Reviews and News:
Teller of dark tales and ventriloquist of the deranged, Edgar Allan Poe could also be prankster. Like when he claimed that a man had crossed the Atlantic in three days in a balloon in an article for the New York Sun: “He had just moved to Manhattan, looking for work as a journalist. What better way to announce you’ve arrived than to prank an entire city?”
You remember MOOCs, right, and their short-lived hype? Take a course from Yale…for free…and receive no credit. What if that last part could be changed?
Why Maryland loves jousting: “Jousting tournaments have been taking place in the Mid-Atlantic state since colonial times, a medieval tradition brought over from the old country. But it wasn’t until 1962 that Maryland named jousting its official state sport, simultaneously making it the first U.S. state to make such a designation. To this day, only a handful of U.S. states have chosen to name official state sports, and fewer still have chosen something as esoteric as jousting.”
Revisiting the1938 Carnegie Hall concert that changed jazz.
What’s it like to live in a city where temperatures are -40°F in the winter? Steeve Iuncker finds out.
Essay of the Day:
If democracies are to be preserved (or created), we must understand the appeals of civility and barbarism. Arthur Milikh in National Affairs:
“The idea that all peoples are capable of self-government and that all the nations of the world should be converted into democracies is one of the most deeply held contemporary prejudices. Many political scientists devote their careers to studying the discrete, measurable variables — a functioning judiciary, fair elections, or freedom of the press — that seem to characterize political liberty, in order to discover the formula by which other peoples can adopt republican ways.
“This fashionable approach, however, fails to grasp the underlying preconditions for civilized self-government, the means by which human passions are formed toward civility, and the nature of its alternative — barbarism. Having been neglected for so long by our intellectual authorities, civility and barbarism are thought to be merely synonymous with politeness and coarseness. In truth, however, they describe two distinct and opposing organizations of the human character. By rediscovering this distinction, we can revive our understanding of the prerequisites for establishing constitutional republics, and clarify how we can preserve our own.”
Photo: Curiosity Rover selfie
Poem: Christian Wiman, “Eight Distillations”
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