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How to Lose Friends & Influence Over People: Write about Race (Part II of III)
How to Lose Friends & Influence Over People: Write about Race (Part II of III) Toward Some Solutions to the Political Problem of Writing about Race while Being Aware of One’s Own Race Part II. In...
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How to Lose Friends & Influence Over People: Write about Race (Part III of III)
How to Lose Friends & Influence Over People: Write about Race (Part III of III) Toward Some Solutions to the Political Problem of Writing about Race while Being Aware of One’s Own Race Part III....
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14 Different Ways to Think About Books
14 Different Ways to Think About Books: Or, Do Good Questions Make Good Books? I’ve been thinking about Kevin Kelly’s book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our...
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11 Books I Read in 2017 (Placed in 7 Categories)
11 Books I Read in 2017 (Placed in 7 Categories) Books I probably should’ve already read a long time ago but somehow hadn’t: For this category, I call it a tie between the Scotsman Sir Arthur Conan...
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How We Should Rely on Others to Think for Ourselves (According to Machiavelli...
How We Should Rely on Others to Think for Ourselves (According to Machiavelli and Alan Jacobs) “Working toward the truth is one of life’s great adventures.” ––Alan Jacobs “Don’t regard a hesitant...
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Lean on Me (When You’re Not Wrong)
LEAN ON ME (WHEN YOU’RE NOT WRONG): Relying on Others to Define Reality for Ourselves – Part I of III It’s a dangerous business to try and impose one’s view of things on others. Padma: if you’re a...
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“We” Think; Therefore, “I” Am
“WE” THINK; THEREFORE, “I” AM: Relying on Others to Define Reality for Ourselves – Part II of III We have an interesting linguistic trap here, one created by centuries of human self-regard. By using a...
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Community and the Lack of Originality
COMMUNITY AND THE LACK OF ORIGINALITY Relying on Others to Define Reality for Ourselves – Part III of III (Read Part I here, and Part II here) If we can’t think without others, if we can’t conceive of...
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Why Science Must Rely on Poetry
Why Science Must Rely on Poetry Samuel Matlack’s essay “Quantum Poetics: Why physics can’t get rid of metaphor” in The New Atlantis (Summer/Fall 2017) covers all the right bases (via Vico, Borges, and...
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Seating at Dinner
Seating at Dinner (According to Martha Nussbaum and Larry McMurtry) First, from Martha: The domain of life that can be called the “Middle Realm,” a realm in which much of our daily life is spent: in...
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We Will Always Think Together (Even If We Don’t Think Alike)
We Will Always Think Together (Even If We Don’t Think Alike): Or, Relying on the Resemblance of Others to Think for Ourselves catena: n. A string or series of extracts from the writings of the fathers,...
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What Germans Thought of American Football Coaches 100 Years Ago
What Germans Thought of American Football Coaches 100 Years Ago: (At Least According to Max Weber): Written in about 1917: The American boy learns unspeakably less than the German boy. In spite of an...
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Nobility and Novelty
Nobility and Novelty I’m very happy to have another essay published in The Fortnightly Review. In “A Charming Sense of Novelty,” I discuss nobility and novelty via Prince William’s new haircut,...
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What I Intend to Read Today: March 18, 2018
What I Intend to Read Today: March 18, 2018. Today’s reads have to do with Russia, information theory and warfare, democracy, racism, and religion: “What We Know, and Don’t Know, About the Firing of...
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Hiding Out In the Open
Hiding Out In the Open From the always wonderful Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980): “Does one not write books precisely to conceal what one harbors? …. Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy.”...
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Two Quotations on the Language of Leadership
Two Quotations on the Language of Leadership Just two quotations today, two to compare and comport and contrast within everything else that has been read and seen and consumed online. The first is...
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Midwest Mod Squad no. 01: Method of Investigation
Midwest Mod Squad no. 01: Method of Investigation I don’t believe all art is political, just as I don’t believe all political activity is artistic. Alfarabi (872–950 CE) was a medieval philosopher...
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Midwest Mod Squad no. 02: Materials for Investigation
Midwest Mod Squad no. 02: Materials for Investigation (Read no. 01 in this series here.) Let’s now see who the subjects of investigation are: New Pop Lit is a publishing organization putting out...
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Hosting the Italians: Part I of III
Hosting the Italians: Part I of III It’s been two years since Scott and I traveled to Italy to meet Cosimo and Chiara, and now, they were coming to meet us in Austin. We expected them to arrive...
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Midwest Mod Squad no. 03: What is the Essence of a Work of Fiction?
Midwest Mod Squad no. 03: What is the Essence of a Work of Fiction? (Read Midwest Mod Squad no. 02 here) The age of argument appears to be over…. (Is that what’s implied when someone says we live in...
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