Stephen Law in Aeon: Born in 1940 in New York, Saul Kripke is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, yet few outside philosophy have heard of him, let alone have any familiarity with his ideas. Still, Kripke’s arguments are often fairly easy to grasp. And, … | Continue reading
Jen A. Miller in the New York Times: On a recent Saturday morning, my dad and I walked our dogs to the local basketball court to see what a persistent “thump-thump” noise coming from that direction was all about. Instead of basketball players, we found a fitness “boot camp,” wher … | Continue reading
Joseph E. Stiglitz in Project Syndicate: The world needs more than Trump’s narrow transactional approach; so does the US. The only way forward is through true multilateralism, in which American exceptionalism is genuinely subordinated to common interests and values, international … | Continue reading
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Ryan Ruby at The Virginia Quarterly Review: Celan’s gray language can be read as a subtle undermining of this principle of separation. Over the course of the four books collected in Memory Rose into Threshold Speech, there is a noticeable shift from a poetics of making-smooth to … | Continue reading
Jen Silverman at The Paris Review: A friend of mine has departed from pronoun-related language to describe their own gender. “My gender is orange,” they said once. “My gender is chrome.” When I tried making my own list I was surprised by how quickly I knew the answers. My gender … | Continue reading
Justin Rowlatt in BBC News: Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that. But I’m hoping that, by the end of 2021, the vaccines will have kicked in and we’ll be talking more about climate than the coronavirus. 2021 will certainly be a crunch year for tackli … | Continue reading
Alejandro Chacoff in The New Yorker: In 1973, shortly after his last novel, like the others before it, was rejected by publishers, the Italian writer Guido Morselli shot himself in the head and died. He left several rejection letters on his desk, and a short note that read, “I be … | Continue reading
Revisions Before the poet was a poet nothing was reworked: not the smudge of ink on twelve sets of clothes not the fearsome top berth on the train not a room full of boxes and dull windows not the cat that left its kittens and afterbirth in a pair of jeans not doubt. Before the… | Continue reading
Richard Marshall interviews Andrew Brook at 3:16: 3:16: You’ve worked a deal in philosophical issues arising in the various areas of cognitive science. Starting there then, so we get a sense of the landscape, what is the philosopher’s role in this area? Some non-philosophers (and … | Continue reading
Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe: We all know stereotypes about people from different countries; but we also recognize that there really are broad cultural differences between people who grow up in different societies. This raises a challenge when most psychological research … | Continue reading
Yanis Varoufakis at Project Syndicate: We used to think, with good reason, that globalization had defanged national governments. Presidents cowered before the bond markets. Prime ministers ignored their country’s poor but never Standard & Poor’s. Finance ministers behaved like Go … | Continue reading
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Lydia Wilson in Smithsonian: Centuries before Moses wandered in the “great and terrible wilderness” of the Sinai Peninsula, this triangle of desert wedged between Africa and Asia attracted speculators, drawn by rich mineral deposits hidden in the rocks. And it was on one of these … | Continue reading
John Hewitt in Phys.Org: Insofar as variants for mitochondrial disease are supposed to be rare in the genome, don’t think for even a minute that it can’t happen to you. In fact, the closer one looks at the full mitonuclear genomes of normal folks, the more one realizes that no on … | Continue reading
Jackson Arn at Art in America: The first thing I noticed about Le Cirque when I saw it at Pace was its clumsiness. The sculpture is comically, endearingly big: thirteen feet tall and almost a hundred feet in circumference, with elephant legs and zebra stripes like scribbles blown … | Continue reading
Dexter Filkins at The New Yorker: In the final days of the Second World War, a train loaded with relics of the collapsing Third Reich was speeding toward the Czech border when American pilots, flying P-47 fighters, spotted it and opened fire. The train ground to a halt in a fores … | Continue reading
Bearhug Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight I yell ok. Finish something I’m doing, then something else, walk slowly round the corner to my son’s room. He is standing arms outstretched waiting for a bearhug. Grinning. Why do I give my emotion an animal’s name, give it tha … | Continue reading
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the most reliable writer of all in the history of 3QD: Akim Reinhardt. Starting at the end of 2010, Akim has written his excellent column at 3QD every fourth week for just over ten years now. He has never, ever mi … | Continue reading
by Akim Reinhardt Every Democrat, and many independent voters, breathed an enormous sigh of relief when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the November election. Now they are all nervously counting down the days (16) until the last of Trump’s frivolous lawsuits is dismissed, his … | Continue reading
