There are public radio stations so hidebound that they run the not-that-hilarious Car Talk twice each week.Which stations? Maybe it will be This Week's Puzzler.
Title phrase credit to Douglas Rushkoff
He [Ronald Reagan] was alive to ideas (an early National Review subscriber)...(via JSOnline)--Richard Cohen
The Lord said:That verse has been quoted to me in response to my raising a liturgical issue at my parish, though not quoted all the way to the end.
“Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
These you should have done, without overlooking the others.
It is no accident that the prologue to David Grossman’s new novel, “To the End of the Land”, takes place in a fever ward. As the stories unfold, the reader discovers that fever is not just a symptom of physical illness. It becomes a description of the existential state of Israel.--The Economist
The Peruvian writer Maria Vargas Llosa today [Thursday, October 7, 2010] won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature, crowning a career in which he helped spark the global boom in South American literature, launched a failed presidential bid and maintained a 30-year feud with the man he now joins as a Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez.--Richard Lea
While about two-thirds of the Kafka estate eventually found its way to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the remainder — believed to comprise drawings, travel diaries, letters and drafts — stayed in Brod’s possession until his death in Israel in 1968, when it passed to his secretary and presumed lover, Esther Hoffe. After Hoffe’s death in late 2007, at age 101, the National Library of Israel challenged the legality of her will, which bequeaths the materials to her two septuagenarian daughters, Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler. The library is claiming a right to the papers under the terms of Brod’s will. The case has dragged on for more than two years.--Elif Batuman
from 1929 until his death 27 years later, he [Robert Walser] lived in an asylum and produced no more literature, or so it was believed for many years. “I’m not here to write. I’m here to be mad,” he proclaimed.
In fact, he wrote quite a bit, but in microscript, a type of shorthand. He also wrote in such small scribble that it was not recognized as literature for decades, and no one translated the microscripts into German until the 1980s. Now, they have been translated into English.--David Ziemer
After reviewing cogent legal arguments presented by Hamilton and Jefferson, President Washington came down squarely on Hamilton’s side, approving the first central bank.
John Marshall, the famed chief justice, traced the rise of the two-party system to that blistering episode, and American politics soon took on a nastily partisan tone.--Ron Chernow (via James Bowman at Arma Virumque)
There were about 400 replies received, and there were 2 negatives.He remains in office with 99.5% of the vote. With over 7,000 parish members, I think we can call turnout light.
I am happy that we reaffirmed our “partnership” to work together in the next few years. Thank you so much. I think they will be exciting years.As do I, if he means the excitement of deleveraging. Our parish is still paying the mortgage on a building project from around the turn-of-the-millenium.
[Wigs on the Green, by Nancy Mitford,] is a satire of something most unfunny: the predilection of parts of the English upper-crust for fascism in the 1930s.--Robert Messenger
Tea Party activists — and their candidates — pose a problem when they move the discussion into a broader one about the role of government.
“You see these rallies and the signs are all about the Constitution,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a nonpartisan political report. “They want it to be about these big ideological ideas, when I don’t think most voters think that way. ..."
--Kate Zernike
When the Qur’an was first dictated in the 7th century, by contrast, there were a few minimal conditions that had to be met in order for the resulting work to count as holy, and thus to count as the Qur’an at all. For one thing it had to be in Arabic. For another, it had to be written by hand. ... In fact, not only has there often been serious debate as to whether a non-English approximation of the Qur’an can count as the Qur’an at all, but there was also a long period during which even a printed Arabic text could not pass the test of authenticity, which surely must precede the test of holiness.--Justin E. H. Smith (via Arts & Letters Daily)
The account in the Book of Exodus describes how the waters of the sea parted, allowing the Israelites to flee their Egyptian pursuers.
Simulations by US scientists show how the movement of wind could have opened up a land bridge at one location.
--BBC (via Diogenes at Off the Record)
