Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this: Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of … Continue reading →
THE SECOND COMING William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and … Continue reading →
RIP, Michael Brown. Who’s Michael Brown? you ask: Michael Brown, a keyboardist and songwriter who at 16 was a writer of the 1966 hit “Walk Away Renee” for his band the Left Banke and composed “Pretty Ballerina” for it as … Continue reading →
I was in my car listening to NPR the other night (yes, sometimes I listen to NPR) and someone mentioned that, back in the 30s, half of John Steinbeck’s first draft of Of Mice and Men had been eaten by … Continue reading →
Ace points out that in the OU SAE case, even the ACLU (boy, that’s a lot of acronyms in one sentence) has been extremely reluctant to admit that the university acted unconstitutionally in expelling the two student ringleaders of the … Continue reading →
Long-time readers here probably remember when I used to write about my elderly mother. And you probably also recall that about two-and-a-half years ago she died. Although I haven’t written much about that event, some day I may. Shortly after … Continue reading →
The book The Nazi Seizure of Power sounds like a fascinating read. From one of the customer reviews at Amazon: …[The Nazis] were masterful at marketing at the local level. They tailored their messages to the specific audiences they were … Continue reading →
There’s been a flurry of publicity over the fact that the boy featured in the book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven now says the whole thing was a lie. The book has been pulled: The best-selling book, first … Continue reading →
[NOTE: This small poetic effort of mine has become somewhat of a holiday tradition at neo-neocon. So here it comes again—just like the holiday itself. Merry Christmas Eve to you all!] ‘TWAS THE BLOGGER’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS ‘Twas the night … Continue reading →
This article by Suki Kim is an excerpt from her book Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, based on her experience teaching English in North Korea. From a review of the … Continue reading →
As a response to my recent mosquito post, commenter “cornflour” has sent in a link to the article “Cosmic Karma: Mosquitoes Have Flying, Blood-Sucking Parasites of Their Own”: Although it’s oh-so-satisfying to hear mosquitoes have their own blood-sucking winged pests … Continue reading →
The WaPo has been reporting on the fact that Obama and his generals are at odds over the conduct of the operation against ISIS. The conflict seems to be heating up (the war against the generals, that is, not the … Continue reading →