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Techdirt

We're Living In the Most Creative Time In History Paramount Wants To Talk To Students About How They're All Thieves & Then Ask For Ideas On What To Do Tom The Dancing Bug Takes On Insanity Of Copyright Extension And Disproportionate Punishment DailyDirt: Bacon Tastes Good. Pork Chops Taste Goood.Ubisoft Cuts Off Legit Players With DRM Server Migration; Pirates Play On Tell The USTR To Stop Being A Pawn Of Hollywood Lobbyists Bulgarian MPs Wear Anonymous/Guy Fawkes Masks To Protest ACTA Young People Followed SOPA News More Than Election News Poland Prime Minister Suspends Any Effort To Ratify ACTA; May Kill ACTA In The EU Is The US Meddling In Polish ACTA Voting?Watch Out: Widespread Protests Against ACTA Spreading Across Europe Hollywood Still Doesn't Realize That The Internet Drives Popular Culture Now Hey Advertisers! Stop Believing The NFL's Lies About Trademark Law And Call The Super Bowl The Super Bowl If Politicians Pushing SOPA/PIPA Want To Create Jobs, They Should Support The Internet -- And Stop Treating Copyright Companies As Special When Judges Are Determining Whether Or Not Art Should Exist... We Have A Problem One Nation, Under Guard Copyright Troll Submits Entire Filing About How 'Radical, Quasi-Anarchist' EFF Should Be Blocked From Participating In Case Jenzabar Continues To Try To Censor Criticism Via Trademark Bullying Making The Case For PR Pros Editing Wikipedia Congress Trying To Regulate Certain Wireless Spectrum Issues... In A Payroll Tax Bill?

Alternet

Alternet Special Coverage - Occupy Wall Street

An Apology, But Not A Reversal, From the Susan G. Komen Foundation If We Can Stop the Keystone Pipeline, We Can Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining in Appalachia New York City: Still The Marijuana Arrest Capital Of The World Susan G. Komen: Can You Trust a Breast Cancer Organization Whose Staff and Board Members Lie About Breast Cancer? No History Is Illegal: Teach-Ins Target Arizona’s Mexican American Studies Ban, As National Organizations Demand Return of Banished Books The Cancerous Politics and Ideology of the Susan G. Komen Foundation Child Abduction for Adoption and the Tangled Web of Deceit in Guatemala: A Review of Erin Siegal’s “Finding Fernanda” Wag The Seal Retirees Occupy Century Aluminum So Pa, So Good…But Must Activists Always Align With Corporations To Win? Hauling the Koch brothers into Congress In Bad Faith: New Study Further Underscores Lack of Truth in Anti-Choice Claims Are black pastors opposing marriage equality for religious right money? Covering Romney? Some Tips for Journalists Tracking Mitt’s Changing Position on “Personhood”MORE

Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins If We Clear Out Our Ideological Cobwebs, Perhaps Americans Can Have a Long Overdue Discussion German Radiation Expert: Fukushima “Atomic Bomb” Possible Strange case of Kentucky soldier charged with espionage Petition to Stop Foreclosures, Hold Banks Accountable! The Great Rice Shortage Occupy Wall Street? No Problem! Occupy everything…but after the anger, then what? Remember, Joe, There Is No Tea Party A real Social Network.MORE

Koch Brothers Convene Super-Secret Billionaires' Meeting for 2012 Elections

Why Do Dangerous Financial Criminals Roam Free?

7 Privacy Threats the Constitution Can't Protect You Against

Crashing the Gates: How a Handful of Progressive Activists Brought Liberal Talk-Radio Back to the Nation's Capitol

5 Important Lessons from the Komen/Planned Parenthood Fiasco (Don't Mess With Women's Health)CIVIL LIBERTIES

How the GOP Is Resegregating the South

Keystone XL Opponents Need a Jobs Program DRUGS

The NYPD Commissioner Told Cops to Follow the Law -- So Why Did Illegal, Racist Pot Arrests Continue to Increase?

6 Things You Need To Know About the Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood Controversy (Updated: Komen Reverses Decision)

ECONOMY Doomsday Scenario: What Happens When Banks Control the Economy?

FOOD 1.25 Billion Chicken Wings? The Vast Amounts of Crappy Food Americans Consume on Super Bowl Sunday

The 18 Most Secretive Corporations in the Citizens United Era BELIEF

Why You Don't Need God to be Good: the Rise of Atheist Charities

The Right-Wing Zombie Lie About Public Workers That Just Won't Die ECONOMY

Bill Moyers: 6 Movies You Have to See About the Financial Crisis ENVIRONMENT

Gasland Director Josh Fox: Obama's Support for Natural Gas Drilling 'A Painful Moment' for Communities Exposed to Fracking

TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT Why We Got Ayn Rand Instead of FDR: Thomas Frank on How Tea Party 'Populism' Derailed a New New Deal

6 Things You Need To Know About the Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood Controversy (Updated: Komen Reverses Decision)

Breasts Yes, Vaginas No? How to Fight Back Against Komen "Race for the Cure" Foundation's Bizarre Capitulation to Right-Wingers VISIONS

New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World

The Real Newt Gingrich: 5 Things Georgians Know That the Rest of Us Should Hot News and Views

Komen Website Hacked, Planned Parenthood Rakes in Donations, and News Surfaces That Komen Official Resigned Over Decision CIVIL LIBERTIES

New York Muslims Fight Back Against Police Department's Institutionalized Paranoia About Islam

Earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

ENVIRONMENT Why a Likely Natural Event Could Cause Nuclear Reactors to Melt Down and Our Grid to Crash

Guy Fawkes mask, from V for Vendetta.

ACTIVISM How 'Anonymous' Went From Mischief Makers to a Force That Terrifies Corporations and Governments

TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT Praying to Be Skinny and Straight: Why Evangelicals Are Concerned With Weight-loss and 'Ex-gay' Therapies ECONOMY

6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America BELIEF

5 Signs the Christian Right Still Wields Too Much Power in America

The Real Newt Gingrich: 5 Things Georgians Know That the Rest of Us Should ECONOMY

United States of Europe? What it Will Take to Save the Continent from Economic Collapse

ELECTION 2012 In Florida Romney Trounces Competitors, But Gingrich Steals Thunder With Bizarre Speech

VISIONS What's Next? Join With AlterNet in Looking into the Future

Why is Obama So Chicken, Unwilling to Even Address the Question of Pot and the Failed Drug War?OCCUPY WALL STREET

Why #OWS Needs to Denounce Violent Tactics on Display at Occupy Oakland

Apple Tries Damage Control after Horrific Working Conditions at its Factories Exposed GENDER

Son of New York Police Commissioner Accused of Rape, Media Smears Alleged Victim WATER

Was Lou Gehrig's ALS Caused by Drinking Water?

OCCUPY WALL STREET Inside the Bacchanalian Wall Street Fraternity Party of Billionaire Bankers and Hedge Fund Predators

How Fox News Is Destroying The Republican Party

FOOD The Scary Danger of Meat (Even For Those Who Don't Eat It) ECONOMY

How Male Global Elites Work Hard to Fix the Economy - In Their Favor OCCUPY WALL STREET

Why #OWS Needs to Denounce Violent Tactics on Display at Occupy Oakland NEWS & POLITICS

Is Mitt Romney's Candidacy Part of 'The Eternal Plan' of the Mormon Church? NEWS & POLITICS

Why the Super Bowl Is Socialist

Can Labor Help Break the Power of the Democratic Establishment? A Connecticut City's Model for Change

WORLD Could Ecuador Be the Most Radical and Exciting Place on Earth?

