then there's a strong resurgence of the fantastic with the Romantic movement. "Frankenstein" straddles the idea of science and the idea of the fantastic in a way that is incredibly modern.
A constellation of stars, a world of fashions, an ebb and flow of trends, a new group of MacArthur fellows. No one doubts their merits, but surely not so many geniuses are created in a year, and surely not so many of them reside in the United States. In a world without a genuine appreciation of genius, this is what we get—excellence by committee and blind peer review. And with it, a nagging sense of nostalgia for a world that could stand to wonder and marvel a little more.
… When Falls the Coliseum � Watching the passing scene.
Whatever happened to Douglas Hofstader?
In the years after the release of GEB, Hofstadter and AI went their separate ways. Today, if you were to pull AI: A Modern Approach off the shelf, you wouldn't find Hofstadter's name—not in more than 1,000 pages. Colleagues talk about him in the past tense. New fans of GEB, seeing when it was published, are surprised to find out its author is still alive.
… 13 Highland St., Medway, MA 02053 (MLS# 71589947) - Medway MA Real Estate - NewEnglandMoves.com.
My stepdaughter Gwen and her husband Chris live there (Emma and Sophie are on their own now).
… Acquiring Empathy through the Essay | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
… 2013 September : IBPC Winning Poems for September 2013.
… First Known When Lost: Divisions And Distances.
… Readux Books launches October 24th and presents their first book series | BERLIN LOVES YOU.
… Philosophy, lit, etc.: Essays, aphorisms, facts.
… Issa's Untidy Hut: Lyric for a Lazy Sunday Afternoon: Richard Brautigan.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Maximum Ground in Minimum Space'.
… Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71 | Music News | Rolling Stone.
What's the most important thing that we as a now-global society could do? The updated equivalent of building the Library of Alexandria or patronizing the Renaissance?
To Lee Billings, author of the new book Five Billion Years of Solitude, the answer seems to be "discover that there's life on another planet." And despite the myriad of details he describes that complicate the search, it appears that we are just on the cusp of being able to make such a discovery.
One page of a spectacular illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah, a Jewish-law codex, is now on view in a modest special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The book—created in Northern Italy in the 1450s and jointly acquired this year by the Met and the Israel Museum, where it had been on loan—is far more than a work of Judaic scholarly interest. It's a rich visual feast, though we get only a delightful first course in the Met display. But even that single serving deserves serious attention.
The 14-section text of the Mishneh Torah was the masterwork of Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) [and] it is with the Mishneh Torah that Maimonides had his most lasting influence.
… Biographer finds some dissonance in Ellington's life.
… 'All the Odes' is oodles of wonderful Neruda.
…A grunt's-eye view of the football industrial complex.
'… Yellow Birds,' on Iraq war, is Phila.'s 'One Book'.
… Upcoming PBS show on 'War of Worlds' may reinforce media myth — in cheesy fashion | Media Myth Alert.
In overwhelming numbers, listeners to the program recognized it for what it was: An imaginative and entertaining show that aired on CBS Radio in its usual Sunday evening time slot.
The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age — what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.
… Paul Davis On Crime: Cool And Classy: 'If I Had 24 Hours To Live, I'd Make A Dry Martini,' Says Sir Roger Moore.
He and share a birth date. Of course he's cool.
This is his sister's suicide he is talking about. How can he be so glib and distant? So, she was a difficult woman. But she was your sister, for God's sake. It's all about him and his feelings and nothing about her, the person who died.
As the psychologists Marco Yzer and Brian Southwell put it, "new communication technologies do not fundamentally alter the theoretical bounds of human interaction; such interaction continues to be governed by basic human tendencies."
… Michelle Orange is the New Black | Bookdwarf.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Russet Descending to Earth-Color'.
Oddly, though I was also born in October, and like the month well enough, I am a summer person through and through.
… Zealotry of Guerin: The Beekeepers and the Birdnester (Breughel).
Christopher Guerin will be reading tonight. So if you're anywhere near Fort Wayne, try to make it.
The pleasure with which we walk down the trail that a system opens up for us in the woods makes us forget that on each side the forest remains intact.
… Hooked on Penguins � The Dabbler.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `See the World More Clearly Than Before'.
Kill Your Darlings is a clever, knowing film about the early exploits of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
… Wolff: JFK and 50 years of conspiracy.
… The Washington Post eBooks.
Here's an excerpt: For John and Jackie Kennedy, the death of a son may have brought them closer.
