Buff kangaroo goes viral after flaunting giant muscles at wildlife centre
Feuds, affairs, and the leading philosophical minds of the day. The German town of Jena was an intellectual hothouse circa 1800 Jena
'Getting Something Right in Language'
Nearly every day I write about things that are important, even life-enhancing or life-saving, that hold no interest for me and that I don’t deeply understand. Some would call this “alienation.” I call it “professionalism.” I’ve earned my living with words for almost half a century as newspaper reporter, editor and science writer, and experience has taught me to accept my limitations, including deep reserves of ignorance and indifference. Like many journalists and former journalists, I’m a generalist, knowing a little about everything, never everything about anything.
“He then said he was ready to die, and with the words ‘Lord, now receive my soul’ expired ‘without any apparent disturbance.’ He was a month short of his fortieth birthday.”
Making Our Pillows Either Down, or Dust'
'His Rambunctious Iconoclasm'
On this date in 1964, Thelonious Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine. People then paid attention to such things. It was deemed an honor. Only five jazz musicians have been thus displayed. The previous year, Thomas Pynchon had published his first novel, V., in which the jazz saxophonist McClintic Sphere appears. The character is usually understood as a nod to Ornette Coleman, but it’s useful to remember that Monk’s middle name was Sphere -- “not Square,” he would explain. The Time editors may have chosen Monk for their cover as much for his oddness of manner and dress as for his music. When Monk died in 1982, Whitney Balliett wrotein The New Yorker:
“The pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, who died last week, at the age of sixty-four, was an utterly original man who liked to pretend he was an eccentric. Indeed, he used eccentricity as a shield to fend off a world that he frequently found alien, and even hostile. A tall, dark, bearish, inward-shining man, he wore odd hats and dark glasses with bamboo frames when he played
Even Welsh was surprised when he chanced across tiny Mornington Peninsula business Three Bays Water. “It’s unlike any water I’ve ever had, it’s mind-blowingly good,” he says of the Victorian water.
Buff kangaroo goes viral after flaunting giant muscles at wildlife centreBuff kangaroo goes viral after flaunting giant muscles at wildlife centre