The Truth About the Conservative Mind: Why Reactionaries from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Have Fought Real Liberty ELECTION 2012

5 Dishonest Ad Campaigns Coming Your Way For Election 2012 OCCUPY WALL STREET

Clashes in Oakland: 400 Arrests, Tear Gas, Flash-Bang Grenades

7 Signs the Corporatocracy is Losing its Legitimacy--and 7 Tools to Help Shut it Down ECONOMY

Why New Birth Control Benefits are the Right Choice and Why Religious Conservatives Have it Wrong More Top Headlines NYPD Officers Shoot and Kill Three Black Men in One Week "Responsible" homeowners and the problem and promise of American Moralism Komen Isn't the Only Do-Gooder Group Conservatives Targeted for Planned Parenthood Ties Riot Police Converge at Occupy DC: Inspection Develops into Eviction Employment Numbers Get an Unexpected Bump in January Vatican refutes top archbishop's corruption claims US seeks global help to fund Afghan troops S. Africa's ANC rejects youth leader's appeal MORE

5 Important Lessons from the Komen/Planned Parenthood Fiasco (Don't Mess With Women's Health)

Crashing the Gates: How a Handful of Progressive Activists Brought Liberal Talk-Radio Back to the Nation's Capitol

7 Privacy Threats the Constitution Can't Protect You Against

Google World

UN council to vote on Syria amid new assault - Christian Science Monitor Their vigor unflagging, Russians protest - Washington Post Pakistan seeks a place at Qatar Taliban talks - Financial Times Iran Begins New Military Exercises in South - ABC News Protests Over Soccer Match Riot Continue in Egypt - New York Times Syrian embassy in London damaged as protests erupt at diplomatic missions - The Guardian Locals bed down in Qld evacuation centres - Sydney Morning Herald Anonymous gain access to FBI and Scotland Yard hacking call - BBC News Amid peace bid, US got purported letter from Taliban - Reuters East Europe Death Toll Climbs as Siberian Cold Grips Region - BusinessWeek

Wiki News

Amazons Latest

Stuff International

Gingrich joins religion debate New net craze: Breading cats Scores dead in football riot Reclusive Amazon tribe on move Newt's moon base not lunacy?2 Two die in NSW helicopter crash Catching malaria comes with the job Cambodia still reeling Game Junkie - Gerard Campbell's gaming blog Blog: US/NZ - a cultural conversation Drivetalk: Dave Moore's blog on cars and driving Are We There Yet? Ann Aitken Worth's blog Stuff on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube 3 2

Stuff

Boing Boing

Improving on the knit Dalek Playing Black Sabbath on Tesla coils with an iron guitar, standing in a Faraday suit Canadian musician outsources his indie video to Bangalore, beauty ensues Stephen Colbert's SuperPAC hurts the Supreme Court's feelings?Bulgarian MPs wear Guy Fawkes mask for ACTA session SOPA, ACTA and WIPO: where is the copyfight headed?Chair with entrails U900 plays "Ben" on Ukulele What is this language game my daughter and her friends speak?The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life, by Shimon Edelman - exclusive excerpt Unexplained 60 meter object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden Taj Mahal Travelers: Japanese ambient music from the early 1970s ID required to buy teaspoons, which are "drug paraphernalia""My Favorite Museum Exhibit": The cyclops Dirk Staschke’s first solo exhibition: "creamy and syrupy stacks of sweets, yet, decay and collapse is looming right around the corner"Your website is not a truck Artist Mike Kelley, RIP "My Favorite Museum Exhibit": Recreating an exhibit that no longer exists Funny note to Yellow Pages in Canada "My Favorite Museum Exhibit": Butterflies eating a piranha Here Comes The Sun: the lost solo guitar Poland's Prime Minister wants to put the brakes on ACTA How to build an art shanty London's anti-ACTA demonstration, one week from TOMORROW "Lifesize" Bigfoot statue!Senior citizens, MTV, and Mitt Romney Unicode's "Pile of Poo" character Circus Galop: the bonkers, non-human-playable anthem used to stress-test automatic pianos Test-tube chandeliers, named for Marie Curie Anon releases FBI conference call

The Register

Tame the gas monster with sensors, suckers and a spiffy new fan Eight... HD camera smartphones Zuckerberg's 2011 personal income tax bill: $1.5 billion Study links dim wits to conservative ideology Micron CEO Appleton dies in plane crash Opinion poll: Anti-regulatory 'hype' unwarranted Facebook post-IPO: Free not fee will make Zuck a buck European revolt over ACTA treaty gains ground US adds more jobs than expected in January Apple iPhones, iPad back in German online store Biz urged to blast DNSChanger Trojans before safety net comes down Dead gamer sat unnoticed for nine hours in net cafe Mother charged with selling fake Facebook stock Steve Jobs sighted in Taiwan flogging Android tablets Anonymous hackers leak Scotland Yard-FBI conference call IBM snatches back SPC-1 benchmark crown US tweet deportation: Chilling behind-the-scenes photos Gun controlled lamp hits the spotlight Sysadmins: Don't get in your own way ARM rains on x86 as smartphones outship PCs IBM bit-twiddlers want point releases for big iron Sony throws smartphone party with Billabong Troubled Game wins reprieve on debt, mulls axing more stores iPhones yanked from German shelves in Motorola patent war BT reveals ultra-fast cable blowing plan for homes, biz Apple FileVault cracked in under an hour by forensics biz Nokia pours oil on burning Symbian Boffins crack superconducting graphene's melting mystery Fibre-gobbling punters help BT deposit solid profit Understanding the make-up of information management Euro watchdog asks Google to HALT privacy tweak Apple iPad beats Amazon Kindle Fire in satisfaction survey Satellite phones lift skirt, flash cipher secrets at boffins Toshiba Regza 40RL858 40in LED TV RIM shot at Android: Free PlayBooks for devs TV tuner maker intros mobile Freeview pick-up Apple Europe poaches Xbox PR mastermind Samsung 'Galaxy 4S' pic posted Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 DNA splice is on - report Next-gen Asus Eee Pad Transformer spied 100 MEEELLION .com domains now registered Brit space agency sends up 1st satellite Fujitsu out bog standard 7in tab for big biz 'We're totally in LA pissing people off'Second 'Blue Marble' NASA sat pic apes Apollo 17's stunner Facebook's Googly IPO delivers on Sun man's vision BT Vision throws Microsoft Mediaroom under a bus for Linux Orange San Francisco 2 Judges retire to consider Assange’s last chance on extradition SpaceX successfully tests SuperDraco rescue rockets