But wasn't he always there?
… Proust, Love and Jealousy- Events - The Greene Space - The Greene Space.
… Programs - Triple Canopy.
… Feds confiscate investigative reporter's confidential files during raid | The Daily Caller.
Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.
He grew up working class and where he came from, "you couldn't do anything right. You were channelled into wrongdoing, wrongsaying, wrongfooting." The "south London mob were only portrayed as crooks and idiots" and, tellingly, "there weren't books about me". So Miller started to write them. Sidetracked at first by the theatre – his debut play was snatched up by the Melbourne Theatre Company – Miller's first novel was not published until he was 50.
… Haute Couture: The Most Fashionable Books on AbeBooks.
The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage.
… Paul Davis On Crime: A Review Of 'I Am Soldier Of Fortune: Dancing With Devils'.
…Revision and Instinct | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
Following Up with an App called Oyster - "Netflix for ebooks"
Instantly, here was race, implied violence, and the abject debunking of the two, all unspooled in a startlingly familiar dialect that was somehow hardly written in dialect. How absurd that this was the first scene of the novel. It was one of the most hilariously accurate depictions of the contemporary South I'd ever encountered, and from the pages of an airport crime novel written by an old white man from Detroit.
… A Don's Life: Do computers belong in museum galleries?
I happen to hate the audio stuff they offer you in art museums. There's a reason it's called visual art. Try looking at it. On your own. It won't bite.
… The Wooden Spoon: Machado Translations in the Buenos Aires Review.
… Michel Serres calls for a strike – against the English language | The Book Haven.
… First Known When Lost: "I Am Your Old Intentions She Said And All Your Old Intentions Are Over".
… The Diary Review: Self-exposing massacre.
… Dabbler Heroes – Zane Grey — The Dabbler.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `We Should Wish to Hug Him'.
The wish to write for the Times strikes me as a tad quaint.
The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.
… Issa's Untidy Hut: Olivier Schopfer & Anitha Varma: Wednesday Haiku, #138.
… Paul Davis On Crime: Happy Birthday To Author Michael Crichton.
Michael Crichton sent me nice email shortly before I retired and not long before his death.
I knew they'd get it right!!
Literary Villains - A Quiz!
How well do you remember some of the nastiest/scariest/most famous villains in literary history?
I promise you can make it as an artist!
It's called "The Introduction" by Nathan Green and is available for $1,495.00 in a limited edition canvas giclee here, which describes it as "a stunning portrayal of that first moment of man's special blessing from God. A brand new world sparkles and vibrates with color and movement as Adam and Eve gaze with a wonder and tenderness to set the standard for all time. This inspiring expression of love will enrich any space, certain to become a family heirloom. You will delight in its detail and beauty"
The artist, Nathan Green, seems to be doing okay too.
… AttackingtheDemi-Puppets: Corruption of Language and Thought.
… Rather Pointless Cultural Projects | Georgy Riecke.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Embanked in Tiers of Books'.
"We take pure and sacred words and express our feelings with those words," explains 29-year-old Pakisa Arzoo, with an energy as bright as her striking emerald green veil."But I know my society has this belief that writing poetry is a sin."
… Attacking Robert Frost | The American Conservative.
O'Connor seems to me to be a genuine candidate for canonization.
A thought for today ….
… Paul Davis On Crime: Clint Eastwood, Don Siegel, And The Great Anti-Hero.
… October 27th – Kristina Moriconi and Ray Garman in Fox Chase | Fox Chase Review.
… Undernews: Why is Obama so indifferent to the NSA scandal?
… Instapundit — THIS SHOULD PROVE POPULAR: Rand Paul pushes constitutional amendment on Congress.
Until I started A Commonplace Blog five years ago, I didn't fully realize how gaunt and unhealthy-looking my prose had become under the influence of academic writing. The blog format proved unexpectedly congenial. I had no inkling, when I blindly began, that blogging would be so liberating. Not only was I freed from begging letters to editors (if I wanted to review a book, I could review it without anyone's permission). But also I no longer had to worry about what the chairman of the English department referred to as "career logic," wherein every printed word must contribute to the building of a limited but national reputation.
Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.
The idea that there are a lot of uncorrected flaws in published studies may seem hard to square with the fact that almost all of them will have been through peer-review. This sort of scrutiny by disinterested experts—acting out of a sense of professional obligation, rather than for pay—is often said to make the scientific literature particularly reliable. In practice it is poor at detecting many types of error.
