Sometimes writing for a weekly newsmagazine means being willing to ask a dumb question. Writing Time‘s cover story this week on the sexual trespasses of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other powerful who did not happen to specifically get into trouble this week, Nancy Gibbs, one of the best to ever write in this format, …
At a Paul Simon concert in Toronto last week, a Newfoundland woman named Rayna Ford called out for Simon to play “Duncan,” saying that it was the song on which she learned to play guitar. Perhaps feeling groovey, in any event feeling light-hearted, Simon promptly invited Ford onstage to pay the song. The video records …
Yesterday was a beautiful day for predicting the end of the world. Apparently life as we know it will come to an abrupt halt a week from tomorrow. That, at least, is the opinion of Harold Camping, a preacher from Oakland, California. At about 6pm (PST, I’m assuming), he is predicting that about two percent …
SEVENTH AVENUE & 33RD STREET, MAY 12th, 12:35 PM Read More »
In his explanation of why he refused to release the photos of the dead body of Osama bin Laden, President Obama told 60 Minutes “”We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. We don’t need to spike the football.” I don’t agree. Put me down as standing with the Beatles on this one. As they …
In an elegantly-written article in the Times today, Cathy Horyn talks to Christine Baranski, a girl from Buffalo, apparently Polish, who turned herself into an artist–a person of intellect, refinement, passion. She comes across as kind of wonderful, most especially in this passage: “All this talk about former haunts led Ms. Baranski to observe: “We’re …
Words of wisdom show up in the oddest places. Watching the Yankee game Friday, announcer Michael Kay was talking about a conversation he had with the manager of the Red Sox, Terry Francona, whose team has started the season a lamentable 0 and 6. According to Kay, Francona was saying that no, the team wan’t …
On the one hand, the Daily Mail reports that the Education Secretary of the UK says that classic literature is dying out in schools. Michael Gove says that “barely one in 100 studied books published before 1900.” The article says that only 1,236 of the 300,000 pupils who took the most popular English literature exam …
In The Atlantic this month, Graeme Wood has an article about a study undertaken by Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. It’s a study about how the rich feel about being rich, “an extraordinary sample of confession, memoir, and apologia” from the super-rich, as the center’s director, the sociologist Paul G. Schervish, puts it. …
Great Britain is conducting its national census this month, which save for the war year of 1941, the government has done every decade since 1801. According to an article by Jon Henley in the Guardian, the count costs £482 million, and because it “is expensive, inaccurate and inefficient,” it is likely to be the last …