Fark

The latest stupid and possibly dangerous internet craze: Filming yourself trying to eat a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, without water, in under a minute Obesity epidemic hits US pets. Your dog wants steak, but could use a salad Driver of parking ticket "spy car" wins court order protecting him from photography Rise of bestiality brothels spurs calls for German legislators to get their act in Gere and ban zoophilia Pigs pinch pensioner for propagating potted poolside pot plants. Pisser Girl Scouts now accept credit cards, still won't accept "No" for an answer, though Having solved all other crimes, Staten Island cops now cracking down on the evil malcontents who park outside the lines What was the last movie that you saw at a drive-in? Subby's was a double-feature of Sister Act and HouseSitter Fire rips through candy company during Easter production run: "The amount of chocolate that had melted and was on the floor -- it was hard to move around in there. We had guys covered in chocolate"Theme: Before and After News: motorcyclist chases down DUI hit-and-run driver and hog-ties him with a belt. Texas: for the second time in 9 months. Fark: is recognized at the scene by the arresting police officer from the prior incident Australian SPCA designs iPad app for kittens so they can play games all Caturday long The annual Retromobile show in Paris is underway. Come for the 1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder, stay for the last Facel Vega ever built Presenting the chicken wing cupcake. You're welcome Fireman assumes task of guiding plane into landing after air traffic controllers fail to show up for work. Looks like he picked the wrong week to quit drinking A new frontrunner for Douche of the Year emerges as a 20-year-old steals a 6-year-old's lunchbox. At gunpoint Two words: Bacon Milkshake Great Britain could get up to 4" of snow this weekend. EVERYBODY KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP "You put your naked supermarket burglar in my chocolate and peanut butter" -- "No, you put your chocolate and peanut butter on my naked supermarket burglar"Busch Gardens welcomes ugly-ass baby giraffe to.....oh who are we kidding. She's adorable Buying generic is now just as expensive as buying name brands Man died while playing video games at internet cafe, but the blank stare and smell of soiled clothing allowed him to go unnoticed by fellow gamers for nine hours Dejected bank robber wearing shorts on his head, not covering his face, leaves without money when teller nearly laughs at him. With pic of what a shorts-on-head bank robber looks like Photoshop this hall of hams 1-800-GET-THIN: "They cut her liver three places during the surgery and put her in a wheelchair and sent her home to die"This week's Mugshot Roundup features assaults, DUI's, bench warrants and wait........... they arrested a melted candle?I-40 in western North Carolina which was closed due to a rockslide is now closed due to two rockslides Worker falls into nuclear reactor pool trying to recover flashlight. Worst. Origin. Story. Ever.London's first "shared space" road is a misery for drivers, blind people, and cleaners, but at least it looks weird Miami named most miserable U.S. city by panel of judges who have never been to Hartford 37 people gunned down at South Sudan peace conference Photoshop this out of the world probe Fark Quiz time, you know the drill. Can you beat your score from last week?There's dick, there's douchebag, and now there's "dart player"Bad: You're repairing a yacht when it sets sail with you on board. Worse: It's going to Antarctica. Fark: The skipper's last trip there sank Canadian Senator wants to give prisoners the option of being in the loop All right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what has infrastructure done for us?Step 1: begin copying photos from a woman's Facebook page and blog, step 2: setup social media accounts and new blog under a new name and post them for months, step 3: profit?February is National Children's Dental Health Month, or as it's abbreviated in Mississippi ... February Spokeswoman says that a few thefts by TSA agents shouldn't make us forget all the good that they've done. You could tell the Spokeswoman was a pro, because she managed to say that with a straight face College student gives up cell phone and all social media for three months--and actually survives to tell the tale When you buy a hotdog near the Super Bowl over the next few days, you will be buying from an unofficial undercover Homeland Security Agent Komen reverses funding change due to it not having broad appeal Jewish Indiana Jones faces 20 years in prison. He chose...poorly The most clever, conniving way to adopt your own baby ever World Court says Germany has immunity from lawsuits over Nazi atrocities, says the country was only following orders Fark ready headline "Christians Boycott Starbucks - Because Romans 1 Explains Starbucks Hates God"Court battle over cat ownership collapses after star witness dog dies Rabid 900-pound cow attacks Georgia farmer. Okay, okay, we'll eat more chicken Things you don't want to have written in your obituary: "Killed by hair extensions"Come down to Marina del Rey. Enjoy the seafood, marvel at the yachts, see the bales of pot floating near the dock Machete wielding rapist deemed dangerous offender. You don't say?Today's "teacher has sex with student" takes a shocking turn when hot 22 year old teacher is arrested for supplying alcohol before she gets a chance to bang anyone. (With "you'd drink with her" pic)Cain not able to explain why he attacked his brother Woman takes crack at driving America: Love it or leave it*. *$450 charge for leaving it Advice: If you are Muslim, or even have a Muslim sounding name, don't text your co-workers and tell them to "Blow away" the competition. Fark: Especially if you are in Quebec Woman picking her kid up from school enters through bus-only lane, hits gate with her car, drives over curb, and exits through entrance, and is busted for DUI and other charges. Ta-da Utah prosecutors clear police of all charges for using pepper spray and batons on a group of Polynesian students performing a haka at a football game, because no one in Utah can be expected to have the slightest idea what a haka is The violence is spreading across Egypt as the football riots continue. Here is a timeline of the events Heck of a job, Brownie No happy ending for masseuse who gave customer unexpected discharge Sure, we've all sped when we were running late for work. It's just that most of us didn't have weed and meth on us, nor did we decide to start a fight with the cops who stopped us Group of scientists searching the Antarctic for a lake buried for tens of millions of years suddenly stop responding to colleagues, Miskatonic officials Researchers say men become nicer, kinder, more caring when a beautiful woman is nearby. Well, duh The Decemberists have withdrawn their support of the Susan G. Komen foundation, Nicholas I College student sues fraternity for negligence because he fell off a deck after a bottle rocket went off in another student's rectum Drunk woman tells officer she cannot take DUI test because "of these big boobies" ...it almost worked until she started to dance (with mugshot goodness)Jack Sparrow injured "in the fight that included Cat Woman, an alien and a second pirate"My Father always told me, "If you're doing something that will make you wanted by the police, remember not to ask the police if you're wanted"In March there will be four carrier battle groups in the gulf region. Sleep tight, Ahmadinejad Russian attack plane headed for Everett. WOLVERINES Woman dies on her 110th birthday. Perhaps the surprise party was a bad idea Yeah, that's pretty much my exact reaction upon hearing Kenny Chesney, too Susan Komen Foundation introduces pink handguns to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Really Sure, I know a little Nepalese. He's right over there You can tell Valentine's Day is near, because the media has produced the first "ZOMG, PERVERTED CANDY HEARTS" story of the season Woman holding baby gets into argument over rent with boyfriend. After boyfriend douses woman in lighter fluid and sets her on fire, woman throws baby out window, where it is caught by attentive neighbors. The Aristocrats Vulcan man arrested for sexual assault. Look, there are better ways to deal with Pon Farr, dude "Yeah, fill 'er up and check the radiator Josés under the hood"Photoshop a flag for the new lunar state Meet the man with over 1,500 boardgames and exactly 0 girlfriends A game similar to freeze tag being played at school "except that a person had to be humped to be unfrozen"Woman who slept with 1,000 men reveals: "I was born a man" (w/pics)The number of Brits dying from alcohol related causes is equivalent to a major plane crash every 17 days Long lost Indonesian twins run into each other three decades later in Sweden living 25 miles from each other. Bonus: After viewing pic, you would wish you were a couch pillow How do you say, "Thank you for your service, sergeant. May you rest in peace," in Navajo?Foundation offers psychic Sally Morgan $1,000,000 to prove that her psychic abilities are real. Sally Morgan instead threatens to sue them...WITH HER MIND Deputy's attempt to apprehend suspect results in foot chase, pitbull attack, Tasering, and a bystander stabbing himself twice Is Hillary Clinton styling herself to be the next Bond villain?Subby's looking for a new beer to try. I know you won't disappoint, Fark This is why you don't let the inmates print the logos for the side of your police cars 2

