The #sky is amazing tonight. #bridge #Pittsburgh #LondonReviewOfBooks #bookstodon #reading #coffee #saturday

"What Wood's retelling reminds us is that a non-consequentialist focus on individuals as ends in themselves – distinct centres of self-responsible significance – makes it ethically imperative to arrange public transport systems in ways that ensure trolley problems do not arise."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/stephen-mulhall/non-identity-crisis

#TrolleyProblems #ethics
#DerekParfit
#LondonReviewOfBooks #LRB

/fin

"What Wood's retelling reminds us is that a non-consequentialist focus on individuals as ends in themselves distinct centres of self-responsible significance makes it ethically imperative to arrange public transport systems in ways that ensure trolley problems do not arise."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/stephen-mulhall/non-identity-crisis

#TrolleyProblems #ethics
#DerekParfit
#LondonReviewOfBooks #LRB

/fin

"What Wood’s retelling reminds us is that a non-consequentialist focus on individuals as ends in themselves – distinct centres of self-responsible significance – makes it ethically imperative to arrange public transport systems in ways that ensure trolley problems do not arise."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/stephen-mulhall/non-identity-crisis

#TrolleyProblems #ethics
#DerekParfit
#LondonReviewOfBooks #LRB

/fin

I have been enjoying reading about "Chips" Channon in the LRB, who seems to have been a hilariously awful human being.

#LondonReviewOfBooks #LRB

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/geoffrey-wheatcroft/not-even-a-might-have-been

Great piece here about where Kate Forbes if coming from (and where she's likely going). Who'd have expected the LRB and Stephen Bush in the Financial Times to provide better coverage of Scottish politics than the Guardian and the New Statesman? Not me, though that's a low bar, admittedly.
#snp #ScottishPolitics #LondonReviewOfBooks #ft
Fraser MacDonald · In Time of Schism · LRB 16 March 2023 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n06/fraser-macdonald/in-time-of-schism

A rather beautiful bitter-sweet return visit to Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eyes” by Anne Enright.

"Reading does, in some way, hold us together. According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, it is connective across various neural circuits and involves large areas of the brain. Our understanding is predictive and feels instantaneous; it can also be metacognitive, co-creative and generative. My mother taught me how to do all this, using those same patterns of mimicry and hesitation, when I was three years old. Or she taught me how to start all this: reading is an evolving skill which begins with simple decoding and ends, according to Wolf, with empathy and those ‘blessed moments’ afforded by immersion in which we attain insight, or new levels of understanding."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n01/anne-enright/eyes-that-bite

#LondonReviewOfBooks #Books

Celebrating my best work ally Isobel Harbison's first appearance on ye olde LRB blog with a sparkling and sharp account of two Irish films you may be hearing about. #LondonReviewofBooks #IrishFilm https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/february/the-banshees-and-the-quiet-girl

This is an astonishing review by Andrew O'Hagan of Prince Harry's book 'Spare'.
"There has never been a book like this, with its parcelling out of epic, one-sided truths. Most royal biographies, even the lively ones ... were made airless by vapid writing, spurious genuflections before royal protocol, cringing vanity masquerading as public service."
#LRB
#LondonReviewofBooks
#PrinceHarry
#Journalism
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n03/andrew-o-hagan/off-his-royal-tits

This, from Michael Kulikowski’s review of two volumes on numismatics in the current issue of #LondonReviewOfBooks (45/3, p. 25), is so true. Heraldry and genealogy have been central to my own prosopographical work: armorial dissemination can contribute much to our understanding of networks within the military community and society at large. As for numismatics: the coinage in medieval Europe offers evidence of mind-boggling variety and richness (the reviewer stresses this for the ancient world).

@redfrog For a really thorough critique of McKinsey see this in #LondonReviewOfBooks
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/laleh-khalili/in-clover

The LRB's latest report for the World Weather Network, courtesy of A.E. Stallings in Greece.

