“The skill at unmasking error, or simple intellectual one-upmanship, is not completely without value, but we should be wary of creating a class of self-satisfied debunkers or, to use a currently fashionable word on campuses, people who like to ‘trouble’ ideas.” So says Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, whose reviews and essays I always make a point to read when I come across them.

Many people have commented upon Tony Judt’s eloquent and acutely observant description of the “progressive imprisonment without parole” that is life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, from which he suffers. The first of a series of short essays, on the subject of getting through the night, is in the January 14 issue of the NYRB. Judt [...]

Those who remember with some fondness Today in Letters, the blog I published briefly in 2007, will appreciate Letters of Note, edited by Shaun Usher. The author describes it as a “blog-based archive of fascinating correspondence, complete with scans and transcripts of the original missives.” Since I began following the site a few weeks ago, [...]

The new season is upon us. Each August I spend some time compiling a large list of art and academic events in and around New York City, which I use and share with a few others. After sending my autumn calendar to some friends I realized that some readers of this site might enjoy it [...]

Just came across the blog decasia: critique of academic culture, which is run by Eli Thorkelson, a graduate student in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. His subject? The anthropology of universities. There are many fascinating posts about higher education: “Against the concept of academic politics“; “Reading as an ethnographic tactic“; “The failed fantasy [...]

On August 3 the writer Luc Sante updated his blog for the first time since the beginning of the year. The post offers the story of a talkative retired cop he met one night in the 1980s at Farrell’s bar, in Brooklyn. It’s a little gem of a tale that involves Andy Warhol in unexpected [...]

Although word about The Memory Palace has made its way around the web in recent months, I only discovered radio journalist Nate DiMeo’s new podcast over the weekend. Each three-to-six-minute episode contains an historical anecdote. DiMeo doesn’t interview historians, doesn’t cite his sources in the stories, and keeps the production values simple. (He hopes “The [...]

For those of you who check Design Observer on occasion, now would be a good time to do so: The site has just re-launched with a new design and additional content, including Change Observer and Places. The former is a blog that “looks at social innovation through the lens of design,” and includes an essay [...]

Randy Kennedy wins the prize for best unnecessary journalistic detail in today’s Times. In a story about the Wassaic Project, an art gallery housed in a converted grain silo and run by a handful of young artists (one of whom I met at a birthday party in Providence in May), he gathers a quote from [...]

After reading the entertaining interview with journalist Jack Hitt posted earlier this month to The Atlantic’s Ideas blog (part 1, part 2), I was eager to see his byline. My first subsequent encounter with his writing did not disappoint: In yesterday’s issue of the New York Times Magazine, Hitt investigates how “a Serbian war criminal [...]

Tom Vanderbilt explores the internet cloud: “As data centers increasingly become the nerve centers of business and society … the demand for bigger and better ones increases: there is a growing need to produce the most computing power per square foot at the lowest possible cost in energy and resources. All of which is bringing [...]

Design writer Allison Arieff reports on her jury service for an architectural competition at the International Council on Shopping Centers, highlighting three innovative projects. Meanwhile, Matthew Shaer visits Belmar, a new mixed-use development on the site of a former mall in Lakewood, Colorado. For related reading, see my review of Helen Klodawsky’s 2008 film Malls [...]

I have imported the archives of Today in Letters to this weblog, where they can now be found in their own category. [...]

From the archive blog of The Times (of London), “ten freaky finds inside of shark stomachs,” including a “great story from 1922 about a giant turtle which, amazingly, survived being swallowed and was rescued and taken to the New York Aquarium where, ‘recovering from cuts and shock,’ he was christened Jonah.” (Link via Light Reading.)

Daily Routines is a blog that explains “how writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.” Its “Best Of” category includes Benjamin Franklin, Haruki Murakami, Karl Marx, and Willem de Kooning.

Platform for Pedagogy is a weekly e-mail newsletter listing an interdisciplinary mix of lectures in New York City. According to its website: “Platform for Pedagogy is an initiative to advance a culture of cross-disciplinary public lecture attendance and to develop the lecture as practice. We deal exclusively with public lectures.” For two years I have maintained [...]