6/30 Fruits of the Enlightenment: synthetic blood vessels and the use of stem cells to repair paralysis.
6/29 Cool photos of insects (and a frog) up close. Very close.
6/28 Why are so many great creators outside the margins? Another fine essay from Paul Graham. Key quotation on “the disadvantages of insider projects: the selection of the wrong kind of people, the excessive scope, the inability to take risks, the need to seem serious, the weight of expectations, the power of vested interests, the undiscerning audience, and perhaps most dangerous, the tendency of such work to become a duty rather than a pleasure.”
6/27 1942 and why Stefan Zweig still matters.
6/26 Wow: the relative sizes of Earth, the other planets, and several stars.
6/24 America’s “World Cup edge”? Margaret Soltan excerpts a David Brooks article on American and European universities. See also Soltan’s classic takedown of a cranky intellectual pretender.
Also: Andrea Dworkin versus the First Amendment—Alan Dershowitz updates and corrects the record.
6/23 When is the next flight to Moscow? Grant McCracken reflects on divergent reactions to outstanding beauty.
6/22 The “high” art world today: one museum loses its head. Mark Vallen comments on a “cutting” edge artist whose medium is flatulence.
And one wonders what was going on in some of these buyers’ heads. For some antidotes, check out Alexandra York’s American Renaissance for the 21st Century and Quent Cordair’s gallery.
6/21 What is anti-imperialism? Marko Attila Hoare’s thoughtful review of Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)
6/20 In Belgium: the Education Police versus homeschoolers. And a brief report on homeschooling in England. (Thanks to Sean for the links.)
6/19 From Arnaud Frich Photo, gorgeous panoramas of Paris at night.
6/17 James K. Glassman with good global economic news: it’s boom time. Striking quotation: “For the first time since 1969 … not a single country in the world has had negative year-over-year growth.” (Via Johan Norberg.)
6/16 Global warming? The journalism and the politics are often awful. How good is the science? (Thanks to Robert for the link.)
6/15 Terry Teachout writes up his visit to the fascinating (and sometimes weird) Barnes Museum in Philadelphia.
6/14 In The Herald, Joan McAlpine diagnoses the malaise of European universities. And the Financial Times, Richard Lambert suggests six steps to revitalize Europe’s universities. (Both via University Diaries.)
6/13 Via TIA Daily, two good articles on the intellectual and moral meltdown of the Left: Ian Buruma notes and explains the pattern of Western leftists admiring and apologizing for the worst tyrannies, and FrontPage Magazine has a roundup of tortured Left reactions to Zarqawi’s death.
6/12 Science, technology, and art at their finest? The Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment. (Via Philosopher Stone.) More seriously, here is a classic experiment in us-versus-them groupthink bias.
6/10 Film buff Stan Rozenfeld has a new round of mini-reviews of new and classic movies.
6/9 At Rossputin.com, an interview with Walter Williams on price gouging. And George Reisman takes on the real gougers—those who, like Paul Krugman, want to gouge the rich to pay for their pet projects.
6/8 Die Zeit’s publisher and editor Josef Josse’s brilliant diagnosis of the psychology of Anti-ism—with special attention to its currently most popular form world-wide.
6/7 The artist at work: June’s studio update from painter Michael Newberry.
6/6 PC World’s top tech gadgets of the past 50 years. And at the Online Archive of California: a photographic collection of technology.
6/5 Chemists beware!—the SWAT team is on its way to your house and lab. Philosopher Stone asks: Is this the future of government regulation? Or this? Punch magazine put it perfectly way back in 1920: “One of the Pacific Islands, we read, is so small that the House of Commons could not be planted on it. A great pity.” (September 15th, 1920 issue; via Bjørn Stærk)
6/3 Eugene Volokh offers an amusing reprisal of John Galt’s legal history. And my college town in Canada was founded by John Galt in 1827.
6/2 Theodore Dalrymple on drug addiction and personal responsibility.
6/1 Hollywood Rand fans. And here is a promising new web log: The Objective Standard. And the BB&T corporation has an excellent Values philosophy.