Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” – G.K. Chesterton
Given the dust of the earth, God created Adam; given my article, you created this. It was with pleasure and confusion that I read your response for the first time: pleasure, for while I must wonder if we will convince no one other than our friends and the others’ enemies, this exchange must represent some blip to public intellectual debate at Princeton; confusion, because I have struggled to understand several of your arguments. But that is my fault. Finding myself in the post-earthquake world that you mention in your letter, I shall content myself with playing the Candide to your Pangloss.
Q: What is a solipsist? A: Why are you asking me this? You know what a solipsist is. Q: Well, yes, but this is for the benefit of the readers, some of whom don’t know what solipsism is. A: It … Read More
You are enormously desirable. More desirable than you realize, even if you have an excess of confidence in your own good looks and god-given pheromones. In fact, you could be horribly maimed and they would still want you – not … Read More
As any Princetonian who has followed the fates of Goldman Sachs and other bulge-bracket investment banks would know—given the 100 first-round interviews that Goldman gave out for summer internships, I’m assuming this group is sizeable—an increasingly disproportionate amount of these … Read More
Open Internet networks are so common these days that warnings about unwanted invasions of privacy have dimmed almost to silence. With people continually posting pictures of themselves, along with private information, on websites such as MySpace and Facebook, everyone has … Read More
There was a time when the idea of a different spin on the dry humor of The Daily Show might have made sense. Around the time that Stewart and co. produced America: The Book, they were a twister (or some … Read More
Humbert Humbert is far from a straightforward man, but he did have the decency to commit a straightforward crime. Lolita was a tender young twelve, her suitor perhaps three times that; whatever physical, metaphysical, sexual, magic or aesthetic power she may have wielded over H.H., she was a child and he was a man of immoral actions.
I am not with the times when it comes to television. Schadenfreude TV upsets me; I can’t watch it. You know what I’m talking about: the semi-scripted reality shows, the “true life” documentaries, the TV that makes you want to … Read More
Every respectable ideology needs an encyclopedia. The editors of the Enlightenment Encyclopédie, when composing the organizational frontispiece to the work, situated religion but a few spokes away from superstitions and black magic, while the reader of the entry on “Cannibalism” interested in related themes would find himself advised to consult the “Eucharist” entry, were he to consult the book’s reference notes. The good Bolshevik editors of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, for example, were quick to minimize the entry on “Jews” in the face of the Soviet anti-Semitism of the early 1950s.
Maidens yet unyoked shall shear their hair for you when they wed, and through ages long shall reap the great morning of your tears.” – Euripides Who would not sing for Britney? She knew herself to sing! If not to … Read More
Paris: city of romance, city of wine, cheese and…belligerent drunks? Gropers on the subway? Public urination? Though it is called the City of Lights, Paris, as I have come to know it, actually has a dark and seedy underbelly. Having … Read More