I like mysteries, once in a while, but I don’t trust them. They are too often contrived, “too clever by half” as the saying goes. Their narratives double back and re-interpret, like lawyers who revisit a set of testimony and add what was elided, in order to “explain” things to favor their clients.
Over Friday and Saturday evenings we watched Miracle on 34th Street for the first time in a couple decades. (I’m not sure if Y had ever seen it.) After such time goes by, you see things in a film or book that you didn’t earlier. Continue reading
NY Times ran this piece a few days ago.
NYT, Hugh Morris, ‘Everyone Wants to Hear’ This One Chord in a Christmas Carol, subtitled “A moment in ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ is so popular, it’s printed on T-shirts. But it’s also symbolic, and important to music history.”
The article refers to a particular moment in a particular setting of that famous Christmas carol.
About George Santos’s fictional resume, Tucker Carlson’s year of being wrong, Avatar 2’s “ecological Indian” cliche, the hypocrisy of right-wing “free thinkers,” Thomas Frank on the lack of imagination of Democrats, DeSantis and vaccines, book banning, and two religious graphics.
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New York Times, Catrin Einhorn, 19 Dec 2022: Nearly Every Country Signs On to a Sweeping Deal to Protect Nature, subtitled “Roughly 190 nations, aiming to halt a dangerous decline in biodiversity, agreed to preserve 30 percent of the planet’s land and seas. The United States is not officially a participant.”
Vox, Benji Jones, 19 Dec 2022: The world has a new plan to save nature. Here’s how it works — and how it could fail., subtitled “At the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, world leaders agreed to a historic plan to halt biodiversity loss.”
This is actually quite remarkable. It evokes E.O. Wilson’s “Half-Earth.” But there’s a catch. Continue reading
With an endpiece about stars.
Here’s an intriguing article, fairly long, that examines how the humor of liberals and conservatives differ. Since its core conclusions are consistent with so many other observations about the differences between liberals and conservatives — admittedly two crude endpoints, or constellations of traits, in a multidimensional spectrum — they sound plausible. I think the article is on to something.
I spent most of this afternoon Christmas shopping. I can make that align with this article about Hanukkah kitsch.
New York Times, 18 Dec 2022: Potato Latke Cocktail, Anyone?
The Washington Post did a list about two weeks ago about this:
Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg, 6 Dec / updated 19 Dec 2022: Opinion | To build a delightful library for kids, start with these 99 books
Then today posted an article about reader responses.
Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg, 19 Dec 2022: Opinion | We made a list of 99 great kids’ books. You told us what we missed.
There is a wide range of attitudes about books. Many people read no books at all. Some read books but only by borrowing from libraries; some people buy and read books but treat them as disposable objects (these are the ones who bend the spines of paperbacks so that they’ll hold open more easily) and then dispose of them, either literally in the trash or taking them to Good Will, i.e. they don’t *keep* books.
A long piece today, from the Jan/Feb 2023 issue of The Atlantic.
The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, 12 Dec 2022: Why the Age of American Progress Ended, subtitled “Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next.”