by Jeroen Bouterse Three times have we started doing philosophy, and three times has the enterprise come to a somewhat embarrassing end, being supplanted by other activities while failing anyway to deliver whatever goods it had promised. Each of those three times corresponds to a … | Continue reading
Uroboros new year, a day of ends and beginnings, two extremes of a rope, sunup-sundown, the moment we split our sign for infinity (that lazy 8 napping on its side as life goes on), the day we take a short breath in belief that its undulant line can really be cut and resumed witho … | Continue reading
by Usha Alexander [This is the seventh in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] “Our plan B has always been grounded in our beliefs around the … | Continue reading
Lorna Simpson. Unanswerable (detail) 2018. Found photograph, and collage on paper. More here, here, and here. | Continue reading
by Dave Maier If one enters the name “Ellen Page” into the search box at en.wikipedia.org, it redirects to an entry entitled “Elliot Page” (and informs you that it has done this). This is because on December 1, 2020, as the entry itself tells us in the section marked “Personal li … | Continue reading
by Rafaël Newman Arma virusque cano: Sing, O Muse, through me, the wandering Of something lowly, microscopic, But found at both Poles, and each Tropic. An opportunist virus, which Is banished by mere soap (or bleach), And yet has billions, masked, in arma, Awaiting backup from Bi … | Continue reading
by Sarah Firisen This Christmas, I stayed in a Marriott in the town where my kids live. Like most people, my business and personal travel has mostly ground to a halt in the last 9 months. So I was pleasantly surprised by the check-in experience the hotel provided me to allow for … | Continue reading
by Philip Graham In the early months of 1966, whenever a familiar look of boredom settled in my mother’s eyes at the thought of cooking, I’d suggest, “Why don’t we go out for pizza?” She always agreed. Our pizzeria of choice was conveniently located on a one-block strip mall less … | Continue reading
Justin E. H. Smith in his Substack Newsletter: Although the literary theorist and anthropologist René Girard has many Silicon Valley disciples, surely the most notable of them is the German-born venture capitalist and founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel. A student of Girard’s while at … | Continue reading
Radek Vana in Inquiries: We are never alone. And by this statement, I do not intend to argue for existence of some supernatural entities, aliens or God. We are never alone because we all share our bodies with trillions of symbiotic microorganisms that perform various physiologica … | Continue reading
Fran Quigley in Jacobin: When we speak to our sisters and brothers living in poverty in the United States, the confessional trope that describes so many dysfunctional relationships should be our opening line. “Poverty is a choice that the fortunate collectively make,” social work … | Continue reading
“As the World Turns” is not just the title of an old TV soap, but a thing that happens year by year.” — Sean O’Saical Letter from My Ancestors We wouldn’t write this, wouldn’t even think of it. We are working people without time on our hands. In the old country, we milk cows or d … | Continue reading
Joanna Blythman in The Guardian: The investigative journalist Gary Taubes is known for his painstakingly researched and withering demolitions of the “eat less, move more” diet orthodoxy, but his latest book is personal. The Case for Keto is aimed at “those of us who fatten easily … | Continue reading
Edward Sorel in The New York Times: Both grew up in the Midwest, both wrote novels that skewered the patriarchal, conformist towns where they were raised, and both shared the distinction of having churchmen condemn their books as “immoral.” They should have been friends, but by 1 … | Continue reading
Priya Satia in Aeon: After the Second World War, historians asked us to shift our focus from great men to the actions and experiences of ordinary people, to culture rather than institutions. This methodological shift to ‘history from below’ was political, supporting a democratic … | Continue reading
Peter Gordon in The New Statesman: Marxism has had a long and troubled relationship with religion. In 1843 the young Karl Marx wrote in a critical essay on German philosophy that religion is “the opium of the people”, a phrase that would eventually harden into official atheism fo … | Continue reading
Mahmood Mamdani in Lapham’s Quarterly: In the early period of American colonization, there was no reference to a place called Indian country. That is because every place was Indian country. Settlers in Maine rented land from Indians. In the Dutch and English colonies, settlers pu … | Continue reading
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Christopher Mackin and Richard May in The New Republic: With vaccinations underway and the Biden administration about to assume power, attention will soon return to an assessment of the true damage that Covid-19 has wreaked on the American economy. At this moment, it’s important … | Continue reading
Jennifer Szalai at the New York Times: On the face of it, “Feline Philosophy” would seem like a departure for Gray — a playful exploration of what cats might have to teach humans in our never-ending quest to understand ourselves. But the book, in true Gray fashion, suggests that … | Continue reading
Daniel Grossman at The Washington Post: Though wood still plays an important role in the construction of our homes — think two-by-four stud supports and plywood in walls, flooring and roofing — our eye most often falls on exteriors covered in synthetic materials like vinyl siding … | Continue reading