Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that “spatial mobility” would increase, and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie. Yet in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic. As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census starting following movement in 1940. That’s good news for families, communities and even the environment. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year. Such jokes were whispered in communist East Germany — and West German spies recorded them diligently to gain insights into the public mood, according to recently released intelligence files. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Kids these days. Just look at them. They’ve got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them? Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Wisdom plays it safe, avoids occasions of sin, sits home on Saturday night with an improving book. Elvis used to croon that “Wise men say, ‘Only fools rush in.’” But like the king he was, he knew that a brokenhearted clown understood more about the heart than any cautious Polonius. What would love be without impetuousness? Who can love and then be wise? “The heart has reasons that the reason doesn’t know.” This is why computerized dating seems repulsive to so many people; you just know the machine would be happier working on a spreadsheet. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
By the second quarter of the twentieth century, one of the world’s most revered figures was a long-haired, somewhat rumpled European refugee. His public persona combined a Gandhi-like saintliness with the awesome impression that his sleepy-looking, baggy eyes gazed not on the everyday world of ordinary mortals but into far vistas of space and time unseen by others. This suggestion of contact with transcendent reality was central to Albert Einstein’s charisma. It arose from his success in opening the door of human imagination to previously unknown concepts of time and space. How did it go wrong? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Poker tables have long served as less genteel clubs for students, teachers, soldiers, businessmen, and politicians of either sex and every rank and persuasion. Instead of walking down fairways 40 yards apart from each other, throwing elbows in the paint, or quietly hunting pheasant or muskie, poker buddies are elbow to elbow all night, competing and drinking and talking. In my class, we discuss how Obama’s Committee Meeting continued a tradition going back to Henry Clay, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Sandra Day O’Connor, William H. Rehnquist, and scores of other generals, justices, and presidents. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The other day – well, on Saturday, 5th September, to be exact – I opened Le Monde to the page called ‘Debates.’ The page was devoted to prisons in France, where conditions are acknowledged by almost everyone to be very bad. Prison reform is an honourable cause; and while I don’t agree with Churchill, that a nation’s level of civilisation can be gauged by the way in which it treats its prisoners, I have always opposed the brutality that can so easily pervade what Erving Goffman called ‘a total institution.’ Theodore Dalrymple explains. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Richard Wrangham’s, author of Catching Fire, has compelling evidence that the invention of cooking is the only possible explanation for the transformation that stood us on our feet, shrank our guts, gave us silly teeth and receding jawlines, and swelled our brains to their current, horrendously fuel-inefficient size. The big news – I think it is big news – is that he succeeds. Catching Fire is that rare thing, an exhilarating science book. And one that, for all its foodie topicality, means to stand the test of time. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
We had enjoyed almost two decades in which the liberal reforms undertaken by China and India, with nearly half the world’s population between them, had produced an unprecedented prosperity that (and this must be emphasized) had finally made a significant impact on poverty, just as we reformers had asserted that it would. The rich countries, with a steady expansion of liberal policies during the 1950s and 1960s, had also registered substantial prosperity. Meanwhile, an increasing number of the poor countries had turned to democracy, altering the status quo ante in which India had been the one “exceptional nation” to have embraced and retained democracy after independence. Some will object that economies have at times registered high growth rates for long periods despite bad economic policies. But we must ask: are such growth rates sustainable? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The United States can still be the most prominent—although not dominant—of the great powers, and it can still offer the most attractive way of life. But to do this, America will have to become more American than it has been in recent years. This means it will have to renovate or reinvent certain pillars that raised the United States to the heights of global power and prosperity in the second half of the 20th century. These pillars remain the only solid and enduring supports for a prominent American role in the 21st century, so we need to be clear about what they are. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense and an architect of the Vietnam War, said it all could have been different if McGeorge Bundy, President Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser, had not resigned from the White House in early 1966. As Obama grapples with Afghanistan, the final interviews of McNamara and Bundy. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
What exactly happened? How could overly enthusiastic homebuyers in the United States sink the global economy? When the global financial crisis took root last year, many politicians across the world quickly determined that it must have come from inside the financial system, that the reason must have been that market players had been given too free a rein and made too many big mistakes. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
One evening in August, Kyle Turley was at a bar in Nashville with his wife and some friends. Suddenly, he felt a sensation of heat. He was light-headed, and began to sweat. He had been having episodes like that with increasing frequency during the past year—headaches, nausea. One month, he had vertigo every day, bouts in which he felt as if he were stuck to a wall. But this was worse. He asked his wife if he could sit on her stool for a moment. The warmup band was still playing, and he remembers saying, “I’m just going to take a nap right here until the next band comes on.” Then he was lying on the floor, and someone was standing over him. “The guy was freaking out,” Turley recalled. “He was saying, ‘Damn, man, I couldn’t find a pulse,’ and my wife said, ‘No, no. You were breathing.’ I’m, like, ‘What? What?’” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Germans have long struggled with the idea that their country was on a “special path” – one that led directly from the 19th-century founding of the Second Reich through the hell of Nazism into a sort of permanent postwar purgatory, in which they were condemned to endlessly confront and apologise for their past. So what to make of today’s Hermannmania? Germany regards itself as being post-patriotic, and certainly cured of all the militaristic nationalism that Hermann once represented. And yet the hundreds of thousands of Germans visiting Detmold aren’t simply looking for a theme-park character – nor are they seeking a new militarism. So what are they looking for? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
America’s post-war prosperity has been a wonder of the modern world. Flexible and adaptable labor and capital markets, a culture that values entrepreneurial initiative and risk-taking, and an openness to the increasingly global economy have all helped create the wealthiest society in history. Above all, though, America owes its bounty to its vast and robust middle class: a skilled, efficient, and ever-expanding work force upon which American companies have built immense success. The severe economic contraction of the past year has left many Americans wondering if we are witnessing the end of this age of affluence. If General Motors can collapse into a heap, what other pillars of our post-war order may yet fall? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
That the current ruler of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao, is a bore will no doubt be a relief to most people, including 1.3 billion Chinese. Hu’s dullness is remarkable given the high drama of China’s fairly recent transformation from a poor, blood-soaked totalitarian country to a rich (in patches) superpower aspiring to take over America’s lead in the not-so-distant future. But perhaps his lack of charisma is part of the point. The first 27 years of the People’s Republic, under Chairman Mao, when millions died in almost constant purges and upheavals, and tens of millions died of starvation in bizarre economic experiments, were so awful that most Chinese are quite sick of charismatic leadership. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
While this year has become best known as the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, it was also forty years ago that the first African-American Studies department was established, at San Francisco State University. Forty-one fall semesters later, there are hundreds of such departments. Has what they teach evolved with the march of time? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Almost a year after A.I.G.’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains. That’s the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What’s more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Too many Americans are in the linguistic shadows now—possibly close to a majority. This language gap represents more than a civic disability that prevents full participation in a democracy. It also represents a bar to general prosperity and social justice. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
At the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, counterinsurgency theory was about as popular in American military circles as tank warfare is today. An early study by the chief war planner for the 101st Airborne Division during its first deployment to Iraq reported “a collective cognitive dissonance on the part of the U.S. Army to recognize a war of rebellion, a people’s war, even when they were fighting it.” There was a reason for this. Eager to forget the most painful experience in its history, the army had all but banished counterinsurgency from the lexicon of American military affairs after Vietnam. As a result, the army relied on a flawed strategy in Iraq for a period that lasted, according to author Thomas Ricks, at least “twenty months or more.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
What is perhaps surprising is that Consolmagno is also a Jesuit brother, that many of his colleagues are ordained priests, and that they’re scanning the heavens with the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope or, more affectionately, the “Pope scope.” The state-of-the-art facility is part of the Vatican Observatory, established behind St. Peter’s Basilica in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII at least partly to show that the Roman Catholic Church was not anti-science — an allegation that has persisted since Galileo was dragged before the Inquisition for claiming that the earth moves. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
What is economics? Is it a science? Haven’t all its failures of prediction and political guidance proved its lack of respectability? The current financial crisis also reveals a deep crisis of economics. We seem to be witnessing the dismantling of an approach that, at least in its shallow mainstream version, has to make a series of absurd assumptions in order to reach any conclusion — with both the assumptions and the conclusions being astonishingly out of touch with reality. Its scholars have come to use mathematical logic as some sort of l’art pour l’art, falling into the trap of technicality rather than aiming at the wider horizon of an all-encompassing social science. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The story of California has always been a great American tale of triumph over long odds. Since its entry into the Union, in the aftermath of war and the midst of gold fever, the state has seemed an improbable colossus. But again and again, California has made its way through hours of challenge – not only surviving intact, but emerging as a model for the rest of the nation. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We’re facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Michael Sandel, a 56-year-old political scientist who teaches one of Harvard’s most popular courses, “Justice,” shrinks that university’s cavernous Sanders Theatre down to a seminar room. His new TV show will do something similar. At the TV show’s Web site, justiceharvard.org, viewers are encouraged to join in online conversations, to take polls on moral questions, and to start book groups. They will even have virtual access to some of Sandel’s teaching assistants, who lead small classes that supplement the lectures. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Inspired by the high profile of its Christian American counterpart, Muslim creationism is becoming increasingly visible and confident. On scores of websites and in dozens of books with titles like The Evolution Deceit and The Dark Face of Darwinism, a new and well-funded version of evolution-denialism, carefully calibrated to exploit the current fashion for religiously inspired attacks on scientific orthodoxy and “militant” atheism, seems to have found its voice. In a recent interview with The Times Richard Dawkins himself recognises the impact of this new phenomenon: “There has been a sharp upturn in hostility to teaching evolution in the classroom and it’s mostly coming from Islamic students.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Should the film director Roman Polanski be extradited to the US over his statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in March 1977? It’s a potentially interesting legal question. But it’s not the question that is driving the transatlantic furore that followed Polanski’s arrest and imprisonment in Switzerland over the weekend. Instead, various political prejudices and unresolved battles are being projected on to L’Affaire Polanski, robbing it of its specific legal complexities and turning it into the site of a proxy Culture War in which clapped-out conservatives and disoriented liberals are hurling intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) hand grenades at one another. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
