He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. He carried a minute portion of it with him wherever he went. His passion for it, the only one which he had permitted himself during a life of austere and exacting study, moved him to take special precautions. Books, even bad ones, tempted him easily into making a purchase. Fortunately, the great number of the book shops did not open until after eight o’clock
~Six Degrees of Separation: from Normal People, to….
DADDY’S GIRL
Laura wants to be a big-time sharp-talking actress like those in the ’40s films noirs she watched with her father. She has loads of parts in her: ‘easy-to-see parts and long forgotten parts and parts I encounter in my problematic dreams. I have shadow parts. They do not wish me well.’
How Did Shanghai Become China’s Literary Hotbed?
Believe it or not, writes Dr. Jin Lee, it was a by-product of the First Opium War, after which Shanghai turned from a little river town into a huge, prosperous international port city. –Literary Hub
Laura wants to be a big-time sharp-talking actress like those in the ’40s films noirs she watched with her father. She has loads of parts in her: ‘easy-to-see parts and long forgotten parts and parts I encounter in my problematic dreams. I have shadow parts. They do not wish me well.’
101+ Virtual Tours of Popular Tourist Attractions Around the World [2020]
Upgraded Points: “Do canceled travel plans have you stuck at home wishing you were anywhere else? We all know how that feels, but luckily, we have a solution. You can still satisfy your wanderlust by exploring famous sights — from your couch! We’ve put together a list of 101 virtual tours from over 35 countries around the world so that you can explore without having to catch a flight or spend a dime! We’ve organized this gigantic list by country so you can easily navigate to your country of choice… or simply work your way down the list and digitally travel all over the globe…”
Upgraded Points: “Do canceled travel plans have you stuck at home wishing you were anywhere else? We all know how that feels, but luckily, we have a solution. You can still satisfy your wanderlust by exploring famous sights — from your couch! We’ve put together a list of 101 virtual tours from over 35 countries around the world so that you can explore without having to catch a flight or spend a dime! We’ve organized this gigantic list by country so you can easily navigate to your country of choice… or simply work your way down the list and digitally travel all over the globe…”
Sampling The World Of Zoom Book Clubs
Gail Beckerman joins a New York literary salon now hosted remotely from Nairobi (“I’d never had the experience of watching in close-up such a large group of people actively listening”), the Quarantine Book Club (it hosts an author a day for regulars from all over the globe), the Borderless Book Club (a new novel in English translation every two weeks), a gathering hosted by the Academy of American Poets, a group devoted solely to Hannah Arendt, and a party where everyone logs on and just silently reads (“It’s mesmerizing, found performance art”). – The New York Times
The Tragedy Of Philosophy
To live is to encounter the tragic — a reality shot through with utter strife, and covered in complete darkness. Despite our best attempts, we are not going to get out of it. For philosophers to overlook, sugarcoat, or rationalize this fact is to deny something essential about who we are and what we might become, both intentionally but also in spite of ourselves. – Los Angeles Review of Books
- What would Hobbes do? — David Lay Williams (DePaul) thinks “Hobbesian reasoning strongly advises that all calls to reopen the economy be subordinated to a focus on preserving human life.”
- “In many ways, Spinoza is now replacing Kant and Descartes as both the compass and the watershed of modern thought” — Clare Carlisle (KCL) and Yitzhak Y. Melamed (JHU) on Spinoza on God and nature
- “Intersectionality” triggers some rightwingers, but it’s an important tool for libertarianism / classical liberalism — Jacob Levy (McGill) explains
- How the pandemic is affecting how people feel time — Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) is interviewed on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show
- The collective dimensions of individual ethical behavior in a pandemic — commentary from Martin Lenz (Groningen)
- “He believed the world must be made safe for differences” — Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton) reviews three books on Franz Boas
- “Tenure-track philosophy jobs are tough to come by, even in a non-pandemic year” — CNN article on future plans disrupted by COVID-19 focuses on a philosophy graduate student