December 01, 2017

From Harper's:

Unattractive scientists are assumed to be better at their jobs.

From The New Yorker:

To live in a city was to know that you were surrounded by far too many people to ever keep track of: there was so much that was outside your control that ignoring annoyances, human or otherwise, became a habit. Moreover, repeated encounters with people who didn’t think as you did could pry open a certain distance between your beliefs and your emotions.

From The New Yorker:

According to a Pew survey, for instance, nearly eighty per cent of liberals like the idea of living in a dense neighborhood where you can walk to shops and schools, while seventy-five per cent of conservatives would rather live in a larger house with more space around it.

From The TLS (Jonathan Clark on Books of the Year 2017):

Like it or not, religion is still determinative. In the West, the interpretation and reception of secular works of vernacular literature largely depend on interpretative traditions evolved over millennia within Christianity. Yet today’s readers are at an unnoticed disadvantage, for the prevalent religious modes have been largely captured by ones of social activism, self-parodied in BBC Radio 4’s “Thought For the Day” slot. Almost lost are the traditions of response and theory embodied in the contemplative tradition, once at home in monasticism. With one notable exception: since 1970 Harold Palmer, initially an Anglican Franciscan, has established a hermitage on a remote hilltop in Northumberland, strangely timeless, “countercultural” and reinstating the undivided religiosity of Cuthbert and Bede. Stephen Platten (ed.), Oneness: The dynamics of monasticism (SCM) explores that unique achievement. Nothing could be further from the mental world of most TLS readers. That is why they should read it.

From The New York Times (on Ali Smith's Autumn):

Smith’s ingenious novel is about the friendship between a 101-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman in Britain after the Brexit vote.