February 2014
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Megan McArdle: Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out. It's sadly applicable to me down to the part where she starts talking about the current educational system: Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators However, she…
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You may have noticed the mention here and there over the past few days that February 9th of this years marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Here is what some critics had to say. (Thanks to Robert W for pointing this out to me.) I remember watching the…
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Well, this was sort of inevitable, after Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues": That's pretty much the definition of blues-rock, and probably my favorite single Cream track. As good as they were, much of their music, at least as it made its way onto records, seemed to lack something. This "Crossroads" is a live performance.…
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First, a piece in the National Catholic Register by Andrew Abela, dean of the School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America: taking his cue from the current and recent popes, he argues for the place of ethics–serious, non-libertarian, Christian ethics–in business; taking the economic system more or less as it is, he…
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(NOTE: this is somewhat spoiler-ish, in a broad way.) I was travelling for several days over the past week, and of course needed to take some things to read. I'm about halfway through The Brothers Karamazov, and would have liked to have had it on the plane, but it's so bulky that I decided at…
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I was a little disappointed when the January issue of The New Criterion arrived and I saw that a large chunk of it was occupied by a symposium called "Reagan, Thatcher, and the Special Relationship." "That sounds a bit dull," I thought. (The "special relationship" is that between the United States and Great Britain, and…
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Robert Johnson: Cross Road Blues Everybody interested in the blues knows the story about the crossroads, but not everybody is interested in the blues, so, for you: there's a legend that Johnson met the devil at a certain crossroads and sold his soul in exchange for musical ability. And here's one of his most…
Light On Dark Water 