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The Marginalian
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements... “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever...
6 hours ago
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6 hours ago
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world’s first algorithm for the world’s first computer. Meanwhile, she was reckoning with the nature...
The Elysian
Marginalia: How to run the world, the case against elections, unions championing WFH Notes from the margins of my research.
17 hours ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Essayists, Like Poets, Are Born and Not Made' “A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being,...
2 hours ago
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2 hours ago
“A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his tongue. Blessed with these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. Give him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as...
The American Scholar
The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in...
yesterday
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yesterday
Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in America The post The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful Predator Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most...
2 days ago
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Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family. Older than great white sharks, they hunt...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Good Humoured Growl' We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies and an angry man is never forgiving -- convictions rooted in naïveté about human nature, which is willful and contradictory. Few of us even understand our own motives. Here is...
The American Scholar
The Seeker and the Sought A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Rewilding the Human Spirit in the Age of Moral Colonialism: Brian Eno on Carnival as a Model for... The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If the twentieth century was the age of dictatorships — I grew up in one — reducing human beings to a herd, the twenty-first century, with its self-appointed moral despots, is the age...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Place Remote and Islanded' “If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
“If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my things are going to last.”  This is Edwin Arlington Robinson at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, writing to a friend on August 20, 1926. In effect he is proposing a fanciful...
The American Scholar
Eighty The post Eighty appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Discipline Results in Freedom' Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of...
4 days ago
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4 days ago
Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of the Sitwells. I know Dame Edith and her brothers, Sir Osbert and Sir Sacheverell, largely by reputation, and they impress me as an eccentric English phenomenon that has...
The American Scholar
“The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared...
4 days ago
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4 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
My master plan to create a modern media empire A network of media organizations that support readers, not advertisers.
5 days ago
Escaping Flatland
If you're facing a complicated decision, your first job isn't to find a solution, but to understand... Some housekeeping:
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What May Save Us Is Conversation' A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation....
5 days ago
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A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation. All work or worked in the past for the same government agency in Washington, D.C. Conversation tended toward the traditionally male – politics, sports, health. Inevitably, opinions...
The American Scholar
The Art of Doing Politics Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of...
a week ago
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a week ago
Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of <em>Doing</em> Politics appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
How I crowdfunded a $60,000+ book advance Plus, my plans for the book from here.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Shun the Man of Sorrow' Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and...
a week ago
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a week ago
Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and disappointments. Too often, volumes touted for their therapeutic qualities are accompanied by nasty side effects: lousy writing, including clichés and soft-headed reasoning. Such books risk...
The Marginalian
Dawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star “You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the...
a week ago
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a week ago
“You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the present,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his transcendent portrait of the transition from sleep to wakefulness. The experience of waking — that phase transition between the liquid...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Disposed to Make Concessions to the World' Philip Larkin, famously childless, first drafted “Take One Home for the Kiddies” in 1954. Then it...
a week ago
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a week ago
Philip Larkin, famously childless, first drafted “Take One Home for the Kiddies” in 1954. Then it was titled “Pets.” He completed the retitled poem on this date, August 13, in 1960, and included it in The Whitsun Weddings (1964):  “On shallow straw, in shadeless glass, Huddled by...
The American Scholar
The Lady Vet The post The Lady Vet appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The Elysian
By all means, let private equity save capitalism We should get Wall Street involved too.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Come Back Now As You Were in Youth' “Whisper to me some beautiful secret that you remember from life.”  Donald Justice often skirts...
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“Whisper to me some beautiful secret that you remember from life.”  Donald Justice often skirts sentimentality in his poems, teetering at the lip of a cheap conceit, but preserves his integrity with craft and an intelligent capacity for nostalgia coupled with the gift of...
The American Scholar
“Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska appeared...
a week ago
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Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Wonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in,...
a week ago
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We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness. Wonder — that edge state on the...
Wuthering...
A readalong of Christopher Marlowe and friends - I fear they know we sent the poison'd broth Please join me this fall in reading the plays of Christopher Marlowe and some of his contemporaries,...
a week ago
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Please join me this fall in reading the plays of Christopher Marlowe and some of his contemporaries, if that sounds enjoyable to you.  The more I have thought about it, the more enjoyable it sounds to me.  I have many questions. Below is an attempt at a schedule, with a play...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old News Flutters From a Bottom Drawer' Like most family history, it started as a rumor, a titillating story without context, myth-like....
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Like most family history, it started as a rumor, a titillating story without context, myth-like. My mother had four brothers, three of whom were older. The oldest were Kenneth and Clifford. We never met the latter. Uncle Ken lived in Tampa, Fla., and we visited him in 1968, annus...
The American Scholar
Anne Labovitz To see and be seen The post Anne Labovitz appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate' “I was the sort of boy who always connected life and art, mixing them up, feeling the way art lives...
a week ago
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“I was the sort of boy who always connected life and art, mixing them up, feeling the way art lives in time and out of it, just like the human mind and imagination.”  Spend enough time reading enough books and you will encounter a strangely familiar character: a funhouse mirror...
The Marginalian
Things Become Other Things: Walking, Forgiveness, and Belonging in the Mountains of Japan Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we...
2 weeks ago
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Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we fall and then we catch ourselves, we choose to go one way and not another. The foot falls and worlds of possibility rise in its shadow. Every step remaps the psychogeography of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like an Enormous Yes' When my brother and I were growing up, books about the sort of music we liked – blues, jazz,...
