Alan Jacobs

Paradoxically, then, `Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive’. Shakespeare was receptive to every mood, every position and disposition: hence the intermingling, the layering and counterpoint, which is one of his stylistic hallmarks. He was receptive to everything but reductive singularity: hence his stripping of unitary motive from such characters as Leontes and Lear. We praise writers for being receptive to all experience; so too should we praise them for being altogether receptive to their reading, save when that reading closes the mind rather than opens it. The range and extent of Shakespeare’s indebtedness is a badge of his genius, not a blemish upon it.

Sometimes we do find the words to express an idea, and only then realize what a stupid idea it is. This experience would suggest that our thoughts are not as clean and beautiful as we would like to believe. Instead of blaming language for failing to capture our thoughts, maybe we should thank it for giving some shape to the muddle in our heads.

Liking art that is misogynist, racist, sexist, or homophobic doesn’t necessarily make you those things, and indictment of that art doesn’t have to be an indictment of you. This seems to be a stumbling block for a lot of people. But let me be clear: if you think Donald Glover is a great MC, I don’t think that means you beat on women or that you hate them. I think Eminem’s Slim Shady persona is virulently misogynist and disturbing, but I still think Em is a ridiculously gifted MC, and I’ve struggled with this since I was in high school. Tower Heist contains an utterly ridiculous but entirely hilarious extended joke about what Eddie Murphy thinks about lesbian sex. Is it problematic? Absolutely. But it’s also one of the funniest bits in the movie. Folks need to breathe a bit. I think our conversations about culture would be a lot healthier and more interesting if we could hold two thoughts in our hands at the same time and acknowledge that we like problematic stuff. Because really, we all do.

Google is known for making decisions informed by data, often very large sets of it. That’s a great practice, and one that undoubtedly often leads to some smart moves and happy users. In this case, the Reader team probably saw that a relatively small number of people were using those features, and decided that it was probably safe to kill them off in favor of pushing users toward Google Plus, which is a big, new priority for the company. It’s ironic in a way, because in its big push to reposition itself as a social-friendly company, Google just displaced an entire community of users, effectively shutting down a social ecosystem that had existed for years.

When we actually start to look at the fundamentals, it seems children learn by exploring—by experimenting, playing, drawing inferences—and there’s every reason to believe the same is true for adults. The really remarkable discovery we’ve made is that that kind of exploratory learning isn’t just the purview of scientists but seems to be very, very basic. We all have the capacity to function the way scientists do. The other kind of learning that we see, not so much in preschoolers but in school-age children, is what I call guided apprenticeship learning, where you’re not just exploring and finding out new things but learning to perform a skill particularly well. A person who’s learning that way will imitate what an expert does, then modify what they’re doing based on feedback. That’s the way you learn how to dance, play a musical instrument, learn a sport. We have reason to believe that’s something that kicks in and becomes particularly important in adolescence, when people are learning specific skills. So the point I would make is that if you look at the way we do a lot of undergraduate teaching, and I’m including myself in here, we don’t really do either of those things. There’s not exploratory learning, there’s not guided apprenticeship. An awful lot of undergraduate teaching still has this model of lecturers who get up and try to be entertaining and talk about whatever they’re doing, and students who sit in a lecture hall and take notes.

The Kylescu Bridge. Talk about the beauty of proper proportions. Via this slideshow.

In the Year of Our Lord 2001, Iain Sinclair walked around the city of London in an attempt to undo a great curse laid upon the city. He walked alongside the M25, the vast London Orbital: sometimes just inside its circumference, sometimes just outside it, very rarely walking on the road itself. The road itself was the curse he sought to remove, along with the politics and philosophy that produce such roads.

Invoking magicians and celebrants of the paranormal, Sinclair imagines London not as an inorganic “place” but as a living body, a body endangered by its mechanistic physicians, above all Margaret Thatcher: “My superstition, sympathetic to Fludd and Paracelsus, persists: the walk around London’s orbital motorway is personal. From Harefield to Purfleet, the rushes, surges of excitement, are connected to an imagined—solar powered?—circulation of blood.” Having noted that many great country houses were built a day’s horseback ride from central London, and that the M25 itself is set just at that distance, he becomes obsessed with concentric circles of spiritual and intellectual force. He sees the poets and sages of London moving to its periphery either to escape or understand: “Blake at Lambeth, [the Elizabethan magician John] Dee at Mortlake, Pope at Twickenham, [the novelist J. G.] Ballard at Shepperton: the great British tradition of expulsion, indifference. The creation of alternative universes that wrap like Russian dolls around a clapped-out core.” The body of London is dying from its heart and being strangled by the great garrotte of the Orbital; Sinclair hopes by walking the ancient lines to make an effectual counterspell, to loosen the malign constriction.

