Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubez
- What Are We Doing Here? (“A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest.”)
- The NFL Is Right, Trump Is Wrong: Dissenting Players Are Patriotic (“Dissent is patriotic, because it affirms that our country is worth fighting for.”)
- Forgetfulness: the dangers of a modern culture that wages war on its own past (“The end result of a systematic devaluation of the past, however, is a condition of confusion not unlike that experienced by those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Bookish Linkage
- A Florida school district is prohibiting the use or purchase of any instructional material, including books, containing “any profanity, cursing, or inappropriate subject matter.” AP class materials are exempt — if “they do not substantially violate community standards.”
- More idiocy: Cambridge University (!!?!) gave students “trigger warnings” for two Shakespeare plays
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “cathedrals”
- The 2016 VIDA Count is out
- An introduction to “New Weird”
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders won the Man Booker Prize while Winnie M Li’s Dark Chapter won Not the Booker Prize
- How to win the Man Booker prize and it’s bad history
- Bookish Lists: 8 novels about bookstores; 10 life lessons from Russian literature; 8 books set in mental hospitals; 5 books Ray Bradbury thought we should read; top 10 imaginary drugs in fiction
Nonbookish Linkage
- Perhaps reflecting the state of America today, a sample of U.S. Supreme Court opinions from 2011-2015 showed a number cited false or wholly unsupported factual claims
- U.S. education should take a hint: Italian high schools will begin teaching students how to detect fake news
- America’s top 10 fears, 2017 edition
- Joni Mitchell, female genius?
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won’t give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Joni Mitchell, “California,” Blue
