(9/11/11: the first in a series) Long ago loosed from popular memory, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was not only a natural catastrophe but a crisis of the enlightenment mind as well. The quake is estimated to have lasted ten minutes, with three distinct jolts. Modern seismological estimates, based on recorded observations of the […]
Labor Day & 9/11
This is a photo of the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center under construction. Accompanying text from the source reads: The World Trade Center project in lower Manhattan last week entered a new phase of construction. A crane placed the first of 76 huge steel columns, shaped like short-handled pitch-forks, that will […]
Letter from Paris: a Lump in the Throat
Yesterday’s Jazz Is entry, a Dexter Gordon film rendition of “Body and Soul,” put me in mind, for a reason you will soon understand that number always now does, of an another experience of the jazz standard. It was September 2001, and I was beginning a sabbatical year with a month-long drive around Europe. Julia […]
The Long, Steep Descent of Noam Chomsky
“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the […]
Not Lost in Cambodia, Just Lost
Last week I wrote about Andrew Anthony’s article in The Observer, “Lost in Cambodia,” on the horridly naive supporter and apologist for the Khmer Rouge, Malcolm Caldwell, whom the Khmer Rouge murdered for his efforts. Now Oliver Kamm has a follow up. Anthony’s article noted the influence on Caldwell of Noam Chomsky’s skepticism about the […]