March 2012
3 posts
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“First, that the speakers of British English, particularly the upper-class...”
– Jessica Love explains the impact dialect and accent have on our perception of a speaker. Read What Prestige Sounds Like.
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February 2012
60 posts
"I can’t believe I burned down a tree older then... →
plocool:
motherjones:
26-year-old Sarah Barnes’s alleged response to allegedly burning down the fifth oldest tree in the world—a 3,500-year-old, 118-foot-tall bald cypress—while (allegedly) on meth. Barnes is allegedly from Florida.
Reminds me of this Radiolab story.
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“Who could fail to admire the weeds? Especially weeds impervious to weeding,...”
– Priscilla Long waxes poetic about a verdant nemesis. Read.
Works of Fiction Set in 2012 →
millionsmillions:
(h/t Berfois)
Huh. So this is the year Seymour dies.
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“I fear that my decreasing interest in the contemporary indicates the onset of...”
– Michael Dirda revisits the fantastical, swashbuckling adventure novels of the early 1900s. Read more.
“But can we please admit that many four year colleges do in fact attempt to...”
– Conor Friedersdorf
Let’s hear it. Is Conor wrong?
(via theatlantic)
Yes. Also, if I were a Notre Dame alum I’d be fairly offended at being lumped in with a racist institution like Bob Jones.
(via markcoatney)
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“I have often tried to describe what I like to call “a good class.” It happens...”
– Professor of English, Paula Cohen describes the great learning lubricant, conversation. Read.
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“We already know that language is special; no other aspect of cognition...”
– Jessica Love compares mathematics to language.
The Naked Face →
tetw:
by Malcolm Gladwell
Face-reading depends not just on seeing facial expressions but also on taking them seriously.
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“Now we live in the kingdom of fact: of information and the means to gather it,...”
– William Deresiewicz, on the rise and return of fiction narratives. Read.
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“Their sense of self has already adjusted to the expectations placed on them.”
– Paula Cohen discusses academic tracking in this week’s edition of Class Notes. Read.
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“When asking our neighbor whether she might give us some sugar, as opposed to...”
– Jessica Love describes a linguistic phenomenon called syntactic priming. Read.
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“If one cannot really teach students to be gifted writers, one can teach them to...”
– Paula Cohen on her creative writing classes. Read.
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“It isn’t that I do not wish success to Occupy and what it stands for. It’s just...”
– William Deresiewicz turns his attention to the Occupy movement. Read
discoverynews:
annadevries:
Public Service Announcement: Literary Magazines still exist! And they are “offbeat,” “itty bitty,” and “platform-agnostic.”
Check these out.
(Thanks, NYT!)
This is so 90s. Love
Is this an intello-chic reblog?
More Great Reads from... →
tetw:
Another collection of excellent reading recommendations from our friends over at the American Scholar:
A Jew in the Northwest by William Deresiewicz The author muses on Jewishness, his forebears, and the East Coast/West Coast culture clash
Stuttgart: Continental Drifter by Olufemi Terry A West African émigré reports on Stuttgart 21, a controversial project that was marred with with...
“The Queen was easy to deal with. She was very definite about what she wanted and...”
– First Lady Betty Ford’s Description of the State Dinner for Queen Elizabeth on July 7, 1976
From her 1978 memoir, The Times of My Life.
(via ourpresidents)
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“The buzzword now is authenticity—If anything, turning ourselves into miniature...”
– William Deresiewicz continues his three-pronged attack on the Millennial ethos. This week, entrepreneurship. Read @FranzKafka.
111 Essential Articles and Essays →
tetw:
A huge collection of the very best magazine length non-fiction. Includes stacks of classic material from DFW, JJS, HST, Joan Didion, Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Orlean, Annie Dillard, Walter Kirn, Tom Woolfe, and many many others.
Yup. There goes my weekend. Here’s a compendium of thoughtful dialogue by today’s best writers.
How to Get a Nuclear Bomb →
tetw:
by William Langewiesche
It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible. A reporter travels the world to find out how.
This a great piece.
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“I reduce my sentences to the minimum number of facts I think a reader would want...”
– William Zinsser on his writing style. Read Flunking Description.
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“Say end dog is teen.
Go ahead, decry the idiosyncrasies of modern English...”
– Linguist Jessica Love, just charming our socks off. Read more.
Fixed! Good spot, mightyflynn.