…  Why I Want My Students to Read Jared Diamond’s Latest Blockbuster, Part II | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network . (Hat tip, Da...

…  George Orwell Day begins annual commemoration | Books | guardian.co.uk .

... We prepare students for their last job, says Sanford J Ungar

…  Charles Rosen on Chopin | The New York Review of Book s .

…  I Don't Understand Quantum Mechanics, and That's Okay - Blog .

…   Book Review: Drinking With Men - WSJ.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Many retired drinkers can tell you much about what they call "t...

…   Interview: Elizabeth Sigmund, dedicatee of The Bell Jar – Reading group | Books | guardian.co.uk . …  Interview: Olwyn Hughes, Sylvia ...

…   Wholly Moses - FT.com .

... How Amish Tripathi’s success is prompting MBA grads to become novelists

…   Week in Words: Wordnik's McKean on Wall Street Journal Words - WSJ.com .

…   To all my Levantine... | Facebook . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass. — Franz Grillparzer , who died on this date in 1872

…  Previously unknown Sandburg poem focuses on power of the gun | News Bureau | University of Illinois . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.) ...

…  The Diary Review: This universal religion .

…  Issa's Untidy Hut: One Inch Rock: Issa's Sunday Service, #154 .

…  Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth -- visualized | Video on TED.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   Nassim Taleb Talks Antifragile, Libertarianism, and Capitalism's Genius for Failure — Reason.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Well, I ...

My friend Julie Chovanes found herself at a loss for words while adding a comment this pts of mine: Imagine that … The always resourceful...

… The Millions : Letters in the Wind: A Writer’s Evolution .

…  For Men Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn is missing evolutionary biology, behavioral economics, and psychology — The Story's Story .

…  Marginalia, no.284 | The New Psalmanazar .

…  Gypsy Scholar: Mary Ruefle: Poet and Essayist . . .

…  Maverick Philosopher: Being is Said in Many Ways: On the Uses of 'Is' .

…   David Ferry's Beautiful Thefts : The New Yorker . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

…  Anecdotal Evidence: `I Could Scarce Trust Myself With Myself' . As Noël Coward said, "Work is more fun than fun."

…   Baseball Great Stan Musial Dies at 92 - NYTimes.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   New Dan Brown novel 'Inferno' coming in May .

… I review Simon Tolkien's latest:  A mystery behind whodunit . …  At 71, able to cast a child's eye on the world . …  A full-le...

…   Bones of Contention: If the Skeleton Is Richard III, Where to Bury It? - WSJ.com .

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only diff...

... Modernism's first wave: turn-of-the-century literature

... What can literature teach us about doing business better?

... Eyes Wide Shut

…  Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says — Pharyngula . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Biologists have long assumed t...

…   Here Be Dragons: In Literature on AbeBooks .

…  Winter 2013 | Kenyon Review Online .

…   David R. Godine, Publisher: Superior Person's Tuesday!

…  Four Points from The Intellectual Life .

…  Sally's American Hands Vision - Daniel Grotta and Sally Wiener Grotta .

…  The Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement | Fox Chase Review .

…  Italy’s first Duce — The Spectator .

…  Carlos Fuentes’s Last Novel to be Published Posthumously | Publishing Perspectives .

…  Ivebeenreadinglately: Chekhov tells you how to live . 

…  Issa's Untidy Hut: Carol Montgomery: Small Press Friday .

…   TT: In a lonely place .

…  zmkc: Closely Watched .

 …  The voice of Virginia Woolf: “Do we write better? Do we read better? … Where are we to lay the blame?” | The Book Haven .

... Scrap Book

... Moral of the story

…  Anecdotal Evidence: `Not the Same as What's Important' .

…  Lucky Lyle Talbot | Bill Peschel .

…  Zealotry of Guerin: Light of the World (Peter Blume) .

…  Julie Burchill, transphobia and hostility towards the victims of oppression | Dean Burnett | Science | guardian.co.uk . (Hat tip, Julie C...