Sci-tech Daily

Delicious

Ars Technica

Week in tech: acting out over ACTA, Firefox 10, and a new KDE tablet Week in science, with unusual amounts of insanity Kelihos botnet remains very much dead after all LibreOffice stats: 400 total contributors, thousands of code commits every month Indiana backing away from bill allowing creation "science" into classrooms FDA whistleblowers say government retaliated with spyware Apple updates iBooks Author EULA to clarify restriction on format, not content Study of deadly flu sparks debate amidst fears of new pandemic "I was punched in the face": Kim Dotcom says police used excessive force in raid Refurbished Motorola Xooms came with private data from previous owners ACTA on the edge in Europe? Poland suspends ratification, Greece gets hacked Boom to bust: THQ's "revolutionary" uDraw now filling warehouse shelves iPhone, iPad injunction lifted in Germany, but Apple still faces iCloud action Anonymous pokes fate bear, leaks FBI conference call about Anonymous How to watch the Super Bowl on the biggest and littlest screens Ars and nature.com at the American Museum of Natural History: good stuff Hands-on with Node.js support in Komodo IDE 7 Mozilla developing Web push notification system for Firefox AMD sets out its plans for 2013, hints at a possible ARM future The route to a Kindle owner's heart goes through the wallet Book Review: The Infinity Puzzle EFF ready to sue if "innocent customers" can't get Megaupload data back At long last, malware scanning comes to Google's Android Market Leaked Windows Phone 8 vid: Windows 8 kernel and integration, multiple cores Feds seize 307 sports-related domains in advance of Super Bowl

Techmeme

Zuckerberg's Big Tax Bill May Benefit Facebook Facebook chief faces tax bill of $1.5bn Apple Kicks Chart Topping Fakes Out Of App Store It's Not Whether Google's Threatened. It's Asking Ourselves: What Commons Do We Wish For?Windows Phone developer lead leaves for Amazon's Kindle team Yahoo unveils app search page for Android and iOS, because we need it Accidental espionage: how iMessage conversations end up in the wrong handsets Las Vegas: Startup City Microsoft testing Skype Windows Phone client, expected at MWC Bing — Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter — Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy Apple ads Genius movie, TV recommendations to Apple TV Apple updates iBooks Author to clarify that you own created content Statement by Micron Technology Board of Directors Dropbox offers up to 5GB of free space to anyone willing to go beta Multi-Language, Multi-Framework, what about Multi-Cloud?Will Lifeline Guarantee High-speed Internet Access?GoingNative 2012: Now Streaming Live!Flex Images: Blur the Line Between Cloud and Dedicated Four-Peat: The 3,000,000 Salesforce Users Vote EchoSign #1 - For the 4th Straight Year 2

