I'm catching up on old New Yorkers.  In the September 11, 2017 issue, Siddartha Mukherjee has an article where he discusses invasive species.  It has this line: "The Japanese knotweed, now colonizing the cherished gardens of the English, is hardly known as a weed in Japan.  An aggressor in one environment is a placid resident … Continue reading Siddartha Mukherjee Is A Pretty Good Writer

My friend, Beth Finke, teaches a class in memoir-writing at the Chicago Public Library.  Most of her students are senior citizens.  She has long observed how writing a memoir can provide the impetus for senior citizens to reconnect with long lost friends and family members.  It turns out that there's now a study showing that … Continue reading Writing Is The Best Medicine

It's true.  Just having a smart phone face down on the desk in front of you as you take an IQ test causes you to score significantly lower.  The average smart phone user spends 145 minutes touching their phone 2,617 times a day. http://behavioralscientist.org/whos-real-boss/ If someone said, I'll pay you $90 a month to spend … Continue reading A Smarter Phone Makes You Dumber

Billy Collins is one of America's most loved poets. He was the U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003.  When Random House lured Collins away from the University of Pittsburgh Press, they gave him a six-figure advance on a three-book deal.  That doesn't really happen to poets in America.  The poetry section of your local … Continue reading The Balcony of Envy

Although I recently quoted a few examples of 19th century feminine jealously and pettiness from Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant, in fact, the vast majority of the petty bickering in the book is conducted by the men.  At age 38, when the Civil War began, Grant was an abject failure.  Both his father-in-law, … Continue reading Masculine Pettiness

Larry McMurtry won a Pulitzer prize for his novel Lonesome Dove.  He did not win one for Boone's Lick.  I doubt he would be surprised. Boone's Lick is mostly a plot outline with no character development. A horse, a bear, and various people get shot, including a company of U.S. Calvary ambushed by Indians (the … Continue reading Book Review: Boone’s Lick

Ron Chernow is a master of the deft character sketch.  Here's his description of Ulysses S. Grant's Attorney General: He turned to Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a bespectacled Republican with a grizzled beard, who was born in Concord, Massachusetts . . . .  A former member of the Free-Soil Party, an upright gentleman of starchy integrity, … Continue reading Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar

One aspect of Ulysses S. Grant's life that receives too little consideration is his career under President Andrew Johnson. Having led the Union armies to total victory over the slavers, Grant was a figure of national and international renown.  Having offered generous terms of surrender to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and advocated … Continue reading Upholding the Laws and Constitution of the United States of America

Louis Menand is really good.  His insights are sensible and often counterintuitive or at least counter-the-received-wisdom. In the January 8, 2018, issue of The New Yorker Menand wrote "Been There: The Presidential Election of 1968".  He writes: Americans tend to overread Presidential elections. It’s not that the results aren’t consequential. It matters which party, and … Continue reading Change (Not So Much)

So, it turns out that in Burma, content that promotes hatred and genocide against the Rohingya minority really engages Facebook users and keeps them on the site consuming advertising and boosting Facebook's profits.  The implication of this article is that Facebook's algorithms are promoting and pushing this content in Burmese news feeds: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/fake-news-on-facebook-fans-the-flames-of-hate-against-the-rohingya-in-burma/2017/12/07/2c1fe830-ca1f-11e7-b506-8a10ed11ecf5_story.html?utm_term=.28f5e2540b41 Does that … Continue reading Complicity