Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2666
August 7, 2010
The Most Beautiful Words
From the Oxford University Press blog:
Henry James was a man of many words. But when it came to selecting just a
pair that he would define as the two most beautiful words in the
English language, he chose the words, summer afternoon.
Enjoy. The humidity lifted here today - and it's beautiful. I can even breathe!
Henry James - Oxford University Press - English language - Education - University of Oxford
Keep On Truckin'
Dave Carter reports from
the road:
As a study of the exotic, it's hard to beat the averagetruck stop. Taken as a group, truckers are an eclectic bunch. There area huge number of veterans like yours truly, for whom trucking has enoughsimilarities to a deployment to make it a comfortable fit. There arethe cowboy types, complete with hats, belt buckles, pointy-toed boots,and a steely-eyed stare that would turn the Marlboro Man into a firstclass bed wetter. We have biker types complete with...
The View From Your Window Contest
You have until noon on Tuesday to
guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If no one guesses the
exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to
VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Winner gets a free The
View From Your Window book, courtesy of Blurb. Have at it.
Country music - Web Design and Development - View From Your Window - Arts - Blurb
"Cordoba"
Carl Pyrdum fisks Newt Gingrich. It's a tour de force from an actual student of history:
Notice how carefully he's phrased his claim to give the impression that during the medieval conquest of Spain the Muslims charged into Cordoba and declared it the capital of a new Muslim empire, and in order to add insult to injury seized control of a Christian church and built the biggest mosque they could, right there in front of the Christians they'd just conquered, a big Muslim middle finger in the...
The Author As Businessman
Paul A. Cantor raves about a recent biography of Charles Dickens:
True to his basic purpose, his is one of the best studies I know of the life of a professional writer precisely in his capacity as a professional writer. The book offers a minutely detailed, step-by-step account of Dickens's whole literary career, from his early and spectacular popular success with Pickwick Papers, to his establishment as a respectable man of letters, to his unprecedented and unparalleled domination of the...
Your Inner Talk Radio Host
Jonah Lehrer explains how we rationalize:
Humanreason has nothing to do with finding the truth, or locating the bestalternative. Instead, it's all about argumentation...So here's my newmetaphor for human reason: our rationality isn't a scientist – it's atalk radio host. That voice in your head spewing out eloquent reasonsto do this or do that doesn't actually know what's going on, and it'snot particularly adept at getting you nearer to reality. Instead, itonly cares about finding reasons that...
Epistemic Egalitarianism
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger points out the website's essential flaw:
There's a whole worldview that's shared by many programmers – although not all of them, of course – and by many young intellectuals that I characterize as "epistemic egalitarianism." They're greatly offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought to matter is...
August 6, 2010
The Weekly Wrap
Today on the Dish, Kerr kept at the ruling on Prop 8, with Andrew at his heels, and one reader dissented with Walker's use of history. Rowe glimpsed the SCOTUS future, Kilgore flagged an ad fueled by Prop 8, and Ruth met Jerry.
Andrew got mugged by the reality of war; and Kristol's chutzpah didn't help. Arab confidence in Obama was collapsing, which may not be a bad thing, while Daniel Levy looked closer at piecemeal peace in the Middle East. Blumenthal plumbed the polls on tax cuts, Drum...
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