2 weeks ago
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When my brother and I were growing up, books about the sort of music we liked – blues, jazz, country, some rock – were hard to find. Today, of course, the market is flooded with everything from fanboy gush to unreadable academic tracts. An exception in the sixties was the English...
Wuthering...
What I Read in July 2025 - books are quiet and unobtrusive, and do not try to hustle the reader In general, however, he [Louis XVI] preferred writing down his thoughts instead of uttering them by...
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In general, however, he [Louis XVI] preferred writing down his thoughts instead of uttering them by word of mouth; and he was fond of reading, for books are quiet and unobtrusive, and do not try to hustle the reader. (Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette, 1932, p. 77 of the 1933...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Men Are Generally Narrative' A blunt fact of modern life: When young, everyone we knew – family, friends, neighbors – lives...
2 weeks ago
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A blunt fact of modern life: When young, everyone we knew – family, friends, neighbors – lives nearby. Our lives are well-populated. With age, that alignment of geography and acquaintance attenuates. Live long enough and our birthplace turns incrementally, across the decades,...
The American Scholar
Streams of Consciousness A writer’s intrepid exploration of troubled waters The post Streams of Consciousness appeared first...
2 weeks ago
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A writer’s intrepid exploration of troubled waters The post Streams of Consciousness appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Garden Is a Vast Hospital' On Saturday I saw the first hummingbird of the season in our front garden. I’ve counted...
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On Saturday I saw the first hummingbird of the season in our front garden. I’ve counted eight butterfly species there this summer and found a monarch chrysalis hanging from a tropical milkweed plant. Brown and green anoles have densely colonized the garden, which has never been...
The American Scholar
Horse and Runner The post Horse and Runner appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Writer Relies on Instinct and Intuition' V.S. Pritchett is asked in his Paris Review interview, “Do you think living and writing conflict?”...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
V.S. Pritchett is asked in his Paris Review interview, “Do you think living and writing conflict?” – a rather silly question -- and he replies: “I have always thought that life and literature are intermingled and that this intermingling has been my quest.” Spoken like the kind of...
The American Scholar
{…} by Fady Joudah Poems read aloud, beautifully The post {…} by Fady Joudah appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Blink Twice to Quell a Quasar: Carl Sagan on Superstition Growing up in Bulgaria, in a city teeming in stray dogs and cars, I was deeply distressed by the...
2 weeks ago
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Growing up in Bulgaria, in a city teeming in stray dogs and cars, I was deeply distressed by the sight of each dead animal in the streets between home and school — deaths I could not prevent and could not bear. To cope with the aching helplessness, I developed a private...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Shakespeare of the Essay Form' “ordinary sanity in extraordinary prose”  The phrase is the American poet David Mason’s in his essay...
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“ordinary sanity in extraordinary prose”  The phrase is the American poet David Mason’s in his essay “The Freedom of Montaigne.” In characterizing the Frenchman and his essays, Mason describes an ideal seldom attained and occasionally scorned. Today, extreme, sweeping statements...
The American Scholar
“Dead Man’s Hand” The post “Dead Man’s Hand” appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Ten-pound Life Will Give You Every Fact' On this, the tenth anniversary of poet-historian Robert Conquest’s death at ninety-eight,...
2 weeks ago
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On this, the tenth anniversary of poet-historian Robert Conquest’s death at ninety-eight, let’s recall the sonnet he wrote about the treachery of biographers, “Second Death”:  “A ten-pound Life will give you every fact -- Facts that he’d hoped his friends would not rehearse To a...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Happier Creature It must be encoded there, in the childhood memories of our synapses and our cells — how we came out...
3 weeks ago
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It must be encoded there, in the childhood memories of our synapses and our cells — how we came out of the ocean 35 trillion yesterdays ago, small and slippery, gills trembling with the shock of air, fins budding feet, limbs growing sinewy and furred, then unfurred, spine...
Escaping Flatland
A constellation of lookers Fragments, vol. 5
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only a Facsimile That Is Called Literature' I’ve learned with time that my mind has periods of attentiveness followed by drifts into passive,...
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I’ve learned with time that my mind has periods of attentiveness followed by drifts into passive, relaxed states of consciousness. I’m awake but almost empty. I might be taking a shower or staring out the window at nothing. That’s when I occasionally find myself in an old song or...
The Elysian
We could return three continents of land to the wild And create an interspecies future that benefits humans and ecologies alike.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Put Out Their Eyes When It Was Dark' “The man who is both happy and an optimist is an imbecile.”  Happiness has always felt like the...
3 weeks ago
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“The man who is both happy and an optimist is an imbecile.”  Happiness has always felt like the byproduct of life properly lived, not a goal unto itself. If I “behave” – live up to my own standards, not exaggerate my importance, pay minute attention to my conscience, respect...
The American Scholar
Hundreds and Thousands The post Hundreds and Thousands appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Knowing Who You Are and What You Want: Cristina Campo on Fairy Tales, Time, and the... “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales,” Einstein reportedly told one...
3 weeks ago
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“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales,” Einstein reportedly told one mother who wished for her son to become a scientist. “If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Given that the deepest measure of intelligence is a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Seemed to Think Lucidity All-sufficing' “[T]here is a very widespread and comfortable belief that we are all of us born writers. Not long...
3 weeks ago
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“[T]here is a very widespread and comfortable belief that we are all of us born writers. Not long ago I heard that agile and mellifluous quodlibetarian, Dr. Joad, saying in answer to a questioner who wanted to write good letters, that anybody could write good letters: one had but...