Venerable Harper’s Magazine, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the “Harper’s Index,” its popular listing of unexpectedly revealing numerical data, has made the entire index available for searching and browsing by categories. The index database includes all 12,058 lines from all 300 issues, with more than one thousand linked categories. Found when searching “Dick Cheney“: (9/03) Year [...]
Archive for February 19th, 2009
Truth in Numbers: “Harper’s Index” Turns 25
Posted in American History, Bush, Cheney, Magazines & Newspapers, Media & Advertising, Politics on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
And the Winners Are: The National Review’s “25 Best Conservative Movies”
Posted in Cinema, Magazines & Newspapers, Movie Reviews, Politics, Popular Culture on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On the eve of the Academy Awards announcements, the National Review has released its list of the “25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years.” The list, chosen from nominees submitted by National Review readers, includes, among others, The Lives of Others, The Incredibles, Juno, Forrest Gump, Ghostbusters, The Dark Knight and Gran Torino, films conservatives [...]
Joking Matters, or: What Made the Greeks Laugh?
Posted in Ancient History, Europe on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“One of the most famous one-liners of the ancient world, with an afterlife that stretches into the twentieth century (it gets retold, with a different cast of characters but the same punchline, both in Freud and in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea), was a joking insinuation about Augustus’ paternity. “Spotting, so the story goes, [...]
Franz Kafka & Our “Kafkaesque” Times
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Writers & Writing on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In his fine essay published earlier this month in The Nation, Alexander Provan considers the recent literature on the life and work of Franz Kafka and argues for a more expansive appreciation of the novelist and short story writer than the impression of him in ”the popular imagination [which has] been subsumed by a one-word slogan: [...]
A Different ‘Toon: “On the Money” Cartoon Exhibition at The Morgan Library
Posted in American History, Business, Collectors & Collecting, Economy, Magazines & Newspapers, Museums & Exhibitions, New York City, Politics, Popular Culture, U.S. Travel on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
With the stir over the New York Post’s economic stimulus cartoon unlikely to die down any time soon (unlike the stimulus bill-writing chimp), there may be no better time to visit the ongoing exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, “On the Money: Cartoons for The New Yorker From the Melvin R. Seiden Collection.” [...]