Analytic and Logical yet Intuitive and Artistic.
But not as a result of the left brain/right brain theory.
Well, that could just be the case. And Frost really was no sweetie pie.
… Born to be a Serial Memoirist | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
… Composer Ned Rorem at 90: Still playing.
Though Rorem would seem to be the most cultivated of composers, he is said to have awakened one morning with a horrible hangover while visiting Philadelphia friends, and, to meet a compositional deadline, sat at the piano for 20 minutes, knocked out the song, closed the keyboard lid, and muttered, "Thank goodness that's over."
And for that matter, once I reached the end of the Recherche, I immediately reread it. Which is something that happens, I believe, to many readers. InTime Regained, it becomes clear that everything you've read up to this point constitutes the inner journey of a man who aspires to become a writer and finally finds his subject, his material: himself and the whole of his life, during which he was convinced that he had lost, or wasted, his time. At that point, you feel the urge to reread the book in order to better understand this inner journey.
Philadelphia, of course, has had a statue of Dickens since 1897.
… Podcast: Wine, Women, and Novel-Writing | Virtual Memories.
This conviction—that good work must be infused with grace—became her strongest principle. She concedes that she is only the medium for the telling, and prays for a constant realization of that fact: Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story—just like the typewriter was mine.
… normblog: Writer's Choice Grand Index.
As noted earlier, Norm Geras passed away on Friday. Above is one of the many things he will be remembered. I felt honored to be asked by him to contribute to the series.
Hannah Price's series, City of Brotherly Love, features portraits of men in Philadelphia captured just moments after they harassed her on the street.
Local Writers Group releasing its first story collection.
Full Disclosure: I am a member, having joined after my very first meeting. A good, thoughtful and nice group of people. And having never been in a writers group, or at a writers group meeting, I was surprised how energizing it was!
… normblog: Norman Geras: 1943-2013.
… First Known When Lost: Fountain.
The beginning of "The Bush" immediately brings to mind lines from Thomas's "The Bright Field": ". . . It is the turning/aside like Moses to the miracle/of the lit bush, to a brightness/that seemed as transitory as your youth/once, but is the eternity that awaits you."
What wondrous lines those are.
I haven't read much Poe since I was in high school, but I remember liking the stories — and I think I read them in one big gulp. The writer of this piece apparently thinks Poe was an opium addict. I thought that had long since been debunked.
…Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab | The Economist.
Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think.
Scientists are people. And being smart and highly trained does not make one immune to human failings.
I think I agree with this, but is reluct at the use of the term believe, because I think it has come to mean something different from faith.
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?
… Issa's Untidy Hut: Dust in the Wind: Issa's Sunday Service, #181.
… Peculiar Professions: Forks in the Career Path.
The deck for this piece says that "America's founders insisted on church-state separation." Only they didn't. Here is all the Constitution has to day on the matter: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …" What the federal government was being prohibited from doing was establishing a national church on the order of the Church of England. The reason behind that was that several states already had established churches of their own. Massachusetts did not disestablish Congregationalism until 1834.
Ms Wiltz notes toward that "when he was president, Thomas Jefferson, a fervent theist, told a group of Baptist ministers government had no business meddling in religion. Moreover, he said, there needed to be a "wall of separation between church and state."
That was Tom's opinion. It was opinion that, if shared by the founders — which is highly unlikely — was at not incorporated into the Constitution.
Today at Mass I was treated, along with the rest of the congregation, to a pinch of politics from the pulpit. I did not find it edifying. But I will have more to say about that later.
… Paul Davis On Crime: Brit Crime Writers To Vote On Greatest Crime Novel.
I was seated with the choir in the loft, and with each hymn we sang and each prayer spoken by the faithful around me – the delivery didn't feel so rote this time – I began to feel a greater attachment to the meaning religious practice held for many around me, and to being present for a ritual that gave that meaning palpable form, even to a nonbeliever. When the time came to take communion, I felt a strong desire to do so, yet I did not. After this, my lack of faith was not shaken, but my tendency to dismiss transcendent spiritual experiences as irrational, or religion as oppressive, was.
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Amuse the Harsh Centurion'.
… An earnest, innocent tale of addictions' demons.
Language without numbers=People without numbers?
Among Pirahã's many peculiarities is an almost complete lack of numeracy, an extremely rare linguistic trait of which there are only a few documented cases.
How melancholy a thing is success.
