News, reviews, latest trends, breakthroughs, disputes, and gossip in arts and culture http://aldaily.com/ en-us Copyright 2010 The Chronicle of Higher Education Thu, 2 Sep 2010 07:00:01 EDT rss@chronicle.com rss@chronicle.com http://aldaily.com/ald01.gif http://aldaily.com 128 70 Today's News http://aldaily.com Thu, 2 Sep 2010 00:00:00 EDT <p>For Sam Harris, a science of morality is simply an account of the behaviors, rules, cultural artifacts, and emotions that constitute the moral life... <a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.harris.html">more</a> </p> <p>H.L. Mencken: ready to bust up the joint with his combative, beautifully sprung, ingeniously funny style, as irresistible as a laughing baby... <a href="http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Prejudices/ba-p/3297">more</a> </p> <p>"People who loved Sarah Palin are disappointed," said one woman in Wasilla. "They found out that Sarah Palin loves Sarah Palin most of all"... <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/10/sarah-palin-201010?currentPage=all">more</a> </p> http://aldaily.com Wed, 1 Sep 2010 00:00:00 EDT <p>China's advantage as a low-wage producer will in time disappear. Will jobs then leave for Bangladesh and Vietnam?... <a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fan18/English">more</a> </p> <p>Too bad that the human race is so prone to make mistakes. But our capacity to err comes with our imagination, and with it our power to grow... <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/being-wrong-kathryn-schulz-review">more</a> </p> <p>The death of the book as object of study. Will the faculty hold the line, or will no one be assigning whole books to students by 2020? Carlin Romano on Extreme Academe... <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Will-the-Book-Survive/124115/ ">more</a> </p> http://aldaily.com Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EDT <p>The printing press was not at first used to make books. Rather, almanacs, calendars, municipal orders, indulgence certificates... <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/08/29/cover_story/?page=full">more</a> </p> <p>In America, what passes for freedom, or so Jonathan Franzen implies, is a refusal to accept limits, to shoulder the burdens of an inheritance... <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2265316/">more</a> </p> <p>In the wake of Wagner's achievement in Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, the musical language that had been common property of Western composers fell into crisis... <a href="http://axess.se/magasin/english.aspx?article=713 ">more</a> </p> http://aldaily.com Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EDT <p>Benjamin Lee Whorf exaggerated. But still, our mother tongue can give us habits of thought that shape our experience in surprising ways... <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all">more</a> </p> <p>Reading old science fiction offers a distinct pleasure, says Wendy Lesser: to compare playfully visionary forecasts with what actually took place... <a href="http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/lesser_su10.html ">more</a> </p> <p>The humanities have been gutted by decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and identity politics, says Camille Paglia. Consider, in contrast, the happy plight of the trades... <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Revalorizing-the-Trades/124130/ ">more</a> </p> http://aldaily.com Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EDT <p>Emerging from deep prehistory, humans muscled their way up the food chain, with everything on the menu - including ourselves... <a href="http://news.discovery.com/human/first-cannibals-nutrition.html">more</a> </p> <p>In the 17th century, handfuls of men using small boats, scaling ladders, and sheer nerve made piracy a profitable line of work. Not unlike the 21st century... <a href="http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43436">more</a> </p> <p>America's need for cheap oil, credit, and consumer goods means Iraq and Afghanistan get fixed before Cleveland and Detroit. It's not just about freedom, says Andrew Bacevich... <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175290/">more</a> </p> http://aldaily.com New material is added to Arts & Letters Daily six days a week. We continually test links for reliability. Despite our best efforts, links may fail (often only temporarily) without warning. We apologize for any inconvenience. Our motto, "Veritas odit moras," is from line 850 of Seneca's version of Oedipus. It means "Truth hates delay." Arts & Letters Daily is a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education.