Man is vile, I know, but people are wonderful.
-Peter de Vries
In dark times we have a right to expect some illumination and some lives can cast light upon the world ... More and more young people are choosing to study philosophy at A-level and university. Claire Smith finds out why - at a time when job prospects are so important - teenagers are turning to Plato, Kant and Humea - a look at why students are turning to philosophy Questioning time
This book will change your life: An article on the reckless art of book blurbing. I read plenty of true-life-story sorts of books by people I’ve met, and this is the number one most intriguing, most hilarious, most jaw dropping, most reckless and brilliant and insane The brilliance of Jozef Imrich’s style is beyond perfection : Unless you’ve been sleeping under Iraq for the past two decades, you have already read this news: Anyone who lives to read gorgeous writing will want to lick this book and Sleep with it between their legs
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Viewpoint: people are wonderful
Biography has a long and venerable history. One thinks of Plutarch separating “lives” from history, the latter explaining events and the former character, or of Giorgio Vasari memorializing for posterity the lives of Italian Renaissance artists.
The weekly Sunday morning ritual: Coffee in hand, I read the book review section of The New York Times. As I do so week after week, year after year, it dawns on me that there is a pattern here. Biography is being reviewed more frequently. One year, 2000, I counted 188 reviews of books related to biography, which is three-plus reviews each Sunday. Curious, I dug around in The Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac, and my inkling was confirmed.
• Biography and the search for meaning: The figure under the Cold River: imaginative and creative sympathy All joy and sorrow for the happiness or calamity of others is produced by an act of the imagination, that realizes the event, however fictitious, or approximates it, however remote, by placing us, for a time, in the condition of him whose fortune we contemplate; so that we feel, while the deception lasts, whatever motions would be excited by the same good or evil happening to ourselves The evolution of biography: Lives That Never Grow Old; [After reading Isaiah Berlin's " Two Concepts of Liberty", Dick Meyer never again had a serious relationship E Pluralism Unum ; Why the hell aren't the locals all deathly pale? Germans love to fake 'n' bake. So much so that the skin colors in late winter are postively alarming -- ranging from jaundice yellow to Tuscan terracotta Why Are so many Germans Orange? ; On holy ground, a hollow sound: Czechs' shunning of religion in part blamed on Soviets. St. Vitus Cathedral ]
• · Imagine you've just discovered that your best friend's partner is cheating on them. What would you do? Do you tell them about it and risk the friendship? Or do you wait until they discover the awful truth for themselves? Should you spill the beans on your friend's cheating partner? ; To each according to need: An anarchist look at communist economics Capitalism is, fundamentally, an economic system ; He was born the only child of middle-class bureaucrats Slavoj Zizek, a summary of his key ideas, and a bibliography
• · · Paul Waldman on Identity Complex: a big idea that unites their proposals and converts them from a hodgepodge of narrow and specific fixes into a vision for society The Progressive Identity Complex ; Howell Raines' new memoir, The One That Got Away, shows him living by the same manly code, whether in journalism scandal or on a trout stream. Now I better stop talking. I’ve had two beers. I think I’m going to catch a fish
• · · · A look through the lens of the teen sex comedies of the early 1980s. The Last American Virgin THEY WANT US TO LOOK; A chat with the science-savvy writers behind "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" Meet the Geeks
• · · · · What a person reads says a lot about him or her. Yorkshire born and bred, strong in the arm and weak in the head Inside the Celebrity-Industrial Complex ; Hiphop Turns 30 Whatcha celebratin' for?
• · · · · · Put not your trust in princes - Monkeys keep turning out to be smarter than people think Striking continuity between humans ; ISSA KANU was in the wrong place at the wrong time Insight: Beware escaped chimps