Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* City Journal's Brian Anderson is always a lively and resourceful observer and commentator. I'm looking forward to his new book about how nonstandard p-o-v's are making themselves heard in the mediaverse. Here's a TechCentralStation appreciation of the book. A new issue of City Journal has just appeared online.

* Even when she was at her most overexposed, I never tired of Camille Paglia. She seems as lively and brilliant as ever in this CBC interview with her about her new book.

* One of the great things about the cultureblog-overse is the way people talk appreciatively and honestly about the art they really enjoy. Graham Lester reads Pearl Buck and finds her excellent. Deal with it, world.

* Another great thing about cultureblogging is the way people are honest and funny about the art-things they don't enjoy too. Take-no-guff librarian Rachel of Tinkertytonk most emphatically does not enjoy herself at a new documentary about the world of wine.

* England these days seems to be anything but the genteel place of Merchant-Ivory fantasies. Crime rates are high, and England's white working-class population is notoriously ill behaved. Steve Sailer puzzles out the whys and wherefores; Randall Parker contributes some thinking too.

* Alex Tabarrok doesn't dispute that there are far more lefties than righties in academia, but he suspects this isn't because of discrimination. Steve Burton thinks David Horowitz's Intellectual Bill of Rights is exactly the wrong thing for righties to cheer for.

* Business Week thinks blogs are big -- as in Gutenberg-big -- and makes blogging its cover story. The magazine has just started its own blog-tracking blog, called Blogspotting.

* Thanks to visitor Philopundit, who points out this amazing story about the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a hoard of Greek and Roman writing that new technology is permitting to be read for the first time. Philopundit also reports that he's currently enjoying this Teaching Company course about the Foundations of Western Civ. At his own blog, Philopundit reviews a heart-stopping new McDonald's sandwich, and considers Libya's scheme to mine for water.

* News flash: kids are swearing more than they used to. (Link thanks to SYAffolee.)

* Women like Kodak; men prefer Canon.

* Until a few minutes ago, I had no idea that Amazon sells lingerie. Good golly: 984 different styles of thong to choose from.

Best,

Michael

Cussin' kids. There is one word in the youth vocabulary of late that does make me cringe - the old famous four-letter F word. I hear it in everyday conversations on the sidewalk, in the elevator and lots of public places. It is a favorite word in a lot of blogs. Now, I'm no prude and can hold my own with the saltiest sailor, but this particular word does not belong in everyday language. IMHO.

Posted by: Cowtown Pattie on April 22, 2005 9:56 PM

Amazon sells all kinds of Amazing stuff...

Posted by: Tatyana on April 23, 2005 9:48 AM

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri story is amazing. It just reminds us that when we confidently speak of Classical culture, we're actually talking about something we have only a fairly dim idea of. All this stuff was found in an Egyptian dump? Makes you wonder, of course, what we still don't know...like what the Sumerians were doing with the electrical power of that battery that's sitting in a museum somewhere.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on April 24, 2005 10:15 AM

I have to chime in with total agreement on your comments re Camille Paglia. She's always a breath of fresh air, and all of the interviews she's doing to push her new book on poetry illuminations that I've read have been great.

Posted by: Yahmdallah on April 25, 2005 10:39 AM

That's silly. I love my Canon digital camera. I guess I can't honestly say that I "prefer" it since it's the only brand I've ever used but I just had to say something. Those gender surveys are all so silly. By the way, I can read maps too. So there!

Posted by: Lynn S on April 27, 2005 8:35 AM

Didya know that Amazon sells more lingerie to men than to women?

That women prefer Kodak cameras but Fuji film?

That the Sumerian battery has just arrived in my city on a travelling exhibition?

That Camille Paglia and Christopher Hitchens are actually the same person?

That Lynn S. is one of exactly 112,406 women who can read maps?

That the Egyptian pyramids were actually just a big party room that Egyptian teenagers built behind their parents' backs and listened to early Elvis and smoked weed in?

Actually, I don't know any of this...it just seems about as reliable and possibly more interesting than all these "official" surveys that get completed!

Posted by: annette on April 28, 2005 3:32 PM

Didya know that Amazon sells more lingerie to men than to women?

That women prefer Kodak cameras but Fuji film?

That the Sumerian battery has just arrived in my city on a travelling exhibition?

That Camille Paglia and Christopher Hitchens are actually the same person?

That Lynn S. is one of exactly 112,406 women who can read maps?

That the Egyptian pyramids were actually just a big party room that Egyptian teenagers built behind their parents' backs and listened to early Elvis and smoked weed in?

Actually, I don't know any of this...it just seems about as reliable and possibly more interesting than all these "official" surveys that get completed!

Posted by: annette on April 28, 2005 3:33 PM

Ummm... not to be a pris, but shouldn't that headline be "Men and women prefer Other"?

Mawado

Posted by: mawado on May 2, 2005 9:14 PM






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