I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more ac...

... Dan Brown: An unlikely hellraiser

... The Fun Stuff by James Wood: review As he admitted in an interview to mark the publication of his debut novel 10 years ago, Wood feels...

... Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter

...and his literary offspring 

…  Max Sebald's Writing Tips - Richard Skinner . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  The Enigma Machine: How Alan Turing Helped Break the Unbreakable Nazi Code | Open Culture . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Vladimir Nabokov on Literature and Life: A Rare 1969 BBC Interview | Brain Pickings . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  ‘Going Clear,’ Lawrence Wright’s Book on Scientology - NYTimes.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   Transmissions from a Lone Star: 2012: The year's most uplifting moments | Columnists | RIA Novosti .

…  A Commonplace Blog: The essential racket  .(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  New Book Celebrates ‘The Poetry of the Taliban’ .

…  Anecdotal Evidence: `The Ultimate Result of All Ambition' .

…  Francis Poulenc | More Than Almost Great | Sightings by Terry Teachout - WSJ.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I agree completely. There...

…   Steven Poole: My problem with George Orwell | Books | The Guardian . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Actually, this piece makes some good point...

…  New owners bring fear and confusion to Philadelphia’s dailies. | Philadelphia City Paper | 01/17/2013 . (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

…  Heather Sellers on her Essay “In Graves with My Student Elizabeth” — BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog .

…  Fragile Reasoning in Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile: An Enlightenment Transhumanist Critique — Transhumanity.net . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) ...

... The talkative dead

... Irwin Shaw, The Art of Fiction No. 4 But don’t forget that almost every writer will tell you that events that happened to him before h...

... Rachel Cusk: in praise of the creative writing course

…  When Falls the Coliseum — Musical nightmare .

…  The Smart Set: Still Waiting - January 14, 2013 . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Paul Davis On Crime: BBC America To Produce Four-Part Miniseries On Life Of James Bond Creator Ian Fleming .

…  A Commonplace Blog: A decalogue for writing well . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   A Message To Philip Roth’s Biographer: Tell Us Something We Don’t Know | Cognoscenti . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meani...

... Being Osama bin Laden

…  On Manti Te’o, the Power of Narrative, and the Need for Fact-Checking — BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog .

…  Murder Season Chapter 1 .

…   Life After Blue | Via Meadia . At the heart of the enduring liberal ideal is a truth that is often forgotten in today’s political deb...

 … The Shapes of Stories byKurt Vonnegut . (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)

…  First Known When Lost: Walls .

…  George Kline: scholar, translator, and chronicler of Soviet bugaboos | The Book Haven .

…  Is it time for the National Book Awards to change? Yes. - latimes.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Dave also sends along this:  Mediocrity ...

…  Dear Abby’s Pauline Phillips Dies at 94 - ABC News . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   Christopher Hitchens faces posthumous 'prosecution' in new book | Books | guardian.co.uk . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) God forbid th...

…   Amazon.com: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award . (Hat tip, Julie Chovanes.)

…  Magazine Success Story: The Saturday Evening Post Keeps on Going | Observer . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Abraham Lincoln | The Power of the Negative | By Douglas L. Wilson - WSJ.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…   Book Review: Conscious Capitalism - WSJ.com . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) "With few exceptions," the authors write, "entre...

... The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life: Literary Citizenship and Finding Your Tribe or, 6 Degrees of Anna Leahy

…  Social Science and Humanities Newswire .

…  Two Minutes and a Suitcase: What Would You Save?  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Anecdotal Evidence: `A Little More Populous With Visionary Shapes' . Years ago, I saw William F. Buckley interview Paul Goodman, an...

…  James Wolcott reviews ‘Selected Letters of William Styron’ edited by Rose Styron and R. Blakeslee Gilpin — LRB 24 January 2013 . (Hat tip...

…  A Wealth of Words by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., City Journal WInter 2013 . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I'm not so sure about this. A large vocab...