In Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, (WW Norton, New York, 1998) Peter Gay writes: Only the most determined could gather up the leisure and the energy after a hard week’s toil, or for that matter the money, to haunt museums, or follow compositions in the concert hall with a score, let alone travelContinue reading “Peter Gay On Bourgeois Insecurities (And Mine)”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Road-Tripping With Rush Limbaugh And Glenn Beck
Yesterday, I drove up to Albany to meet an old friend. After spending the night, I returned this afternoon to Brooklyn. While driving, I sought entertainment through radio. The usual fare of FM was hard to snare: reception was often spotty–for whatever reason, the selections were uninspiring–a little too much emphasis on the Eagles methinks,Continue reading “Road-Tripping With Rush Limbaugh And Glenn Beck”
The FBI, Online Brokerages, And The Hiring Of ‘Potheads’
This almost-two-years-old story about the FBI’s claim that it could not find hackers–AKA ‘cybersecurity experts’–to hire because they smoke marijuana (and thus would fail their pre-employment drug tests) reminds me of a story from the days of the Internet gold rush, as demand for programmers, system administrators, and the like meant the instant hiring andContinue reading “The FBI, Online Brokerages, And The Hiring Of ‘Potheads’”
Boccaccio And Double Entendres In A Patriarchal Society
In his review of a new translation of Giovanni Boccaccio‘s The Decameron (by Wayne A. Rebhorn, Norton, 2015), Stephen Greenblatt writes: Many of these stories are scandalously obscene, but the scandal has nothing to do with filthy words….circumlocutory words, or periphrases…have nothing to do with prudery. They are part of Boccaccio’s inexhaustible bag of metaphorical tricks, andContinue reading “Boccaccio And Double Entendres In A Patriarchal Society”
William James And The Pre-Raphaelites’ Influence
This morning, for no particular reason, or perhaps because I’ve been reading Becoming William James, Howard Feinstein’s excellent psycho-biography of William James, I posted the following on Facebook: William James was a better, more interesting, writer than Henry James. These are, as my friend Margaret Toth pointed out, “fighting words.” But of course, as IContinue reading “William James And The Pre-Raphaelites’ Influence”
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Franchise Slumbers
I saw my first Star Wars in December 1981; my brother had bought us a brace of tickets as a welcome-home treat. (I had been away at boarding-school.) I enjoyed every minute of it, from the opening gunfight, right down to the destruction of the Death Star. I looked forward to the sequels with someContinue reading “Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Franchise Slumbers”
Why It’s Okay To Mourn, To Cry For, The Passing Of Strangers
Many silly things are written when celebrities die. One is that you cannot speak ill of the dead. Another is that you cannot mourn for those whom you did not know personally. A variant of this is that visible expressions of grief for those you did not have personal acquaintance with are ersatz, inauthentic, aContinue reading “Why It’s Okay To Mourn, To Cry For, The Passing Of Strangers”
Chelsea Clinton On The Iraq War: A Worthy Inheritor Of The Clinton Mantle
Chelsea Clinton has been groomed for a long time to take over the Clinton Empire. Her education, which has essentially consisted of a long, slow, drive through the salubrious gardens of the Ivy League and Oxbridge, thus providing adequate insulation against the hard edges of social and political reality, form an important component of thisContinue reading “Chelsea Clinton On The Iraq War: A Worthy Inheritor Of The Clinton Mantle”
Cancer, Medical Marijuana, And A Personal Account
This page at the website of the National Cancer Institute, which describes some of the medicinal effects of cannabis and cannabinoids in cancer treatment regimes serves two salutary purposes for me today. First, it confirms for me, yet again, that opposition to the War on Drugs and advocacy for the legalization of marijuana are AContinue reading “Cancer, Medical Marijuana, And A Personal Account”
Are There No Ethically Uncompromised Lunches In The Universe?
Once upon a time a farmer told his neighbors that they could use his land for ‘free’–as a kind of community recreational space. His neighbors were told they could set up little stalls. where they could play music, show off their handicrafts, display family photo albums, and of course, walk over to their friends’ spacesContinue reading “Are There No Ethically Uncompromised Lunches In The Universe?”
Samir Chopra 