"There’s a term in Greek for a spell of fine weather in the middle of winter, the halcyon days (alkyonides meres), after the kingfisher, which, according to legend, must nest and raise its brood floating on calm waters. These days tend to occur for a week or two from mid-January, but can start any time from the solstice through to 15 February. Perhaps for that reason, the exceptionally mild weather over the twelve days of Christmas did not call forth the same climate anxiety as, for instance, the heat waves of the summer, and the ever worsening and elongating fire season. It’s just the halcyon days, we tell ourselves, and marvel at the blue skies and soft spring-like air."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/january/halcyon-days-in-the-saronic-gulf

#LondonReviewOfBooks #climate

Bono, ever the buzzkill...

"The book spans just seven hours, from the moment Dustan arrives at La Loco on a Sunday afternoon, until the DJ plays U2's 'Lemon'—a 'hetero sound' that signals the arrival of the straight crowd and the end of the party."

Lili Owen Rowlands on Guillaume Dustan, in the #LondonReviewOfBooks

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/lili-owen-rowlands/i-was-the-human-torch

Holiday season bookhaul after I told my partner I wouldn't buy any more physical #Books. I blame the #londonreviewofbooks bookshop for some of this. #Ernaux #McPhee #Zerán #Høvring #Paul

I recently read a smattering of Derrida and found him to be frustrating... impenetrable (alongside Deleuze and Badiou, who I also struggled with). The timing wasn't ideal, as I was in the middle of a miserable 5 week illness.. I like to think that affected my feeble brain's ability to process such things.

So with that in mind, I enjoyed this LRB piece from '91.

"I left before the fifteen-minute question period, upset, head full of Derridiculous language tricks. The De-rideau (curtain) had lifted to expose, not Derrida ridens (Latin for ‘laughing’), but Derrida derided, the self-mocked mocker. More than upset, I was sad, and more than sad. I felt a whiff of tragedy. This, I thought, is what happens to all of us. The cells which build us turn against us, our inventions become tricks, our gift becomes a burden."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n15/richard-stern/derridiarry

#Philosophy #LondonReviewOfBooks #Derrida

Writing in the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan manages to perfectly capture what makes shopping malls such evocative (and, these days, nostalgic) destinations. A lovely piece.

"As with high flats or holiday camps, we begin to see the essence of these places only in the moment of their passing. Malls are playgrounds with parking. They are nightclubs without drinks and with muzak for music. They are billboards of aspiration and churches of boredom. You don’t wander round a shopping mall in order to be thrilled, but to overcome the wish to be thrilled; if you buy something, that’s fine, but you belong there just as much when you don’t.”

“I Think We’re Alone Now”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/andrew-o-hagan/short-cuts

#LondonReviewOfBooks

Writing in the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan manages to perfectly capture what makes shopping malls such evocative (and, these days, nostalgic) destinations. A lovely piece.

"As with high flats or holiday camps, we begin to see the essence of these places only in the moment of their passing. Malls are playgrounds with parking. They are nightclubs without drinks and with muzak for music. They are billboards of aspiration and churches of boredom. You don’t wander round a shopping mall in order to be thrilled, but to overcome the wish to be thrilled; if you buy something, that’s fine, but you belong there just as much when you don’t.”

“I Think We’re Alone Now”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/andrew-o-hagan/short-cuts

#LondonReviewOfBooks

An interesting article in the #LRB on G.K. Chesterton's oddly reverent attitude towards his unpleasant, antisemitic brother Cecil. I've always (since I was a teenager reading my grandparents' Father Brown books) *wanted* to like Chesterton, but never really did. This article clarifies a number of reasons why- for all his idealism and amiability- his writings are problematic.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/peter-howarth/rejoicings-in-a-dug-out

#amreading
#londonreviewofbooks

Lovely post on the LRB blog concerning Oak trees, acorns and elusive flowers in Iraqi Kurdistan.

—
‘Trees are an invitation to think about time,’ Rebecca Solnit has written, ‘and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.’
—

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/december/the-acorn-harvest-in-iraqi-kurdistan

#LondonReviewOfBooks

"The primary product sold by all management consultants – both software developers and strategic organisers – is the theology of capital. This holds that workers are expendable. They can be replaced by machines, or by harder-working employees" Thorough critique of McKinsey, Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, PwC, Boston Consulting Group, Andersen Consulting. By the wonderful Laleh Khalili in #LondonReviewOfBooks
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/laleh-khalili/in-clover
#ManagementConsultants
#Corruption #Bribery #StateCapture