Two weeks ago, when Alfonso Cuaròn’s Gravity rocketed to the top of the box office, Neil deGrasse Tyson went into a well-publicized Twitter rant about the technical inaccuracies present in the film. Tyson went on to say that he truly enjoyed the film, and to clarify that his criticisms were actually a compliment to the … Read more
As a mathematician-cum-philosopher-cum-social critic who published 66 books and more than 2,000 essays, Bertrand Russell was totally unqualified to promote leisure at the expense of work. But in a 1935 article for Harper’s Weekly titled “In Praise of Idleness,” that’s exactly what he did, and by many accounts he was quite successful. The nuts and bolts … Read more
The Lady has done it again. With the August 2013 release of her single, “Applause,” Lady Gaga addressed what many celebrities imply but fail to explicitly convey: that behind the façade of celeb immortality lies a fragile dependence upon audience reception. Gaga described such a phenomenon on her Twitter feed “’Applause’ is a very meaningful song to me, … Read more
Though you most likely have never heard it and never will, you can well assume there is nothing quite like the sound of vinyl records exploding. But let’s say for a second that, on a sweltering July day in 1979, you attended a White Sox doubleheader at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Let’s say you brought … Read more
“The confidence of an era can be assessed by the width of the gap between scientific and moral reasoning. In periods of confusion and uncertainty, the turn to aesthetics (of whatever form) becomes more pronounced.” – David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (1989) Allow me to riff a bit on Harvey’s observation. To elaborate: in … Read more
A Preposterous Powerhouse The story goes that one evening, Raoul Walsh was driving along a remote Utah highway when his jeep suddenly collided with a jackrabbit, spraying Walsh’s face with glass and debilitating his right eye such that it had to be surgically removed. When recommended he install a glass replacement, Walsh refused, saying that … Read more
Stepping out of the darkness, Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, introduces himself to the audience. “There are two kinds of pain,” he begins, cradling the head of a whimpering dog injured in a hit-and-run, “pain that makes you strong or useless pain.” Brusquely, he tilts the dog’s head to one side and rotates. “I … Read more
Staff writer Taonga Leslie ’15 talks about his article “Devil in the Details” in the 2013 spring issue of the Harvard Political Review. Read the full article here. You can access additional content by subscribing to our YouTube channel and visiting our iTunes page. Editing and Production by Jenny Choi Interview by Colin Diersing Music by Dylan Perese
“Memory takes a lot of poetic license,” Tennessee Williams wrote in the stage directions of his most famous “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie. “It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” When The Glass Menagerie was first performed … Read more
Why are some countries wealthier than others? Lately, this question has been receiving a lot of attention. The most recent debate centers around the role of institutions in economic development. Daron Acemoglu, a professor of Economics at MIT, and James Robinson, a government professor at Harvard, discuss this particular issue in their latest book on … Read more