Arts and Letters Daily

Belgium is a shotgun marriage of Dutch speakers in Flanders and French speakers in Wallonia. Maybe it�s time for the divorce... Frankly, we still give a damn about a movie that has just turned seventy. Adjust for inflation, and its box office is the most spectacular in film history... Before the Bauhaus, modernism was a volatile, centrifugal affair: Cubist, Futurist, Constructivist. After the Bauhaus, it gained a coherent focus... It�s the holiday season again, and time for cheerful women and their men to go out shopping together. Usually a big mistake, and Darwin tells us why... Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history, giving the West a better understanding of its adversary. Today, we need a jihadology... Faux friendship. We�re all on a first-name basis, and when we vote for president, we ask ourselves whom we�d rather have a beer with... In the 1980s and 90s, both Russia and China opened farming to private profit. For China, it turned out well, for Russia, not. Therein lies a story... Why is December 25th Christmas? If Jesus had been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later... Attacks by critics left poet John Keats much more uncertain and deeply wounded than his admirers then, or even now, have been willing to admit... As Twilight shows, not all that girls like is good art � or good feminism. But the backlash against Twilight should matter to feminists, even as they shudder... Jean Sibelius lived through difficult and politically ambiguous times in WWII Finland. But did he have more to do with the Nazis than we�d expect?... With all the hijacking off Somalia, how can pirates finance new ventures? And what do they do with their profits? They need a pirate stock exchange... Geoff Smith has invented a piano with a kind of micro-tuning that can make it useful for playing Persian music or North Indian ragas... David Guttenfelder is chief photographer for the A.P. in Asia. He offers a close-up look at the lives of U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan... Because entry barriers are so low, the web is a medium for journalistic experiments, says Nicholas Lemann. But we still need big news organizations... Franklin D. Roosevelt, after falling victim to polio, was in the business of concealing his diseases from the public. So did he die of cancer?... With more grandmasters than China and many more per capita than Russia, let alone the rest of the world, Armenia is a chess superpower... Reality TV has not only helped to debase the networks, it has even trashed the time-honored art of bad acting. James Wolcott explains... The stereotype of the sports-playing, emotionally illiterate, sex-obsessed boy keeps being regurgitated. Time to rethink boyhood... Caster Semenya won the 800-metre title by nearly 2� seconds, cruising past the other runners like a machine. Then her problems began... Mikhail Khodorkovsky�s fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?... Dogs do it, lions do it, even babies in the womb do it, and though weird theories abound, nobody really knows why we yawn... Lew Wallace, General in the Civil War, a man Billy the Kid wanted to kill, wrote a favorite 19th-century novel, made into a 20th-century movie: Ben-Hur... Should historic art be repatriated to its land of origin? Imagine the Renaissance without the spell of “looted” antiquities from Greece... Wherever they go, Michelin guides smile on restaurants that are fussily French. Can they adapt their exacting critical criteria to American fare?... Religion reduces corruption and acts to increase respect for law in ways that boost economic growth in societies where it is present... more� ... Religion is blamed when it promotes such evils as persecution or warfare, but gets less attention when it patches up the moral fabric of society... Some of Shakespeare�s plays, in the view of Edward Albee, could do with a bit of a trim. Just don�t suggest that to Albee about his own plays... Albert Einstein’s first trip to the U.S. in 1921 evoked a mass frenzy we associate with rock stars. He also split American Jewry down the middle... The instant a warm wave of Chinon red splashes over the taste buds followed by pink chunk of lamb just off the coals can never be replicated... Jane Austen was such a subtle reader of her characters’ manners, flaws, and virtues, yet was herself a mysterious presence, hard to imagine in the flesh... Should Martin Heidegger�s books be pulled from library philosophy shelves and placed in history of Nazism? For Emmanuel Faye, it�s a good idea... Max Weber and Talcott Parsons may just be social scientists in your mind. But they are enemies of the state in Tehran... California has over 5000 public servants whose state pensions exceed $100,000. For that lucky group, it is the Golden State. Meanwhile, in Texas... Livestock and poultry farms give out 500 million tons of manure yearly. Where does it all go? Ask Rick Dove, whose Cessna is equipped with cameras and a GPS device... Whacky tabloid headlines can be quite literally true � but very misleading all the same. John Allen Paulos explains... Yamaha�s new electronic piano looks like a cheap and nasty baby grand, but delivers the sonic wallop of a nine-foot Steinway. Or so it says here... Having escaped from Germany in 1933, Hannah Arendt stayed for the rest of her life loyal to the philosophic tradition that had helped lead to Hitlerism... The secret of the Mona Lisa�s enigmatic smile is a matter of which cells in the retina pick up the image and how they channel it to the brain... Science may at last help us to answer the eternal political question: really now, are liberals smarter than conservatives?... From curator to benefactor to docent, the art museum is a natural home for women, young and old. Polly Frost provides a field guide... Muslims who see themselves as having mastered technology and the modern world are often people for whom creationism has the most appeal... Ayn Rand was proud, grouchy, vindictive, insulting, dismissive, and rash � the Evel Knievel of leaping to conclusions... Was a golf ball ever sliced into potato chips? Well, says a skeptical Clive James, suppose a golf course lies near a potato field... Bobby Fischer was one of the world�s great chess geniuses. He was also, Martin Gardner explains, close to being a complete moron... If a portrait of George Washington based on Gilbert Stuart was painted by a Chinese artist in 1800, should it be in a museum of American art?... Even Richard Dawkins knows �an English nostalgia for village life, including church. I never go ... but still, I have some nostalgia for evensong�... Grape foam injected with walnut milk and covered in powdered Maytag blue cheese. It�s the American food revolution... What do F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns tell us? For starters, his popular reputation as a careless spendthrift turns out to be untrue... Moral in tooth and claw. Animals have rich social lives. Cooperation has shaped their evolution as much as competition... more� ... more� ... more� ... There are many argumentative Indians, but very few who can hold your attention in quite the way Amartya Sen can... Let us now praise � the cliché. It’s a form of speech that is concise, time-tested, and instantly familiar. What’s not to love?... Americans are becoming less nomadic, with aging, stay-at-home baby boomers wanting to be close to family, friends, clubs, and churches... No one has ever summed up the longing for the warmth of family life and a front porch more eloquently than Christopher Lasch when he wrote... How did overly enthusiastic homebuyers in the U.S. manage to sink the global economy? Time to step back and take a long, clear view... At Arts & Letters Daily we never endorse anything except our own T-shirts and coffee mugs. We�re not up for an $11,000 FTC fine. But how about you?... For centuries Germans united around the tale of Hermann, the hero who defeated the Roman army. Does Germany dare go back to this founding national myth?... Poker combines Puritan values of self-control, diligence, and slow savings with a cowboy desire to get rich quick. How very American... For China�s growing economic elite, life is sweet. For the dissidents and peasants of China, it�s quite a different story... Trying to decipher nonsense makes you smarter. At least for a while. So should John Cage be taught more in schools?... With trials, harassment, and other forms of thuggish intimidation, Russian authorities are striking out against trouble-making curators and artists... Who me? Strident? Richard Dawkins is a little incredulous. If some people don�t like him, it�s only because he loves truth even more than he loves them... A nonalcoholic sequel to the Whiskey Rebellion is brewing and it is gaining adherents. You might call it the Fresca Rebellion... Rachmaninoff? Alfred Brendel says he wrote �music for teenagers. He was a composer who knew his craft.... But for his time he was a reactionary�... Ghost writers: posthumous books by Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, and Ralph Ellison raise thorny questions about what the writers intended... The Asian tiger mosquito has traveled from its home in Southeast Asia to the ends of the earth, one of the world’s most invasive species... Michael Sandel grasps the risks of taking his Harvard justice course to TV. He might even end up challenging his own moral and political convictions... The kindest cut. Raymond Carver was one of America�s greatest writers. But was his razor-sharp style created by his editor, Gordon Lish?... Is yonder cloud not in the shape of a camel? Methinks �tis a whale � yes, very like a whale. So hath that painting the signature of Jackson Pollock?... more� ... Why do we still need to read the novels of Charles Dickens? Because they tell us, in the grandest way possible, why we are what we are... Metaphors that we put in daily use are often viewed as mere ornaments of speech. In fact, metaphors are keys to the structure of thought... Ever notice how many fine writers are just terrible at giving speeches and interviews? You are not alone. Arthur Krystal proposes an explanation... Vasily Kandinsky�s aesthetic DNA lives on in the history of art right up to the present day. Peter Plagens shows how... Vladimir Nabokov�s revisions matter. They are not mere blottings out, but a window into the greatness and humanity of an author... Our melting brains. From the pencil to the typewriter to the computer, every change in media has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing to save the old ways... Rural