Friedrich --

* In the WashPost, Laura Sessions Stepp compares old-fashioned romance-and-flirtation with today's grab-what-you-can ethos here. (Link thanks to Arts & Letters Daily, here.)

* Alice Bachini thinks that when you speak a foreign language you're quite likely to become a different person, here.

* Did more people die in the 20th century from 1) wars between countries or 2) the misbehavior and viciousness of their own rulers? George Hunka lays out the sad facts, here.

* Alan Sullivan writes here about what made him turn the corner politically. "Without wealth, we artsy types would starve," he points out.

* Steve Sailer interviews 3rd-world property-rights advocate Hernando de Soto here and here.

* I enjoyed this Bryan Appleyard visit with the actress Kristin Scott Thomas, here.

* Hey, I'm not the only film buff who's a fan of the work of the director Ronny Yu. Polly Frost (here) loves "Bride of Chucky" and "Jason vs. Freddy" too.

* The director Fernando Meirelles talks about why he loves Bernardo Bertolucci's movie "Besieged," here. I love the movie too, but I also like the way Meirelles discusses it -- he's a real filmmaking connoisseur.

* Have you read Margaret Visser's collection of short essays "Much Depends on Dinner" (buyable here)? I thought it was a gem. Visser discusses food and eating on many different levels -- food as history, as symbolism, as sex, as pleasure ... And she manages to do so without the fussiness and overextravagance food writers seem prone to. Here's a good long interview with her.

* James Russell calls the new Tarantino "a pastiche that doesn’t really work" and sounds convincing doing so, here.

* Clifford Krauss reports in The NYTimes that Canada's national health service appears to be coming up short, here.

Best,

Michael