Well, that’s that. The Swedish Academy has announced it won’t award a Nobel Prize in Literature this year.
Going all in: A New Yorker writer who is working on a book on poker postpones it after she wins $86,400.
Walking New York with Jane Jacobs: “This weekend, thousands of New Yorkers will participate in Jane’s Walk, a citywide walking tour festival held in honor of Jane Jacobs. Much has been said about the profound and largely beneficial legacy of Jane Jacobs. But the special virtues of walking tours, which various groups host year-round, are less widely understood.”
Richard Feynman at 100: Algis Valiunas remembers the charismatic and gifted physicist: “Quantum electrodynamics describes the interaction of electrons with light, and it was Feynman’s signature theory. He laid the groundwork for it as a Princeton graduate student and elaborated it as a Cornell assistant professor in 1947-48; he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for this work, with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichiro Tomonaga, who independently of one another worked out different versions of the theory. Judged by the standards of classical physics—or the standards of common sense—QED seems absurd, as Feynman enjoyed telling baffled audiences. Electrons behave at once like particles and like waves; positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, can be conceived as electrons traveling backward in time; light does not travel from one point to another in a single straight line but rather pursues every possible path along the way. And yet the experiments prove the outlandish theory correct.”
Cézanne’s portraits have been collected for the first time since the painter’s death. “The post-impressionist known for his vibrant fruit and sunbaked hills left a body of portraiture that might charitably be defined as ‘experimental.’ Over a career spanning 44 years, Cézanne pursued many styles and techniques simultaneously. The challenges that plagued him early in his career—including mask-like faces, unseeing eyes, and ill-proportioned figures—are never fully resolved in his later canvases. Yet he did succeed in developing a highly original body of work that is striking in its earnestness. In Cézanne’s hands, portraiture did not enhance the sitter’s personal identity, but instead revealed his human dignity by stripping away all artifice.”
Identity politics comes for the musical: “Identity politics is decaffeinated apartheid, and in the decline of the musical – most recently in the surrender of Sierra Boggess – we see this; not the most threatening but perhaps the most joyless expression of the cringe of a culture. As the great John Cooper Clarke once said ‘Repression is the mother of the metaphor’: political correctness is, as Mark Twain said of its begetter comparison, ‘the death of joy.’”
Essay of the Day:
How did two American college students—one of them a convert to Islam—decide to join ISIS? Emma Green tells the story in the Atlantic:
“The day she left to join the Islamic State, Jaelyn Young took a floral backpack with clothes, craft supplies, and a scrapbook. Muhammad Dakhlalla, whose friends call him Moe, packed a bar of soap, gray sweats, and a pack of Starburst minis. She was organized: Her wallet held bank cards and insurance cards, plus a Sonic receipt tucked inside. He loved video games: His only t-shirt featured the robots of Portal 2. On that hot August day, they were headed to Turkey, on their way to Syria.
“Moe, 22, had graduated from Mississippi State University in Starkville a few months earlier, in the spring of 2015, and had been accepted into a psychology master’s program there for the fall. He has a friendly, slightly dorky demeanor in conversation, ever the goofy baby brother of an expressive Muslim family. Jaelyn, just turned 20, was a sophomore in chemistry, working in a lab on nanoparticles. High-school friends describe the tiny Vicksburg native as a ‘spunky, smart robotics chick’ from a strict black family, with a Navy veteran and police officer for a father and a school superintendent for a mother. The two started dating in November 2014; she converted just a few months later. By June, they had wed in an Islamic ceremony, although they never obtained a marriage license. Moe and Jaelyn were both academically talented, but neither planned to return to school. God willing, Jaelyn allegedly told their online recruiter, they would be overseas by summer’s end.
“The weeks dragged on. They applied for passports, waiting impatiently for them to arrive by mail. Moe wondered whether they’d be assigned a city or could pick one. She wanted to be a medic. He yearned to be a fighter. They asked questions about religion classes and wondered if they would be tested on their knowledge of Islam.
“She was nervous about traveling, she allegedly told her recruiter—she had never been outside the United States. He asked about basic training and whether ISIS follows Islamic law. ‘I am not familiar with sharia,’ he allegedly told the recruiter. ‘I am excited about coming … but I feel I won’t know what all I will be doing.’
“Finally, it was time to leave. They used her mom’s credit card to buy tickets on Delta, with a connection in Amsterdam. She carried $367.50, more than enough for a taxi or train to the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where they planned to meet their recruiter. They would stand out, she wrote, because of her ‘big bushy curly hair,’ but she asked the recruiter to bring a head scarf for her to wear during the rest of their journey; she was ashamed to go uncovered but scared to wear a hijab while traveling for fear of drawing attention to herself. Early on a Saturday morning, they drove about half an hour to Columbus, Mississippi, expecting little security trouble at their small regional airport as they departed for their new life.
“They were arrested while preparing to board their flight. Jaelyn and Moe weren’t actually talking to ISIS recruiters. Their contacts had been undercover FBI employees the whole time.”
Photo: Fishing with fire
Poem: D. A. Powell, “Talk to Strangers”
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