brain drain. Small town America is being hollowed out, losing talented young people while new farming transforms the land for those who stay... Why is music in particular nice to listen to, blessed with a gigantic industry, while there is no market for “easy listening” speech sounds?... Does reading absurdist literature make you smarter? How about Kafka? Beckett? Giraffe carpet cleaner, it seems that it does... When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency theory was about as popular in American military circles as tank warfare is today. But things change... Saving China from its kitsch: Brian and Jeanee Linden want to restore a Yunnan village with an eye to historic authenticity. They�ll need a lot of luck... Muslim creationism, built on an idea of superior Islamic science, is becoming increasingly visible and confident... Norman Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution that saved millions of lives, is dead... more� ... The Minsky meltdown. One economist saw years before anyone else exactly what the financial system is going through right now: Hyman Minsky... Typos can be an annoyance for both book authors and readers. Now in the e-book future, we can alter and correct without end... The guards at Abu Ghraib, like the guards in the Stanford Prison experiment, were victims of place and time. Weren�t Cheney and Rice victims in the same way?... Libya isn�t the most brutal regime in the world, but it remains a grotesque entity, the state as a protection racket... When buildings collapse or trains crash, special rescue teams can bring out trapped people often in a matter of minutes. This is an ancient calling... As things stand, no blow is low enough, if the president comes from the other side. Consider Obama�s school speech... Arts & Letters Daily�s Tran Huu Dung, visiting Giverny a few weeks ago, took a picture proving that Claude Monet was a photo-realist... Most of us know only one version of Little Red Riding Hood, the one we heard as a child. But there are dozens of versions of this fairy tale... Drugs will soon be on sale to improve everything from memory to our trust in others. David Edmonds describes the coming Age of Enhancement... Children everywhere stew in the same pot of family conflict, with local cultural seasonings added for flavor. But basic moral values remain similar... If we ever again experience a solar storm similar to the extreme event of September 2, 1859, damage may be staggering... more� ... Google�s book search has become a running scholarly joke, as Geoffrey Nunberg explains, with delicious examples. But it�s not beyond repair... Barack Obama�s mother, S. Ann Dunham, did solid anthropological research on village economics in Indonesia. Her work is at last coming into print... Did the Trojan War really happen? If so, did it flare at the archeological site that some scholars call Troy? Skepticism is slowly giving way... Stieg Larsson�s serial killers and torture fanciers are capitalists in league with hideous fascist bikers and meth runners. Not just crime, it�s politics... English may well be one of the biggest, most imaginative and attractive languages on the planet, but people just won�t leave it alone... With his health failing at the end, it is no surprise to discover Vladimir Nabokov was losing his writerly powers. For son Dmitri, there is no such excuse... Facial expressions do not communicate so much as enjoin us to imagine what it feels like to make the expression. Music is empathic in a similar way... Sofia Tolstoy was a woman of strength and spirit. She understood the high price she would pay to live next to one of the greatest writers in history... Van Gogh was fascinated by Japanese prints, loved nature, and was obsessed with portraiture, which he viewed as a crucial genre for modern artists... What might it mean to hate the Roman Empire with all your heart? Think yourself into the murderous soul of Mithradates, and maybe you�ll understand... Henry Fowler did not waffle: there are right ways and wrong ways to use words. A new edition of his classic guide takes us back to the original Fowler�s... For collaborators, life in Vichy Paris was sweet. Even for the likes of Sartre, Camus, and Cocteau it was hardly unlivable... Charles II loved theater, music, women, hunting, tennis, and gambling � and he gambled for a more tolerant England... Leonardo�s oeuvre was whittled down from some 90 paintings in the 19th century to the dozen or so accepted today. Plus that one in Kansas... Umberto Eco is fascinated with lists, lists of lists, and the infinite regress of adding up and counting down anything and everything. Etcetera, etcetera... When Rilke died of leukemia, he did not want to know the name of his disease. For him, all that was worth knowing was in his poems... Engrossing, energetic, and compelling, Van Gogh�s letters dramatize individual genius while throwing light on how the creative mind works... We live in the age of the memoir, a time of �more narcissism overall, less concern for privacy, a strong interest in victimhood, and a therapeutic culture�... A writer lives monkishly, coddling a loss, dead wife, whatever. Violent accidents, maybe a man is beheaded, plus B-movie dialogue. It�s Paul Auster�s fiction... Before Facebook, few of us ever asked others to be their friends, nor did we count the number of friends we had as a status indicator... There are beautiful passages in Vladimir Nabokov�s The Original of Laura, but they are few and scattered. This is a major book � for specialists... Loyalty to your workers, customer care, and giving back to the community made Baton Rouge�s favorite department store, created by Jews who fled the Nazis... In 1807, a Broadwood square grand piano, no. 10651, was taken by canal from London north to Lancaster for a John Langshaw, organist. Therein lies a story... Françoise d�Aubigné: born in a prison to a murderer, was a child beggar, then later on governess to Louis XIV�s children, and finally his mistress and wife... Friedrich Nietzsche cultivated the alien form of Dionysus on the soil of his native Pietism. In truth, he never overcame his childhood religion... He was a skeptic? Oh, spare us, puhleeze! Arthur Koestler was a man suckered by an endless line of political, intellectual, and paranormal con jobs... Malcolm Gladwell�s little cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry, and false dichotomies do annoy. But when he stops playing social scientist... Tuscany. Provence. Sigh! Last outposts of love, wisdom, healthy food, great wine, warm people, and the good life. Really now, what twaddle... Roland Barthes is still here. Like Cole Porter, he was the author of phrases and rhythms that for some of us will not go away until we do... The research of Bell Labs� Jan Hendrik Schön was so hot that editors of Nature and Science competed to publish it. He was, of course, a fraud... The Peloponnesian War can be used to guide thinking about our own problems of peace and war, argues Donald Kagan. He might be right... Maybe it�s great, post-Eve Ensler, that we’re now so garrulous on the topic of vaginas. Kathleen Parker doesn�t think so, and she is America�s most-read woman columnist... Events of 1989 are often depicted as a failure of socialism. Though this powerful view has served to discredit alternatives to capitalism, it remains in doubt... Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky�s Memories of the Future enlarge our conception of the zeitgeist that promoted some of the 20th century�s most limpid deliriums... Dangerously delicious food, designed by Big Food and by restaurants to taste so good, threatens public health. Congress needs to do something... Wikipedia writer/editors are 80% male, 65% single, 85% without children, about 70% under the age of 30. Does that tell us anything?... John Maynard Keynes offers us today not so much a well-defined economic doctrine as the attitude and the tools with which he attacked economic problems... From the Salem witch trials to W.E.B. Du Bois to Linda Lovelace, A New Literary History of America covers a lot of ground. Maybe too much... Atlas Shrugged was published 52 years ago, but in the Obama era, Ayn Rand’s angry message is more resonant than ever before... Benjamin Britten abhorred Brahms, whose First Symphony was found to be �ugly and pretentious,� while his Second was �dull, ugly, gauche�... Email has its faults, but it has also been, like journalism early in the 20th century, a cleansing agent for prose, inhibiting dull, abstract wordiness... What if you could fix global warming with a balloon, a few miles of hose, and a benign stream of sulfur dioxide? Good news? NO!... more� ... For a man so haunted by the horrors of history, Daniel Goldhagen�s geopolitical views are either willfully naive or just plain idiotic... People find it easier to get pleasure from modern art than avant-garde music, and it�s not just a matter of conservatism and a love of Mozart... History of cities: Londoners have long been willing to live in filth. Orientals wasted time building sanitation systems and bathing, but Brits preferred making money... Malcolm Gladwell says his work succeeds or fails by �its ability to engage you, to make you think." On that basis, his new book is a success... Kati Marton�s parents were brave people who paid for their courage in communist Hungary by being sent to prison. Yet it is a story with a happy ending... Heil Heidegger! Isn�t it time we saw what a creepy little buffoon this guy was? He should be the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations... As the humanization of dogs hits absurd levels (56% of owners buy their pets Christmas gifts), we�re still eager to know about real dogginess... E.B. White didn’t hate grammar, but his patience was tried by various “outraged precisionists and comma snatchers.” ... William Butler Yeats’s work touched the greatest discoveries in modern physics and psychology. But he was also a poet of violence and horror... The year 1989 was perhaps the very best year in European history. It also may have been the last occasion when world history was made in Europe... Lionel Trilling: English prof, critic, and one-book novelist, he still generates interest long after his death, while his contemporaries are forgotten... Set against Napoleon, the Imperial Russian state was far from being a ramshackle despotism. It could fight with power and determination, and win... The Somme was the darkest hour not only in death, but in the life it gave later to class conflict and the rise of Nazism in Europe... In the shark-tank that was Henry