RefBan

Referral Banners

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Browser daily newsletter [17 Dec 2011]

17 December 2011

 Best of the Moment

Christopher Hitchens: 'The Consummate Writer, The Brilliant Friend'

Ian McEwan | Guardian | 16 December 2011

Wonderful, touching piece from McEwan remembering last weeks of his great friend. A writer, to the last: "His head would droop, his eyes close, then with superhuman effort he would drag himself awake to type another line" Comments

How National Identities Are Really Formed

Hussein Ibish | Ibishblog | 14 December 2011

Spiky, enjoyable analysis that takes as its starting point Newt Gingrich's recent remarks about Palestinians being "an invented people". They're no more or less "invented" than any other modern national identity Comments

Sing Of The New Invasion

Slavoj Zizek | New Statesman | 12 December 2011

"Fiennes's Coriolanus is like the eyes of God or a saint in an Orthodox icon: Without changing a word in Shakespeare's play, the film looks squarely at our predicament today, offering us the figure of the radical freedom fighter" Comments

A Death Of One's Own

Peter Singer | Project Syndicate | 16 December 2011

"In the US, you can buy a gun and put a bullet through your brain without breaking any laws." But if you ask your doctor to shoot you, or to kill you by some other means, you are party to a crime. What sense does that make? Comments

If You Can’t Notice A Gorilla In Plain Sight, How Can You Testify As A Witness?

Daniel Simons | The Crux | 14 December 2011

Interesting post on limits of our perception, awareness. As notorious "gorilla test" shows, we are far less likely to notice unexpected events than we presume. Which could have severe consequences, when it comes to matters of law Comments

Hitch

Jane Mayer | New Yorker | 16 December 2011

Brief but brilliant. A fabulous vignette. The scene: An exclusive, allegedly anti-Semitic country club in Palm Beach. Christopher Hitchens is shown to a table in the middle of the dining room... Comments

No comments: