Half of today’s languages set to disappear Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken across the globe today, but nearly half of them stand to disappear within the next century, according to linguists. Russ Rymer has an excellent article… Read more »
Jeff Bezos: Bat-shit crazy? Or, just crazy like a really evil, rotten fox? Okay, I resisted this one for several days because, well, hell, it was entirely too predictable for me to jump on it. But then nobody said anything about it, and… Read more »
Literaturwurst: not the worst of literature There are lots of ways to express one’s dislike of a book, but if you’re Dieter Roth, German-Swiss artist whose wide and varied output included many works incorporating food, giving… 3 / Read more »
Rohinton Mistry’s neocon fairytale For the last few years, America has been in the grips of a veritable storm of celebrity-author graduation speeches. To start with, there was David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement speech and Dave Eggers’… Read more »
Exercises in translation, the Spanish edition We saw last week week that writers (Ed Albee, we’re looking at you) have exacting standards when it comes to translation. Granted, you earn a bit of clout when you’re… Read more »
Tolstoy’s last days And Tolstoy’s grandson meets the Dalai Lama Chris Hayes, here’s Ted Leo Apple gets the bug Your speech was phenomenal, Mr. President She’s authentic, just not original… Read more »