Weekend Edition: 5-17

Bulletin Board

• There will be substantive posts this coming week

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

• Blackness ever blackening: my lifetime of depression (“Even when the veil is present, something in the making of me means I know, as I knew then, that there is an intolerable reality lurking behind it, a bleak, inhuman emptiness, and that this is the truth behind the web of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world.”)
• The Day I Started Lying to Ruth (“But in the lobby of my hospital, I knew the answer: My knowledge was too clear-eyed. I couldn’t pretend for another day or hour or minute that there were good days ahead.”)
• Age of Ignorance (“It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today.”)

Lawsuit of the Week

• Au Bon Pain, Kmart, the City of New York and 1,000 John does are being sued for $2 undecillion, although one commentator notes that what the defendants did “is not entirely clear”

Legal Ruling of the Week

• “Jesus Christ does not hold copyright for works published in his name, a German court has ruled.”

Bookish Linkage

• How libraries decide what books to keep
• When does a book become a classic?
• Bookish Lists: Six types of aggravating readers; 3 of the best books on China; the top 10 loners in fiction; 5 books to read when life sucks

Nonbookish Linkage

• George Carlin’s guide to life
• Why is the liberal media so white?
• Fifteen facts about African religions
• The ethics of erasing bad memories

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During the past four decades, America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason