News That Stays News

Day Jobs for Writers November 30, 2010

Lapham’s Quarterly has a nifty chart that details the day jobs of Kafka, Faulkner, and T. S. Eliot, among others.

The Hollywood Roaster has a similar chart that has been updated for the present day.

House Lore November 29, 2010

1. A colorful collection of anecdotes about the men who have received a censure at the hands of the House. The best bits are the tales of partisan violence:

In 1858, Mr. Keitt started a donnybrook on the House floor. After an exchange of insults in a debate over the admission of Kansas as a slave state, he leaped up and tried to throttle Representative Galusha A. Grow, a Pennsylvania Republican. Supporters on both sides jumped into the fray, and a melee involving dozens of congressmen broke out.

The speaker shouted in vain for order. The sergeant-at-arms rushed in. Representative Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin tried to grab Representative William Barksdale of Mississippi by the hair, but came away with a toupee. Mr. Barksdale retrieved his wig, but put it on backward, and the fighting ended as both sides dissolved in laughter.

2. Incoming Republicans are making a lot of promises about their behavior in the upcoming congress. About 15% say that they will resist the temptations of Washington by sleeping on their office couches.

Wikileaks November 28, 2010

The New York Times has two great articles about the latest Wikileaks document dump.

1. An episodic look at the skullduggery that lies beneath our diplomacy. We don’t come off that well when you shine this kind of light on the way we throw our weight around.

2. A behind-the-scenes look at the diplomatic intrigue surrounding Iran. Its Arab neighbors apparently spend a lot of time pushing the US to use force to end Iran’s nuclear program. According to the article, they think like the Israelis do on this.

Remember when we used to think The Economist was the be-all-and-end-all? November 23, 2010

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/fight_against_aids

Let’s play a game: which countries are missing?  I spot (in hundreds of millions unaccounted for):

1 Pakistani

3 Indonesian

13 Chinese

2 Brazilian

1 Russian

1 Mexican

It’s safe to say that this will add up to at least a third of the population of the earth.  Including a bunch of countries that really don’t want to talk about this problem.  Who thinks China’s AIDS transmission rate is slowing?

Imagine if they colored the parts of the map they didn’t know about bright blue, or jet black, to represent the unknowable, instead of light gray to avoid catching the eye.

William Deresiewicz November 22, 2010

Deresiewicz (Billy D) was one of my favorite professors in college- he taught “Modern British Novel” and served up his own interpretations of Joyce and Woolf with a real intellectual edge. He was one of the idolized teachers in the English department- the guy whose class would fill up twenty seconds after registration opened online- and the sort of guy you can imagine getting into the pants of his more adoring fans (I have no desire for malice here- he was just one of those people). Everyone I knew at Yale was sad when he didn’t get tenure and went out to make a name for himself as a literary critic.

His most famous essay to date is probably The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, and he’s one of those critics who periodically writes something about the academy, but he also does a lot of specific work.

Deresiewicz on

1. Cormac McCarthy and No Country for Old Men

2. The New Yorker critic, James Wood, and his book How Fiction Works

3. Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

4. Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, and Home

Deresiewicz is one of the pugnacious ones, but he’s still more of the literary establishment than someone like B.R. Myers, whose  A Reader’s Manifesto still leaves marks (it’s subtitled “An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose.”)

Budget Widget Update November 22, 2010

Now you can see what everyone else who reads the New York Times thinks we should do to balance the budget.

Browsings November 22, 2010

1. Vigilante justice on Indian Reservations; a professional bruiser takes $1000 per broken bone. It all comes about because a third of native women are raped in their lifetimes; 86% of the time, the perp is a non-native.

2. Jonathan Safran Foer and new technology for the book. Would you be interested in a novel that ends in a flipchart?

China in Africa November 20, 2010

A New York Times report on abuses taking place at a Chinese mine in Zambia. To be fair, I’m not sure the Chinese treat their own coal miners better than this.

Best Budget Widget I’ve Seen November 15, 2010

I finally feel like I understand the budget deficit, thanks to this Week in Review piece in which you can solo the budget deficit in the New York Times. They need to make a video game out of this. The best part is that you can share your selections: my plans for reducing the deficit. I’d love to see some other suggestions.

Asian-American demographics November 15, 2010

Asian-Americans have a life expectancy of 91.8 years in New Jersey, says the WSJ. Does that seem right to you?