VIII�s court, Thomas Cromwell was as deadly as any. But Hilary Mantel at least gives us a Cromwell we think we understand... A god whose existence you can prove is a god to whom you cannot pray, and prayer � not proof � is where religion rises or falls... Charles Dickens created force fields of imagery and thought as each new novel came to life, feeding the process along the way... Richard Dawkins devotes his latest book to showing the deep explanatory power of evolution while hammering creationists at every turn... Some little magazines carried poetry and fiction by unknown writers. Others shaped intelligent opinion to combat puffery in literary journalism... Inhumanly ruthless in his dealings with non-Bolsheviks and inept with Stalin, Leon Trotsky was too vain and self-deceiving to merit the status of tragic hero... The invention of cooking put us on our feet, shrank our guts, gave us silly teeth and small jaws, and ballooned our brains to a gigantic, fuel-inefficient size... Anatomist William Harvey claimed in the 17th century that the uterus is a second seat of intelligence. Odd, but perhaps he was onto something... Anglo-Saxons view the French with mixed amusement and horror. France is a land the English love to hate, hate to love, and can�t get enough of... Let us face the unappetizing facts and just recognize Knut Hamsun for what he was: a pivotal figure in the literary canon and a disgusting human being... Thomas Hobbes: a hero to some, but to many philosophers the source of a malignant liberalism, Jacobinism, or even Bolshevism... It may have started nicely enough, but in the end Henry Wellcome�s will to collect artifacts over the whole of human history was an unhealthy obsession... The poetry was great, but Rilke in person could be vain, self-pitying, obsessive, whining, arrogant, childish, lachrymose, and neurotic... In a clean-shaven town, the barber shaves all and only men who do not shave themselves. Was Georg Cantor driven nuts wondering who shaves the barber?... Andy Warhol wasn�t just an artist. He was, in Arthur Danto�s words, �the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced�... William Golding knew his own capacity for evil, and he was uneasy. “I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature”... Woodstock: sex, drugs, music, and mud. It now all looks so drab and dated. It�s an event in history that is really, really over, says P.J. O�Rourke... That racist domination was the true basis for the British Empire has been repeated so often we forget how deeply false it is. Enter historian James Belich... James Joyce�s Ulysses : more venerated than read because it has been so long held in academic captivity. Declan Kiberd wants to set it free... J.R. Ackerley�s Hindoo Holiday (1932) deserves an honored place in that literary genre of witty, campy, opinionated travel books by young colonials... Richard Dawkins compares creationists to Holocaust deniers and spoons an acid sauce of mockery onto their absurd confection of half-baked ideas... For half a century, Paul Nitze and George Kennan wrestled with the USSR, the Cold War, the nuclear threat, and with each other... It all began long ago with the death of the Prophet, but the Sunni/Shia split still haunts Islam and the world today... Many could not abide him, but if you care about the English language and questions of human nature, you must love Samuel Johnson... How does a culture that has become unmoored from its own past cope with an influx of newcomers? That�s Europe�s problem... Green Metropolis. A place where people drive, pollute, consume, and throw away much less than the national average: New York City... Darwin�s sexual selection theory, Gould�s Birds of Australia, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The connection is a real one... Were the original pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries socialists or capitalists at heart? For us, of course, it’s becoming harder to tell the categories apart... The Islamic burka is a disputed but very potent human symbol. Many insist it stands only for piety. Marnia Lazreg disagrees... more� ... John Rawls�s ideal of justice may be best realized not with abstract liberalism, but with appeals to emotion, patriotism, and religion... Dogs are Aristotelians, but with their own doggy teleology. Their goals are not only very different from ours, they are often invisible to us... The global financial crisis had made some leftists in the West go all nostalgic for the Soviet Union. John Gray can only smile... Sarkozy wants Muslim integration based on real respect: “When I enter a mosque, I take off my shoes,” he says. “When you enter a school, take off your veil”... Just as in the Great Depression, members today of the middle and professional classes wonder what the new normal will be. Not like the old... Linda Lovelace and James Fenimore Cooper, together at last, along with T.S. Eliot and Mickey Mouse. It�s the wacky New Literary History of America... Dictatorships behind the Iron Curtain were destroyed not by monolithic force, but by myriad human beings impulsively reacting to the idea of freedom... Wrestling with Moses. That�s what Jane Jacobs did, and the war between her and city-builder Robert Moses was a struggle of titans... Did Thomas Jefferson father any � or all seven � of Sally Hemings�s children? It�s entirely possible. But the DNA evidence... Thomas Hobbes’s gloomy claim was that man’s existence is “nasty, brutish and short.” Frans de Waal shows this is rather unfair to the brutes... R. Crumb�s version of Genesis is as full of sexualized violence as Tales from the Crypt and as disrespectful to cultural icons as Mad magazine... Starved of adjectives, thinned to a nervous set of verbs, intense almost past bearing, Louise Glück’s dark poems are hard to look away from... more� ... Most of us are genetic dandelions: able to survive anywhere. Others are more like orchids: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming if given hothouse care... The history of the South is a dark little corner of the American past. Can light be thrown on it without seeming to defend slavery? Donald Livingston thinks so... Japanese: an excruciatingly difficult language with subtleties few foreigners can ever master. It is being simplified by the web � even dumbed down... The august tutelage of Emerson, Thoreau, and her father made Louisa May Alcott acutely conscious of unseen, spiritual realities. Still, she could play them for laughs... Always with the complaining! Possibly the most noble and eloquent kvetch in the history of English poetry is Ben Jonson. Robert Pinsky explains... For many people, the moral life is based in religion, or at least in wisdom given to us by religion. No, says Marc Hauser: the moral sense is evolved... Kandinsky�s circles. Are they yeast cells budding, a haloed blue sun and candied satellites, or life itself escaping a careless primordial stew?... The struggle for equality between the sexes keeps coming down to motherhood, over and over again. Kay Hymowitz on men, women, and evolution... Art moves on, but essential qualities of decent critics do not change: knowledge, courage, and a way of finding aphorisms with good headline potential... Christopher Alexander: an architectural theorist who has inspired counterculture DIY-ers, smart-growth advocates, computer programmers, and more... Jessica is a plucky lass who, with mum and dad�s blessings, is determined to sail solo around the world. Might it all end in tears? Roger Sandall looks at a little history... Andy Warhol�s 200 One Dollar Bills goes up in price by tens of millions, while 200 actual one dollars bills become more worthless. James Panero on mysteries of the art market... For John Tierney, there is blame enough to spread around all sides in the debates over global warming. But the pilfered East Anglia emails still give us a lesson or two about science... more� ... Martin Heidegger, a thinker many regard as the most important philosopher of the 20th century, was a bona fide, arm-saluting Nazi. How much should we care?... The Renaissance imagination reached farther across the globe than the ships of Spain or Genoa. Consider Petrarch and Boccaccio as geographers... Telling the taxi driver he was Cuban always elicited a warm reponse: “Ah, Cuba! Fidel Castro!” Taxi drivers of the world need to know about the Cuban Revolution, says Jos� Prieto... Thanks to Best in Show, dog shows now have to go forward in an age of dog-show ridicule. How fair is that? Jesse Smith wonders... Little acts of social thuggery. The screaming kid on the airplane and the iPhone babbler in line at the bank exploit our patience and goodwill, says Amy Alkon... Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is so dumb you want to cheer, Die Cusack, Die! Amanda Peet and their kids, too. It�s the end of the world, so please meet death like everyone else... The world has too many Malthusians, and what�s worse, they are multiplying like rabbits, becoming a burden to clear thinking about human population growth... There are 36 arguments for the existence of God, each with some persuasive power. But every one of them has buried within it some kind of flaw... The fetishization of change is a symptom of a deep intellectual malaise in modern education theory, where truth, knowledge, and meaning have merely a provisional character... When Jane Austen doesn�t like a character in one of her novels, she ceases to be the subtle, witty ironist everyone adores and turns into a vicious moral harridan... The Mumbai attacks: sixty harrowing hours. Jason Motlagh�s minute-by-minute account shows us scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty... Louis Armstrong, even as a little boy, �could easily see the ungodly treatment White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family I worked for”... Journalism and philosophy: how is it that the two humanistic intellectual activities that most boldly proclaim devotion to truth are barely on speaking terms?... The Arabian Nights, Brahma, Zoroaster, the Turkish Pasha: Mozart�s operatic orientalism was part of a European tradition of tireless intellectual curiosity and scholarship... The Prodigal Son, his father said, �was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.