… Paul Davis On Crime: Eminent Hipsters: A Book Of Essays By Steely Dan's Grumpy Old Man, Donald Fagen.
… Paul Davis On Crime: Happy 82nd Birthday To John Le Carre.
It was the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897. Through a periscope, England was sailing along in all its hope and glory. That summer Edward Elgar turned 40 and was slowly emerging as the country's greatest composer.
On July 14, following a visit the previous weekend to some family friends, the Reverend and Mrs. Alfred Penny, Elgar spun off what looked like a drawing or scribble and gave it to his wife, Alice, to attach to a thank-you note. It was intended for Dora Penny, a 23-year-old ardent admirer, who sang in a local choral group and liked to dance.
The scribble, known as the Dorabella Cipher, has never been decrypted and stands with such other famous unsolved puzzles as the Voynich Manuscript, a 240-page codex dating from the 15th century; the Phaistos Disk, an apparently Bronze-age piece of clay found in Crete in 1908; and the Zodiac Killer ciphers of the 1960s and '70s.
Scacity v. Abundance Publishing - the World is Changing?
Because the shelf space is limited, traditional publishers only kept books with a fantastic sales record in print. The other books had a short shelf life before they were taken out of the stores and eventually out of print.
Everyone currently working in traditional publishing, from the publishers to the editors to the writers, learned the scarcity attitude. Everyone. That includes me. That includes any unpublished writer who tried to break in before 18 months ago. That includes agents. That includes book reviewers, copy editors, book editors, and the publishing executives.
Our attitudes got formed in a model based on limited shelf space and expensive production costs. On "gut" decisions instead of quantifiable decisions.
The very idea of abundance is confusing. How, everyone raised in scarcity wants to know, does anyone find anything? How can something become "big"?
People who come at publishing from the new world of publishing—always-available titles, e-books that might stay in print forever—understand the long tail. They understand that something may not be a hit when it first appears, but word of mouth (or an abundance of page views) will lead to a wider audience. That wider audience will then bring its friends and family to the table, introducing yet another new group of people to the item.
These two attitudes—scarcity thinking and abundance thinking—are greatly different from each other. In scarcity thinking, the bigger the audience, the better. Which means that items have to be geared toward a mass audience because you need to hit a home run one out of one hundred times.
Abundance thinking takes the pressure off each individual item. Instead of trying to appeal to millions with one item, appealing to thousands or even hundreds works just as well provided there are other items available from the same company/individual/provider. The other items don't have to be similar to the first item (although it's nice if there's a grouping). Niche audiences communicate with each other, and slowly bring the fan base to the table.
Traditional publishing, like network television, is built on scarcity. In traditional publishing, "airtime" was shelf space. Only so many brick-and-mortar stores that carried books (of any type) existed. Those stores only had room for a certain amount of shelf space. Only a handful of books could fit face-out on those shelves. Several more could fit spine-out, but it's harder to sell a book based on its spine than it is to sell a book based on the cover.
… First Known When Lost: "The Falling Of The Leaves".
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Vigorous, But Rugged'.
… the story couldn't be simpler. It's about a young man of an unspecified age who enjoys reading, who is shy and introspective, but not necessarily awkward or antisocial, who likes his mother, who wants to travel to Venice but, because of poor health, never quite manages to do so until later in life. Marcel, the hero of Proust's autobiographical novel, loves nature, music, restaurants, hotels, beaches, churches, art, theater, Paris, fantasizes about friendships and girls, dissects the grown-ups around him with no less unforgiving irony and acuity than when he studies himself, and ultimately worships the good and beautiful things of life, hoping one day to craft the story of his maturation as a human being and as an artist.
… Tomas Venclova speaks at the EU about his mother tongue and an "eccentric, capricious city." | The Book Haven.
The lead-in is about the only Lithuanian I remember from when a friend tried to teach it to me years ago.
… Zealotry of Guerin: The Cyclops (Odilon Redon).
… 21 Best Tom Clancy Quotes - The Daily Beast.
Most of these sound about right to me, but it's easy to figure which ones the people at the Beast might object to.
...Has David Birnbaum solved the mystery of existence?
… www.culturalcognition.net - Cultural Cognition Blog - Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension.
… I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments--all very negative-- of what I understand the "Tea Party movement" to stand for. I just no longer assume that the people who happen to hold those values are less likely than people who share my political outlooks to have acquired the sorts of knowledge and dispositions that a decent science comprehension scale measures.