Remember math class? You instantly had either a flash of great joy or your soul just died. This is a story about math for the latter group. Trust me on this one. First, why does the latter group exist? Why are there so many people, and let’s be honest, it is a very great number of people, whose experience learning mathematics was pure misery? Over the years, I cannot tell you how many students have been in my office and said, “I can’t do math.” I invariably say the same thing: “Of course … [Read more...] about Infinitely Weird
Modern Society
Suicide Chic
“The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.”Thus ends The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s vastly overrated foray into the novel. I tried to find some redeeming feature of this novel. I really did. I even waited to write this review until a clever former student of mine who likes this novel had the chance to convince me the novel was not atrocious. She failed. But, I don’t real blame her. This is a really bad … [Read more...] about Suicide Chic
A Funeral Pyre for Books
“When people ask me what I do, I usually say I’m an essayist or a critic. More honorable terms, both, and they mostly fit. They almost conceal the fact that the greater part of what I do is read and write about books.”In writing that, Sven Birkerts expanded his repertoire into writing about reading and writing about books. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. A title like that tips the conclusion; Birkerts is not optimistic. This collection of essays circles … [Read more...] about A Funeral Pyre for Books
The Decline of Leisure and the Academy
May latest essay at Law and Liberty, reflecting on Josef Pieper's book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture: The idea of the liberal arts college has been under assault for some time now, not just from without the walls of the Academy. Liberal arts colleges made a Faustian bargain: in exchange for ever increasing tuition payments, we provide students with hypothetically valuable job training in a posh resort. The result is that there are two forces competing for control of the colleges right … [Read more...] about The Decline of Leisure and the Academy
Jack the Ripper
“As with much of the evidence surrounding these murders, the data is ambiguous, a shifting cloud of facts and factoids onto which we project the fictions that seem most appropriate to our times and our inclinations.”Alan Moore wrote that in the appendix to From Hell, his macabre tale of Jack the Ripper. (Technically Eddie Campbell shares the credit since he drew the pictures, but, we all know this is really Moore’s book.) Jack the Ripper surely benefits from having a memorable nickname, but … [Read more...] about Jack the Ripper
The Great Movies?
Terry Pratchett had an uncanny ability to isolate an aspect of the world, turn it inside out and drop it into the fantastical world of his creation. The result is inevitably an amusing tale, littered with enough slightly more than thinly veiled references to keep your brain locked in looking for the jokes. Underneath the narrative is a substantive point. It really is a rare talent. Moving Pictures takes on Cinema. An old man guarding a secret dies, and the next thing you know, people are … [Read more...] about The Great Movies?