� Along with Goldilock and Snow White, this is the first story Mary Gordon remembers... It is oppressive for math teachers to “transfer” their knowledge to students. Instead, they must help students construct their own understanding of math and find their own math solutions... Umberto Eco, himself on most people�s list of top world intellectuals, enjoys lists. �I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have preferences”... Isaiah Berlin was a sublime raconteur, �a trapeze artist, soaring through every imaginable subject, spinning, flipping, hanging by his heels�... With huge student debt and more young people than ever failing to complete a degree, it�s time to ask and honestly answer, Are too many students going to college?... Velázquez�s Las Meninas is shown in a Prado gallery that often teems with people. This great work of art was painted, however, for an audience of one... In all cultures, music unfolds in time, with natural rhythms of respiration and pulse, says David Goldman. Tonal music of the West, however, adds a new element... Click, tweet, email, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the intellectual habits of internet life are killing storytelling, says Ben MacIntyre... Spaceship Jesus: Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of sixteen novels represents everything that is most deranged about religion. Frank Schaeffer explains... Scientists seem addicted to predictions lately, the more ominous or hysterical, the better. Science didn�t used to be like this, says Stuart Blackman. What�s going on?... From Lascaux to the Louvre to Carnegie Hall, human beings crave to see skillful artistic performances. Then there�s the shark in the tank... Russia’s historical misfortune � and its tragic fate � is its obsession with imaginary dangers and neglect of real ones, argues Walter Laqueur. Just look at its relation to Islam... Story-loving isn�t just culture, it�s biology. The human brain has evolved to make and enjoy narratives. So as we enter the Age of Twitter... Dying languages. Would it be inherently evil, John McWhorter asks, if there were not 6,000 spoken languages, but only one? And what if it happened to be English?... Women are often the cruellest critics of other female writers. Where does this anger come from, and at what expense? Emily Gould wonders... Even if the beauties of a peacock’s tail, the Art of Fugue, and a stunning landscape have deep Darwinian roots, the pleasures they give us are quite different... Monsters stand for human vulnerability and crisis: zombies, vampires, and serial killers are imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace... What panics critics of historic fiction, says Hilary Mantel, is not knowing for sure which bits are true. So just remember: when the author writes, �He thought that,� she�s making it up... Indian novelists who write in English have often been accused, especially by readers and critics at home, of being inauthentic, sellouts. Times are changing... Great works of musical art always contain elements of ambiguity. Masterpieces don�t push you around. Will the guys in white coats who study music ever get it?... Wisdom in medical treatment does not mean cookbook medicine. It needs a genuine partnership between doctor and patient, with complexity and uncertainty both recognized... FDR�s Four Freedoms were depicted in 1943 in four uneven paintings by Norman Rockwell. Today, it is only Freedom of Speech that remains impressive... With the Internet, we create culture for ourselves, says Tyler Cowen. Maybe the book is less central now, but our daily lives can still be filled with beauty, suspense, and learning... James Fallows survived China. If you think that is but a minor achievement, consider a few health and pollution facts about life in that bustling land... In mournful tones, both Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy at the end blamed not only Johnson and his military for Vietnam, but also themselves... Okay, so let�s assume for argument�s sake that women have become less happy relative to men since 1972. Has feminism ruined their lives? Barbara Ehrenreich wonders... Copernicus needed evidence to support his new theory of the cosmos. When he saw America on the map, he knew he had found what he was looking for. Toby Lester explains... Ah, today�s youth. The brightest do-gooders in history? Shallow narcissicists? A bunch of illiterate knuckleheads? All of the above, and more... Peter Paul Rubens, painter of those fleshy, pink nudes, was a man in control. In fact, he was a secret diplomat and spy, his artistic work a perfect cover... The saintly, white-haired Einstein was once the symbol of nuclear physics as most prestigious of all the sciences. Then, somehow, it all went wrong... Joseph Stiglitz claimed the current crisis was for market capitalism an equivalent of the Berlin Wall collapse. All analogies are imperfect, says Jagdish Bhagwati, but that was very dicey... Michael Vick’s fighting dogs were not put down: that would be a betrayal of loyalty. Professional football players, too, are selected for their loyalty to team and game... When Time magazine�s Henry Luce coined the phrase �The American Century,� it was already 1941. He turned out to be right � in spades. So what about this century?... Herta Müller knows what it means to be a target of state terror. The Nobel Prize winner tells what the Rumanian secret police did to her... My Ardi, myself. There�s a lot to say about the new human ancestor, observes Lionel Tiger. And much of it has to do with how we prefer to see ourselves... There are in life three kinds of fools: real fools, professional fools, and unsuspecting fools. The professional fool, a staple of Shakespeare, is in reality nobody’s fool... Ridicule the Great Books, if you will, but do not forget they stood for the value of hard work to achieve understanding. Not the passive entertainment model college students now expect... The looming collapse of the U.S. entitlement system casts a giant shadow over the country’s future. How did America get itself into this mess?... Theodore Dalrymple was a prison doctor. So when a philosopher argues that prisons must be closed down, replaced by centers for reintegration, expect him to have an opinion... African-American Studies departments tend to hold front and center the idea racism is immensely influential in American life. John McWhorter does not disagree, but... Almost a year after AIG’s collapse, and despite a tidal wave of outrage, there was still no clear view of what toppled the company. Until Michael Lewis got on the case... Cultural warriors from the past have turned Roman Polanski into either a ventriloquist’s dummy or a voodoo doll to let off cheap moral steam. A plague on both sides, says Brendan O�Neill... A principal cause of U.S. educational failure has been the dominance of a misguided �how-to� theory of language mastery. Schools need to teach commonly shared knowledge... Polymaths are scarcer today than in times past, with branches of knowledge fenced off from each other. �Foxes used to roam free across the hills. Now hedgehogs rule�... The argument Samuel Johnson started over the dictionary’s public role, was an early battle in what has come down to us as the culture wars. Yet another way he was ahead of his age... more� ... California, fresh, lively, and forever oriented toward the future, has for more than a century been a model for the rest of America. So who killed it?... For undergrads, watching grad students in English struggle to gain Ph.Ds and find jobs is like watching young people in Rust Belt cities: the work isn’t there, the technology obsolete... We domesticated dogs, roses, and corn. Next in line are domesticated bacteria that will power reactors to give us unlimited clean energy... In Arles, Vincent planned to be methodical and determined: “more interesting as a man who knows what he is doing than as a mad genius, because everybody can be a mad genius”... Ted Kennedy, Victorian hero. You can tell good guys from bad on principles of Darwinian literary criticism. Kennedy was one of the good guys... There’s a lot of bad food in America, almost all of it eaten in god-awful chains. But in back streets and strip malls, you can also find uncounted small acts of culinary genius... Cultural studies may stand in some minds for �half-assed research, self-congratulation, farcical pretension.� Michael Bérubé sees in it the promise of an understanding that actually works... Art historical roads � from Virgil, Ovid, and Dante to Vasari�s Michelangelo � begin with Homer, who incites us to imagine magnificent Greek palaces and their art... The price of a scoop. New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell ignored advice and was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Saving him left his interpreter and a British soldier dead... Hatred of America and those evil Jews, along with intricate conspiracy theories, helps to unite Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and their new friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... You could hardly expect Plato to approve of Grand Theft Auto IV, with what he�d have regarded as its puerile shoot-�em-up values. But what about Aristotle?... American academics have shown little curiosity about conservative ideas. Will Berkeley�s Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements make any difference?... more� ... The professionalization of everyday life was a trend from the outset of modernity, and has grown hugely since the 1960s. It�s a tyranny of experts... At its therapeutic best, women�s shoe shopping takes place in hushed, carpeted salons, salesmen serving their Cinderella customers. Zappos has another idea... For Gail Hornstein, learning to write was a matter of sharply defining her ideas, making them vivid and pleasurable. How painful to unlearn nearly all she�d been taught as a professional... Stand Up and Cheer! was meant as a morale booster for 1934, using song, dance, and little Shirley Temple to sell optimism in support of President Roosevelt... After cloistering himself to bring dead flesh to life, Victor Frankenstein condemned his creature to a solitude that made monsters of them both. Mary Shelley knew this loneliness... Economics, says Douglas Rushkoff, is not a natural science. It is game theory, and its assumptions have little to do with genetics, neurology, or evolution... What is snark? Abuse in a public forum that is low, personal, teasing, rug-pulling, finger-pointing, snide, obvious, and knowing. As David Denby explains... Norman Mailer’s obsession with violence found its greatest expression in his superb, civilized focus on boxing�s great heavyweights. In other settings he was less successful... Seventy years ago today, WWII began in Poland. How differently countries party to the event commemorate it. The view taken by Russia is perhaps the most troubling... more� ...