Reading Rat - April 2020

Articles, Essays, Reviews

I apologise to the Jewish community — rebuilding your trust starts now, by Keir Starmer, Evening Standard

How Rituals and Focus Can Turn Isolation Into a Time for Growth, by Arthur Kleinman, The Wall Street Journal

Why New Jersey’s Unemployment Insurance System Uses a 60-Year-Old Programming Language, by Elena Botella, Slate

Books of dying: The grim plight of New York’s booksellers, essay hy Benjamin George Friedman, The Times Literary Supplement

Student Library at the Open Library

Annual Report 2019, The Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies

Outside government: compassion, innovation, flexibility, Highway funding, which relies on the gas tax, will be hard hit as fuel sales decline, by Marie Rohde, Badger Institute

How to stop websites accessing your webcam and microphone: When was the last time you checked what permissions you've given the sites you visit? by Maria Mellor, Wired

Universal School Library at the Internet Archive

Milwaukee Public Libraries Increase Digital Access to Members, Milwaukee Magazine

The British Museum Puts 1.9 Million Works of Art Online, Open Culture

Catholics in Crisis, by Claes G. Ryn, originally published in The American Conservative, March/April 2020, posted at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship, The Catholic University of America.

Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump, by Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020

Taking Sheen Seriously, by James M. Patterson, First Things

Stadium Development: Special Treatment From Special Legislation, by Caleb Tomaszewski, 30 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 415 (2020)

Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?, by Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb, American Economic Review 2020, 110(4)

The New York Times Magazine profile of Weird Al Yankovic in its April 12th edition is behind the paywall, so here's "Frankie Goes to Hollywood", Weird Al's tribute to Frankle Yankovic and guide to the 28th Annual Grammy Awards, then upcoming on February 25, 1986.

Frankie went on to win the Polka Grammy for 70 Years of Hits, but Weird Al, nominated in Comedy for Dare to Be Stupid, lost to Whoopi Goldberg.

Events

Great Conversation Reading Group, Current Reading from the Ten Years Reading Plan in Great Books of the Western World: May, The Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell; June, Capital, by Karl Marx, Prefaces, Part I-II

Great Books 2018-2019 Readings for the Great Books Roundtable Discussions at Special Collections on the Fourth Floor of the Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: May 27th, Richard II, by William Shakespeare.