Reviews and News:
The other side of 1970s radicalism: "With Witness to the Revolution—a sprawling oral history of the later years of the decade—the journalist Clara Bingham offers an amalgamation of the recollections of hippies, cops, LSD enthusiasts, activist thespians, Vietnam vets, Nixon staffers, Weather Underground members and the FBI agents assigned to track them, and, of course, various associates of the Grateful Dead. Bingham focuses on the time period between August 1969 and September 1970, which, as she points out, crammed in more momentous 'sixties moments' than most recall. 'Everything suddenly was Technicolor and there was hope,' says feminist Robin Morgan at the book's beginning—until things got dark."
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The main character of J. M. Coetzee's latest novel is a "sermonizing dullard": "The Schooldays of Jesus is not, as it happens, about the schooldays of Jesus. It is the Man Booker-nominated sequel to The Childhood of Jesus(which, you guessed it, did not once refer to the childhood of Jesus either). J.M. Coetzee is now so much part of the literary pantheon, so liable to be rewarded by the critical classes and the academic industry surrounding him, that he no longer needs to worry about basics such as having a title that makes sense. He should still worry, one feels, about telling a story worth following."
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Pericles's politics. "In general, the populist, democratic line in domestic politics tracked with the anti-Spartan position in foreign affairs, and the "left" end of Athenian politics had a distinctly nationalist edge. Pericles thus sponsored successful legislation to pay Athenians for their service on juries and other government functions (a radical reform that, Samons has long argued, altered the character of democratic government forever) and legislation to restrict Athenian citizenship to those born of both an Athenian mother and father. It appears that Pericles' role often involved racing to the bottom of a given debate faster than his competitors—for example, the funds used to pay Athenians for their time in public service were taken from the tribute payments the city received from other Greeks in return for protection against Persia. This obvious shakedown was popular with the poor, but offensive to Athenians with a more traditional sense of propriety. As is often the case in democracies, propriety lost. Why then is Pericles generally remembered as a great man and not as a rabble-rouser, albeit one who achieved such prominence that he could occasionally afford to tell the people they were wrong on matters of strategy?"
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A history of the ellipsis: "A scholar of medieval manuscripts, David Wakelin, conducted a study on how popular various methods of omission and correction were based on a sample of 9,000 manuscripts at the Huntington Library. He found that 'crossing out, subpuncting, or erasure' accounted for 25% of the corrections he found. He does not provide a percentage of subpuncting alone, but it does occur in a variety of manuscripts, particularly those in the 14th and 15th centuries. Wakelin notes that subpuncting begins to die out in the early 16th century, and [Anne] Toner picks up on the rise of the ellipsis in the late 16th century. Could the two be related?"
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In praise of playing and watching sports: "More than any other competition, the Olympics reveal a love of sports that transcends cultures and places. At the same time, they invite some critical questions about the sporting world."
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Biologists have long believed that the birth rate for twins is constant. It's not.
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Essay of the Day:
In The New Atlantis, Jacob Hoerger argues that increasing artificial illumination not only has a negative effect on animal life, it also limits our moral imagination:
"Things our grandparents would have been able to spot easily with the naked eye — the Andromeda galaxy, comets, the zodiacal light — are in many parts of today's world outshone by the light emanating from buildings, streets, and parking lots. Even some of the brightest arrangements of stars, such as the constellation Orion or the Pleiades cluster, are no longer fully visible to residents in and around the biggest cities — cities whose glow can illuminate the horizon from over 200 miles away. The lights of Las Vegas, for example, can be seen from eight different national parks.
"Although the phenomenon has been documented and decried by professional astronomers and amateur stargazers for decades, most of us barely notice that the nighttime skyscape is fading from view. Living in a world awash in artificial light has become the norm. According to data from the late 1990s, some 40 percent of Americans live in places where it never gets dark enough for human eyes to become dark-adapted, and over two-thirds live in places where it is impossible to see the Milky Way. Virtually none will ever experience a night dark enough for the Milky Way to cast shadows on the ground.
"Readers might be tempted to write off the disappearance of the night sky as a 'First World problem,' the sort of thing we can bother worrying about only because our most pressing needs have been addressed. But of course it is a First World problem in the most literal sense: the phenomenon is more pronounced in industrialized countries like the United States. The expansion of artificial light — and the resulting dimming of the nocturnal lights that humans, as well as other species, have looked to since time immemorial — is a consequence of the modern effort to expand human agency to the largest possible swath of surrounding space. This effort has afforded us more time in the day we can devote to work or play and more places where we feel safe. Yet the costs of our sky's increasing artificial illumination range far beyond diminished enjoyment of the stars or opportunity for telescopic research. We also lose a powerful reminder of our finitude."
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Image of the Day: Above Lucerne
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Poem: Ned Balbo, "A Word the Romans Used"
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