The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
I just finished the February 17 & 24 anniversary issue. I enjoyed Roger Angell's "This Old Man" although I didn't think I would. I didn't enjoy the article "Starman" about Neil deGrasse Tyson as much as I thought I would. Also, the tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman left me cold. What I enjoyed the most was the article by Adam Gopnik, "The frankly faithless" about agnostic/atheists through the ages.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on April 23, 2014, 10:24:53 pm ---I just finished the February 17 & 24 anniversary issue. I enjoyed Roger Angell's "This Old Man" although I didn't think I would. I didn't enjoy the article "Starman" about Neil deGrasse Tyson as much as I thought I would. Also, the tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman left me cold. What I enjoyed the most was the article by Adam Gopnik, "The frankly faithless" about agnostic/atheists through the ages.
--- End quote ---
Those all sound worth reading! I'll have to dig that issue out of the pile.
I'm midway through a December article by Michael Pollan about scientists who believe that plants can "think." Once again, an interesting concept turns into a duty article. You kind of get the point early on -- plants interact with their environments and each other in far more complex ways than previously thought, showing awareness of conditions and responding with chemical changes or movement, which some scientists consider something like animals thinking, but others scoff at as not comparable -- and then the article goes on for pages and pages, reiterating and fine-tuning the concept, offering more evidence, quoting more people on both sides.
serious crayons:
I'm reading Michael Kinsley's personal history about how his Parkinson's might or might not be affecting his cognitive abilities in the April 28 issue. (I skip around -- still plodding through Pollan's intelligent plants from December.)
Highly recommended so far. It's courageous -- what if a famous pundit gradually loses his intellectual edge? -- and, as always with Kinsley, measured and even-keeled and humorous. Kinsley has always been probably my favorite political writer.
Front-Ranger:
I'm reading the Kingsley article too. It makes a nice complement to the Angell article I read last week.
serious crayons:
Finished Kinsley. Highly recommended! :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version