If you then factor in cops who are not necessarily crooked, but think it’s appropriate to pepper-spray people for fun, or leave people in detention over a missing ID, or who simply kill innocent people by mistake, officers who routinely arrest people on “contempt of cop” charges, you are talking about something a bit more dangerous than the One Percent rule implies.

That is the terrain. I accept it as a result of democracy. I also accept that communities which enjoy an overexposure to this privileged One Percent, will tend to be less likely to regard the police as a legitimate branch of law enforcement, and more likely to regard them as another neighborhood crew, empowered with the right to legally kill, and suffer few obvious consequences. One can see how such a people might make the wholly sensible decision to refrain from speaking too much with this One Percent.

Over the long term, I hope we revisit how we’ve decided to police our communities. In short term, I have son to raise. There are numerous forces I seek to safeguard him against. The police are among them.

Music was one of the first businesses to get hit hard. What happened there? Was it all piracy?

This is one of those questions that is hard to answer. It’s very hard to say exactly what caused what, and I would argue that separating those things out is impossible. Right now, the single biggest problem with CD sales is all the stores where you used to buy CDs are closed. Well, what caused that? Well, people started buying songs online. That became a problem because people were only buying singles instead of albums and they weren’t spending a lot. Well, why did that happen? Because piracy put so much downward pressure on prices that you have to take any deal, whether it’s a good deal or a bad deal. It’s very hard to separate these things. Any study where people say this has nothing to do with piracy is a bunch of bullshit.

Go to send for.
Have you say that?
Have you understand that he says?
At what purpose have say so?
At what o'clock dine him?
Apply you at the study during that you are young.
Dress your hairs.
Sing an area.
These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in the mouth.
How do you can it to deny?
Wax my shoes.
This is that I have think.
That are the dishes whose you must be and to abstain.
This ink is white.
This room is filled of bugs.
This girl have a beauty edge.
It is a noise which to cleave the head.
This wood is fill of thief’s.
Tell me, it can one to know?
Give me some good milk newly get out.
Dry this wine.
He laughs at my nose, he jest by me.
He has spit in my coat.
He has me take out my hairs. He does me some kicks.
He has scratch the face with hers nails.
He burns one’s self the brains.
He is valuable his weight’s gold.
He has the world for to laugh.
He do the devil at four.
He make to weep the room.
It must never to laugh of the unhappies.
He was wanting to be killed.
I am confused all yours civilities.
I am catched cold.
Till say-us?
Till hither.
I have put my stockings outward.
I have croped the candle.
I have mind to vomit.
I will not to sleep on street.
I am catched cold in the brain.
I am pinking me with a pin.
I dead myself in envy to see her.
I take a broth all morning.
Have you understanded?
Let him have know?
Have you understand they?
Do you know they?
Do you know they to?
The storm is go over.
The sun begins to dissipe it.
Witch prefer you?
The paving stone is sliphery.
The thunderbolt is falling down.
The rose-trees begins to button.
The ears are too length.
The hands itch at him.
Have you forgeted me?
Dont you are awaken yet?
That should must me to cost my life.
We are in the canicule.
No budge you there.
If can’t to please at every one’s.
Take that boy and whip him to much.
Take attention to cut you self.
Take care to dirt you self.
Dress my horse.
Since you not go out, I shall go out nor I neither.
That may dead if I lie you.
What is it who want you?
Why you no helps me to?
Upon my live.
All trees have very deal bear.
A throat’s ill.
You shall catch cold one’s.
You make grins.
Will some mutton?
Will you fat or slight?
Will you this?
Will you a bon?
You not make who to babble.
You not make that to prate all day’s work.
You interompt me.
You mistake you self heavily.
You come too rare.