Trail

“Syria’s madness and ours” by Spengler

2013-05-21T21:09:05+00:00

The horror, the horror. Spengler looks at Syria. What we’ve seen so far, he says, are merely the preliminary skirmishes of Sunni-Shi’ite war.

Cary Grant on Style

2013-05-11T23:59:25+00:00

Cary Grant’s 1963 op-ed in This Week magazine on dressing well.

“Hezbollah bogged down in Syria” by Jacky Hougy in Globes

2013-05-09T03:27:14+00:00

Galei Zahal (IDF Radio)‘s Arab Affairs correspondent looks acutely at the Syrian civil war from Hezballah’s perspective. It’s all-out Sunni-Shiite confrontation.

“Why Frank Lloyd Wright Disliked Fantasia” by Wade Sampson at MousePlanet

2013-05-09T03:26:07+00:00

Some advice for Disney from fellow artist Frank Lloyd Wright on February 25, 1939, at 11am in Projection Room IV.

“Pope Accepts Peres’ Invitation to Israel” by VOA

2013-05-01T00:23:57+00:00

Peres and the Pope as covered by the Voice of America (Reuters). This meeting has not gotten much coverage.

http://parulsehgal.com/

2013-04-07T02:25:55+00:00

Read Parul Sehgal, book reviewer extraordinaire.

“Israel and the Arab uprisings”, a Lowy Lecture by Tal Becker

2013-04-07T00:49:10+00:00

Australian-born himself, rising Israeli statesman Tal Becker does the regional lowdown at the Lowy Institute.

“What Really Happened in Jerusalem” by Charles Krauthammer

2013-04-02T23:33:01+00:00

Bracing clarity from Krauthammer on the meaning of Obama’s visit to Jerusalem.

“The Touch-Screen Generation” by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic

2013-03-22T00:08:33+00:00

Hanna Rosin writes on the iPad and young children. The beginning could have appeared anywhere, the middle in any number of magazines, the end in only a small handful. And a rather relevant topic at the moment in this house, where Good Morning is spoken as “Where the iPad gone!”

“What Obama’s Ideal Day in Israel Would Look Like, vs. the Dispiriting Reality” by Jeffrey Goldberg

2013-03-21T18:27:43+00:00

Jeffrey Goldberg imagines what Obama would really like to be doing on his visit to Israel.

“Why I am a Zionist” by Tom Doran

2013-03-17T03:36:19+00:00

Welshman Tom Doran explains why, as a liberal secular humanist, he must stand up for Israel.

“John Lanchester rides the London Underground” in The Guardian

2013-03-08T05:01:30+00:00

Considering how central it is for Londoners, Why is the Tube so underrepresented in stories? The writer suggests that, like sex and prayer, and unlike on the street, any human significance down there is internal.

“Requiem for a Dream” by Larissa MacFarquhar

2013-03-08T04:30:43+00:00

Surely the definitive article about internet wunderkind Aaron Swartz. Only eating white or yellow food seems a glaring sign that not everything there was quite right.

“My father, the smoker” by John Jeremiah Sullivan

2013-03-08T04:20:22+00:00

Moving piece about the writer’s father, a sportswriter, who could not give up cigarettes.

“The Shooter” by Phil Bronstein at the Center for Investigative Reporting

2013-02-17T22:39:39+00:00

Not that this article needs anybody else to promote it, as it’s also the cover story on Esquire, but it’s like watching Zero Dark Thirty through one of the other characters.

“How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society” by Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic

2013-01-19T05:31:09+00:00

Older parents like us are perhaps a severe problem.

“How Good Does Karaoke Have to Be to Qualify as Art?” by Dan Kois in The New York Times Magazine

2013-01-19T02:36:38+00:00

Wow. Dan Kois, a senior editor at Slate, heads to Portland for a week of serious karaoke.

The 20 Most Popular Homes in Dwell

2013-01-19T01:59:45+00:00

The 20 Most Popular Homes in Dwell. Many of these homes are small so encourage ingeniousness and are in general encouraging.

“It’s true: all the taken men are best” in The New Scientist

2013-01-18T06:34:18+00:00

It’s official: women are mate-poachers. I would have wagered on this anyway. “Offered a single man, 59% [of single women] were interested … But when he was attached, 90% said they were…”

“What’s Wrong and How to Fix It, Part 7: Health Care” by Adam Garfinkle

2013-01-16T23:06:10+00:00

Adam Garfinkle at The American Interest waxes catholic and sensible on the runaway American health care system — or, more accurately, disease repair system.

“Gadamer’s Floor” by Jacques Herzog

2013-01-15T02:46:21+00:00

Gadamer’s Floor by Jacques Herzog, in which the Swiss starchitect relates designing the Tate Modern. Actually, forget it, it gets boring, drifting off to installations within the museum and other projects, as if the job itself wasn’t interesting enough to warrant an entire little article.

“The best houses of all time in L.A.” by the LA Times

2013-01-15T01:40:20+00:00

Given that this is the second time I’ve ended up at this story, I can’t miss adding it to the Trail: The best houses of all time in L.A. by the LA Times.

“Insoluble Syria” by David P. Goldman

2013-01-15T00:28:12+00:00

“The Bashar al-Assad regime commits atrocities that are designed to be unforgivable,” Spengler postulates, “in order to persuade their base to fight to the end.” His conclusion? “Let the Alawites have their enclave, and let the Sunni Arabs have a rump state, minus the Syrian Kurds, whose autonomy would be an important step towards an eventual Kurdish state.” Me, I’d be willing to wager just three things about the Middle East in 50 years: there will be Israel, there will be Kurdistan, and there will be Arabs. PS — Doesn’t Goldman look like Gary Oldman playing James Baker III?

The ABC of Architects

2013-01-14T01:28:39+00:00

The ABC of Architects, a great short animated film.

The Visual Effects of Iron Man

2013-01-02T01:29:03+00:00

The visual effects of Iron Man on YouTube.

“New Year’s Day 2013: WhatCulture’s Top 12 Of Everything In 2012”

2013-01-01T03:29:06+00:00

Happy 2013! A look back at 2012 with WhatCulture’s Top 12 Of Everything film wise including top 20 movie posters.

Kraftwerk – The Catalogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 at Tate Modern, Turbine Hall

2012-12-13T04:51:43+00:00

All 8 Kraftwerk shows at Tate Modern, £60 per, sold out quicker than the museum’s servers could handle.

“Evidence of world’s ‘oldest’ cheese-making found” by BBC News

2012-12-13T04:48:05+00:00

7,500-year-old cheese discovered. “The most important ingredient for cheese-making is milk and only domesticates can be milked. Thus, it is unlikely that the origins of cheese-making predates the Neolithic,” says the researcher breezily.

“Beneficial effects of sauna bathing for heart failure patients” by Arnon Blum and Nava Blum

2012-12-03T23:26:19+00:00

Check out the “Beneficial effects of sauna bathing for heart failure patients” by Arnon Blum and Nava Blum, an article published by the US National Institutes of Health. Turns out people with heart problems not only can use the sauna, it’s a therapy.

“Sweat Therapy Theory” by Stephen Colmant

2012-12-03T04:40:54+00:00

Some pro-sauna theory: Sweat Therapy Theory by Stephen Colmant. “From clinical experience, sweating induces commonly observed effects of exercise on mental health, such as reducing anxiety, depression, and stress and improving body image, self-esteem, and sense of well being.”