Posted in Asia, Foreign affairs, Japan, Philosophy, U.S. Politics on December 26, 2007 | 3 Comments »
The touchdown at Osaka airport by night is rather enchanting: there is even a lit up ferris wheel visible from the air. Enter the customs area at the airport, however, and the mood is somewhat less magical. Behind the row of customs officers processing visitors is a massive yellow sign, perhaps more than 30 metres across, with [...]
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Popular culture, tagged biography, Charles Schulz, David Michaeli on December 25, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Lucy Van Pelt as therapist.
Jeannie Schulz, widow of the creator of Peanuts, offers some further thoughts on David Michaelis’ Schulz and Peanuts. Earlier postings on the subject can be found here, here, and here.
Jeannie Schulz’s comments:
There is an issue that Michaelis brings up a number of times in the Schulz biography which has completely baffled [...]
Posted in Foreign affairs, U.S. Politics, tagged National Review, shoddy intellectuals, terrorism on December 22, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Victims of the church bombing.
Like all conservative publications, National Review likes to fulminate against terrorism. Terrorism is a serious problem, of course, but I have trouble taking what they say on this matter seriously. Here’s why:
1. On September 15, 1963 a bomb went off at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing 4 [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged content creation, Happy holidays, sweatshops on December 21, 2007 | No Comments »
It’s traditional at this time of year for bloggers throughout the world to warn their readers of anticipated slow-downs in their rates of posting, as they head off to spend time with family and friends instead of continuing to produce the content that their audiences have come to expect, and in so many cases, to [...]
Posted in Literature, tagged Philip Roth, religion on December 21, 2007 | No Comments »
Philip Roth.
Just because you don’t believe in God doesn’t mean you can’t believe in ghosts. Philip Roth is a stone-cold atheist and is perhaps the most sternly materialist of all the great writers. Not only does Roth not believe in God, his novels are so steadfastly focused on the physical, bodily dimensions of human life [...]
Posted in U.S. Politics, tagged fascism, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, shoddy intellectuals on December 20, 2007 | 48 Comments »
Jonah Goldberg’s gall is greatly to be admired. A contributing editor at National Review, Goldberg will soon issue forth a book entitled Liberal Fascism. Early peeks show that the dust jacket contains this clever apercu: “The quintessential liberal fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or [...]
Posted in Philosophy, tagged forgotten prophets, Yeshua bar Yoseph on December 19, 2007 | No Comments »
The rabbi Yeshua bar Yosef was a master of the aphorism. Like many ancient sages, he wrote nothing down but strove to concentrate his wisdom into pithy, shocking, memorable sayings, often only a sentence long, at other times a very short story. Also called Masih Isa ibn Maryan, the rabbi deserves to be better known than he is. His [...]
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Literature, Popular culture, tagged biography, Charles Schulz, David Michaelis on December 19, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Above: the cartoonist and his creation
David Michaelis’ biography of Charles “Sparky” Schulz has been something of an obsession with this blog: it’s a big book and a challenging one, given the way it mixes facts (or apparent facts) with interpretation. Jeannie Schulz, the cartoonist’s widow, has sent along some comments she has on the Michaelis [...]
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Batman, liberalism, Mises on December 15, 2007 | 10 Comments »
You can’t trust everything you read in a Batman comic book. Ron Paul, the engaging libertarian-minded candidate in the Republican presidential nomination race, told an interviewer that his favorite comic book character is “Berlin Batman,” an alternative world superhero who, as Julian Sanchez notes, rescues “the manuscript of Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action from the [...]
Posted in Literature, tagged biography, Philip Roth on December 13, 2007 | No Comments »
In earlier posts, I suggested that biography is akin to fiction writing, both activities involving the taking of stray facts and hints about a life to make a narrative. But there is another sense in which biography is diametrically opposed to literature. Poets and novelists take the raw material of life and transform it into [...]
