Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
I keep forgetting to post this. I once said that Jordan Peterson had been “completely unprepared” for his 2019 debate with Slavoj Žižek. Why? Because Peterson “knew next to nothing about Marxism.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb put it better: “Never BS…
From Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne: But of all names in the universe he [Tristram’s father] had the most unconquerable aversion for TRISTRAM;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could…
On Hope by Tara Isabella Burton in the Hedgehog Review: In order to accept our lives as a comedy, we must accept that none of us are the heroes we imagine ourselves to be. This is the truth understood by…
Paul Krugman admits that he underestimated the current rate of inflation when assessing the impact of the $1.9-billion “American Rescue Plan” early in 2021. On the other hand, Lawrence Summers warned in February 2021 that inflation might rise too high…
A few years ago, I tried listening to Jordan Peterson debating Marxism with Slavoj Žižek. It soon became clear to me that Peterson was completely unprepared: he knew next to nothing about Marxism. Or, perhaps, he was deliberately playing the…
On abortion, my thoughts aren’t much different now than in 2016: …[E]nforcing a universal ban on abortion will require a greater degree of governmental interference into the private lives of the citizenry. It would make every woman of childbearing age…
The opening sentence of a recent piece by Laura Spinney in The Guardian: Isaac Newton apocryphally discovered his second law – the one about gravity – after an apple fell on his head. Newton’s second law of motion is F…
I was trying to write a sensible comment to a piece on Medium, It’s Time We Tell the Truth about the Rolling Stones, when I came across a stunning essay by Margo Jefferson. Ripping Off Black Music, published in 1973…
Ian Bogost writes in The Atlantic: …Ebook devices are extremely compatible with an idea of bookiness that values holding and carrying a potentially large number of books at once; that prefers direct flow from start to finish over random access;…
“We liked how Actress X played her part – we just didn’t like Director Y’s production.” Every now and then, critics write this – without noticing the contradiction within. More often than not, it turns out that Actress X excelled…
Reading Faramerz Dabhoiwala‘s review of three books on British imperial history, I saw this quote from 1911 concerning West Indians of color: …lazy, vicious and incapable of any serious improvement, or of work except under compulsion. In such a climate…
Here’s an extract from The Rainbow (1915) by D. H. Lawrence describing Will Brangwen’s infatuation with German religious art: These were the finest carvings, statues, he had ever seen. The book lay in his hands like a doorway. The world…