TRUMP—AND TWO MEANINGS OF THE WORD “PITCH” PART 2
SIMON SKINNER GAVE US AN INFORMATIVE INTRODUCTION to international football with his LRB “ ‘I Wouldn’t Pay It Either’ ” book review of Jonathan Wilson’s The Power and the Glory: … Continue reading
TRUMP—AND TWO MEANINGS OF THE WORD “PITCH” PART 1
THIS TALE WAS PROMPTED INITIALLY BY Simon Skinner’s giant (15,601 words!) “ ‘I Wouldn’t Pay It Either,’ ” his June 25, 2026, London Review of Books review of Jonathan Wilson’s … Continue reading
REALITY 101 PART 2
YESTERDAY WE CALLED FOR REALITY ASSESSMENTS of warfare and the crypto meme scam. Today in Part 2, Mother Nature fact-checks Trump’s climate con, her weather cancels his ego games, and, … Continue reading
REALITY 101 PART 1
SO MANY RECENT TRAGEDIES MIGHT HAVE BEEN AVOIDED with a course in Reality 101. Its syllabus would include basics of elementary history, economics, science, and medicine. In Parts 1 and … Continue reading
DR. ZEYNEP TUFEKCI CLARIFIES A.I.
AS CONFIRMED BY HER APPEARANCES AT THIS WEBSITE (see “Plato, The Internet, Education, and A.I.,” December 17, 2022; “Grok Goes Bonkers,” May 23, 2025; and “Deepfake—And Our Resulting Loss of … Continue reading
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!
THIS, OF COURSE, IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of the ongoing political-social experiment defining the United States of America. Here are tidbits gleaned from the past—and from the present—on this occasion. … Continue reading
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 1
THE BROTHERS WILLIAM HOLMES AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON MCGUFFEY edited a series of Readers for grades 1-6. As noted by Wikipedia, these Eclectic Readers “were widely used as textbooks in American … Continue reading
SET AND COSTUME DESIGN FOR OPERA
“LEAPS OF IMAGINATION” IS THE APT TITLE for Anthony Freud’s article in Opera with Opera News, July 2026. It follows up on his “Illuminating the Stage,” February 2026, tidbits of … Continue reading
ADVANTAGES OF THE PRINCIPLED PUBLIC SPHERE PART 2
IN PART 1, ALEX ROSS’S “Jürgen Habermas Defended Reason in a Darkening Age,” The New Yorker, June 22, 2026, introduced us to the philosophical concept of the Principled Public Sphere. … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE STARTED STUDY OF MCGUFFEY’S ECLECTIC READERS, USING its annotated version edited by Stanley W. Lindberg. Today in Part 2 we continue with a lesson that’s a fundamental one … Continue reading →