Why Must We Keep Hearing About the NATO Inch?
Ivan is a nationalist in the Putin mold and during our visit mistook me, at least, to have some American equivalent of his native love for authoritarianism.
Dispatches
The Latest Chapter in the Reading Wars
Phonics was my nemesis, and later, I heard it as Phyllis Schlafly’s battle cry. Why, I wondered, was reading instruction political?
A Surprising Museum in Washington, DC
Despite some overlaps, military branches do in the end have their own histories, traditions, and, in particular, things, which set an emotional tone. Marines are “Leathernecks” for their stiff collars, originally meant to prevent cutlass wounds. Sailors were “swabbies” for their mops, or “tars” for the tar used on old ships. Navy cadre at the dive school called us “trees” for our camouflage-patterned army uniforms.
Five Years Since Scott Walker’s Gone
The story of Scott Walker is the story not of making it big, but making it big the right way across an entire career, including even the long breaks in between.
A Young Artist Fleshes Out Philosophy
Philosophy needed some rebranding, if people were not to relegate it to grumpy old men. But Becky Moon was just a freshman, so she shrugged off the question and contented herself with doodling fresh, playful little pictures about the thought experiments.
Why Are We Still So Confused About COVID?
Our healthcare system runs on profit. It could use some fortification. Also, a few towers, so we can see farther into the future. And maybe a moat, to keep out the misinformation.
Bill Watterson’s Wisdom Literature
“Calvin & Hobbes” ended in 1995, and Bill Watterson was not seen or heard from much since—until last year, when he and caricaturist John Kascht published “The Mysteries,” a (very) brief graphic novel.
Robert Motherwell’s Defining Images of Change and Strife
It is in Motherwell’s complete and utter lack of direct representation that we might find room to discover the heart of his “Elegies.” He assumes, graciously, that we also have the heart and intelligence to triangulate history, painted images, and varying titles on the theme of Spain’s self-inflicted suffering.
Why Women Are Drawn to “Bad Boys”
Imagine the catharsis, for the gender that has been schooled for centuries to be good and sweet and nice. But girls are no longer forced to be demure—and no longer need bad boys to act out their unlived urges. So why does the appeal persist?
Moby Dick as Circus Theater is Moving and, It Turns Out, Participatory
The play does well portraying one of the novel’s main conflicts: that Ahab cannot live without knowing, within the framework of his own understanding of cause and effect, and this tautological pride makes other beings suffer. His lust for vengeance is blasphemous chiefly because he cannot live in The Mystery without acting on some little part of it and calling it the whole—just like us.