…and journalists! Via Leah Libresco, the Dictionary of Numbers: It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets. It might turn the phrase “315 million people” into “315 million people [≈ the population of the United States]“. As Glen explains, he once read an article about US wildfires which mentioned that the largest fire of the year had burned “300,000 acres.” This didn’t mean much to Glen: I have no idea how... Read more
at AmCon: Both the title and the trailer of Mira Nair’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (now playing in DC at the E Street Cinema and Bethesda Row Cinema) suggest that this will be the story of how a man becomes a fundamentalist: how a young-gun New York financier, humiliated and mistreated after 9/11, turns his back on America and returns to Pakistan to become an Islamic terrorist. This is not the actual story of the film. In a sense the movie... Read more
Hi all! What are the best novels you’ve read about friendship? And have you read any great novels about charity or service to those in need? These don’t need to be “positive” books–in fact, I’m maybe even more interested in books which explore the problems and dilemmas of these forms of love, while still treating them as forms of love. And for the second question I admit I’m especially interested in stories which don’t involve vowed religious (priests, nuns etc),... Read more
via Ratty, I think: Kaufman thinks Russian literature is — unexpectedly — a particularly good fit for prisoners. The authors often asked what they called “the accursed questions,” Kaufman said: “Who am I? Why am I here? Given I’m going to die, how should I live?” more Read more
reports: Pope Francis warned against “gentrification of the heart” as a consequence of comfortable living, and called on the faithful to “touch the flesh of Christ” by caring for the needy. The pope’s words came in a homily during Mass in St. Peter’s Square May 12, when he canonized the first Colombian saint, as well as a Mexican nun and some 800 Italians martyred by Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. more Read more
blogs: The true ideological inclinations of the Obama White House can be endlessly debated, but slightly more than halfway through this presidency I think it’s fair to make the following generalization: Obama has governed as a business-friendly social democrat and an aggressive social liberal, as a hawkish interventionist when intervention seems cheap and easy (drones, missiles, etc.) and a cautious realist when it doesn’t, and as a surprisingly vigorous defender of presidential prerogatives across a variety of fronts. A few... Read more
You totally can! Kind of amazing; via Ratty. Read more
report: Incarceration reduces former inmates’ earnings by 40 percent and limits their future economic mobility, according to a new Pew report, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility. This is a growing challenge now that 1 in every 28 children in America has a parent behind bars, up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago. “People who break the law need to be held accountable and pay their debt to society,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project... Read more
“I think you are very fond of Sebastian,” she said. “Why, certainly.” “I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long.” Read more
at the Nat’l Catholic Reporter: In two weeks, on May 25, the Catholic church will celebrate what is quite possibly the most important beatification of the early 21st century. Italian Fr. Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi will be recognized as a martyr in a Mass celebrated in Palermo on the island of Sicily, where he was assassinated in 1993 for challenging the Mafia’s hold. The event probably won’t get a lot of media play outside Italy, especially since the pope isn’t going... Read more
Eve Tushnet
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In