An evening Lull Report …

… courtesy of Dave Lull:



… The American Scholar: On Weirdness — Nathaniel Rich.

Weird, he said, meant surprising, unexpected, unusual, new. Weirdness was the quality he sought when he listened to music, and also when he watched movies, and read books. All great art was weird.

… Sounds about right:  Sochi is to Putin what Berlin in 1936 was to Hitler, says Garry Kasparov.



… Hollow Men and the Search for a Workable Pluralism.

The 1950s intellectuals shared the founders’ reverence for science and the individual, but not their belief in natural laws ….

… Peculiar favorite: TS Eliot: Words tongued with fire.

From the outset, Eliot’s work fused satire and mysticism; his denunciations of society depend for their authority on his conviction that the religious vision of his great hero, Dante, offered a securer means of interpreting and judging culture and experience than the formulae and rituals of liberal democracy. 

… Twenty-two consecutive days below zero.