Mar 10 2015

Rereading Atlas Shrugged as South Africa becomes a dictatorship

Karl Marx was a brilliant diagnostician. His analysis of the way in which unregulated capitalism can drive inequality was incisive, especially considering the lack of data available to him to prove his point. His solution, on the other hand, was appallingly destructive.

That seems to happen fairly often. People notice a social or economic problem, assess and diagnose its cause with astonishing aplomb, and then suggest a solution of startling naiveté based on cartoonish assumptions about the way people behave.

Sometimes the cartoon solution reflects the cartoon in real life. Continue reading →

Mar 8 2015

Women you’ve probably never heard of – Pulitzer winner Susan Glaspell

This is the beginning of the Wikipedia article on Susan Glaspell:

Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, novelist, and journalist. Continue reading →

WordsDay: Literature
Mar 5 2015

Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time: the Byron factor

“Contradiction is, with me, an innate passion; my entire life has been nothing but a chain of sad and frustrating contradictions to heart or reason.” – Grigoriy Pechorin in A Hero of Our Time…

A Hero of Our Time by Mihail Lermontov (image courtesy Goodreads)

Another Russian classic from the 2015 reading list. Mihail Lermontov, like Pushkin, whom I write about last time, is a Russian Romantic era writer, and his only significant work, the novel A Hero of Our Time, is as good an example of the enormous impact of Byron on European literature as a reader will ever find.

The Byronic figure, a response to proto-Romantic figures like Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling or Goethe’s Werther, was a world weary, bored, self-destructive  figure who cannot find peace anywhere. Lermontov’s Grigoriy Pechorin is just such a figure. His inability to relate to his fellow human beings is not simply excused – it is admired and forgiven:

…if all people reasoned more, they would be convinced that life is not worth worrying about so much…

Continue reading →

Category: RaceCrime
Mar 4 2015

DOJ on Ferguson: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Pattern of biased policing in Ferguson doesn’t make Wilson easy to charge

Via NBC: DOJ Says Officer Darren Wilson, Cop in Ferguson Case, Won’t Be Charged

“But the Justice Department announced Tuesday after its six-month investigation into the Brown shooting that police in Ferguson have consistently violated citizens’ civil rights. Specifically, while blacks make up 67 percent of the city’s population, they made up 93 percent of arrests from 2012 to 2014. Black drivers were also more than twice as likely to be stopped for a traffic search than whites.”

So, as a member of a police department that consistently violates citizens’ civil rights, Wilson rolls into a predominantly black neighborhood and words are exchanged because Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson were walking in the middle of a residential street. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe if Brown and Johnson had been walking on the sidewalk they would merely have looked furtive and suspicious. Continue reading →

Mar 2 2015

On Netanyahu’s address to Congress, Lee Zeldin hits the nail

Just not on the head

NYT reports: Netanyahu’s Visit Bringing Uninvited Problems for Jewish Democrats

“Regardless of whether you are Jewish or not Jewish, Republican or Democrat, if you greatly value having the strongest relationship possible with Israel, welcoming the Israeli prime minister to America with open arms should be something members fully embrace,” he [Rep. Lee Zeldin] said. “It is an opportunity to let not just the Israeli prime minister know, but the Israeli people know, that America is united in strengthening our relationship with Israel.”

It’s also an opportunity to let Bibi and the Israeli people know that America is clearly not so united in strengthening that relationship as they would like to think. Continue reading →

ArtSunday
Mar 1 2015

Pushkin’s Prose Tales: Russian Romanticism, Russian Literature…

Pushkin’s prose tales, mostly uncompleted, tantalize and torment readers both with their beauty and with the wistful sense of ‘what might have been’ that their incompleteness conveys….

The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin, trans. Gillon R, Aitken (image courtesy Goodreads)

This selection from the 2015 reading list is a re-read from my undergraduate days. The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin in the Gillon Aitken translation includes every piece that Pushkin worked on. Like any scholarly edition, it has that painstaking sense of completeness that can feel like both a blessing and a curse. It is wonderful to read all the prose that Pushkin attempted in his life; it is painful to be left wondering again and again as stories and novellas break off with the translator’s too oft repeated message:

(Pushkin never completed this story.)

Pushkin is Russia’s first great modern writer. Renowned even more as a poet than as a prose writer, his magnum opus, Eugene Onegin, tells a story that is haunting in its prescience: a sensitive poet is drawn into a duel and killed due to his flirtatious fiancée.

Pushkin himself was killed at the age of 37 in a duel caused by his flirtatious wife. Art can imitate life with disastrous consequences.  Continue reading →

Feb 28 2015

Wes Brown sent off: the utterly pathetic state of officiating in the Premier League #BREAKINGNEWS

Referee Roger East fucked it in today’s Manchester United/Sunderland match, clearly sending off the wrong player after a foul in the box on United Striker Radamel Falcao. Fine. It’s a fast game and mistakes get made, even by the best of officials.

But no, that’s not good enough.

Two hours after the match, the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) issued a statement which explained East’s actions.

“From his position Roger East, the match referee, believed he saw contact from John O’Shea and Wes Brown on Radamel Falcao,” the statement read.

Continue reading →