Alan Jacobs

I only read factual books. I can’t think of… I mean, novels are just a waste of f•••ing time. I can’t suspend belief in reality… I just end up thinking, ‘This isn’t f•••ing true.’ I like reading about things that have actually happened. I’m reading this book at the minute — The Kennedy Tapes. It’s all about the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis — I can get into that. Thinking, 'Wow, this actually f•••ing happened, they came that close to blowing the world up!’ But… what f•••ing winds me up about books… is, like… my missus will come in with a book and it will be titled — and there’s a lot of these, you can substitute any word, it’s like a Rubik’s Cube of shit titles — it’ll be entitled The Incontinence Of Elephants. And I’ll say “What’s that book about?” And she’ll say, “Oh it’s about a girl and this load of f•••ing nutters…” Right… so it’s not about elephants, then? Why the f••• is it called The Incontinence Of Elephants? Another one: The Tales Of The Clumsy Beekeeper. What’s that about? “Oh it’s about the French Revolution.” Right, f••• off. If you’re writing a book about a child who’s locked in a f•••ing cupboard during the f•••ing Second World War… he’s never seen an elephant. Never mind a f•••ing giraffe.

Almighty and most wrathful God, who hate nothing You have made but sometimes repent of having made Man; we thank you this day for the life and work of Your faithful servant Jonathan Swift, who constantly imitated and occasionally exceeded Your own anger at the folly of sin, and who in his works excoriated such folly with a passion that brought him nigh unto madness; and we pray that You may teach us to be imitators of him, so that the follies and stupidities of our own time may receive their proper chastisement; through Christ our Lord, who reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

After finishing my degree in philosophy, I needed a career. I have no regrets pursuing my MBA at Stanford and in the various experiences that followed from that choice. Would I have done the same thing if I had, say, a trust fund paying my living expenses? Probably not. But I am more of a person today for the intellectual rigor I assimilated at the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, or for doing an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. I could list many benefits I gained from these experiences, but I will cite one. The microeconomic modeling and game theory analysis I learned at the Boston Consulting Group has helped me explain developments in the history of music that I would never have understood if I had spent my entire life in the arts.

On the other hand, I knew that I couldn’t allow the financial opportunities of the business world sway me from my music projects. Shortly before my thirtieth birthday I had a huge choice to make. The Boston Consulting Group wanted me to move to New York and advise their corporate clients, and that same week Stanford University asked me to teach jazz and work alongside artist-in-residence Stan Getz. The consulting job paid ten times the teaching job—I’m not exaggerating. But this was an easy decision to make. A few weeks later I started teaching at Stanford. I always lived modestly so I could make these kinds of choices.

According to the Pew Forum, between 2006 and 2010 Christians faced some form of discrimination, either de jure or de facto, in a staggering total of 139 nations, which is almost three-quarters of all the countries on earth. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade. That works out to 11 Christians killed somewhere in the world every hour, seven days a week and 365 days a year, for reasons related to their faith.

In effect, the world is witnessing the rise of an entire new generation of Christian martyrs. The carnage is occurring on such a vast scale that it represents not only the most dramatic Christian story of our time, but arguably the premier human rights challenge of this era as well.

natgeofound:

People gather on a roof terrace in the District of Columbia as lights come on in nearby buildings, April 1967.Photograph by Joe Scherschel, National Geographic

Mental Floss: Purely for trivia and posterity’s sake, if you could indulge some (even more) inane queries: One story that’s made the rounds is that a plush toy manufacturer once delivered a box of Hobbes dolls to you unsolicited, which you promptly set ablaze. For people who share your low opinion of merchandising, this is a fairly delightful story. Did it actually happen?

Bill Watterson: Not exactly. It was only my head that burst into flames.

However you slice and dice the history, the strategery, and the underlying issues, the decision to live with a government shutdown for an extended period of time — inflicting modest-but-real harm on the economy, needlessly disrupting the lives and paychecks of many thousands of hardworking people, and further tarnishing the Republican Party’s already not-exactly-shiny image — in pursuit of obviously, obviously unattainable goals was not a normal political blunder by a normally-functioning political party. It was an irresponsible, dysfunctional and deeply pointless act, carried out by a party that on the evidence of the last few weeks shouldn’t be trusted with the management of a banana stand, let alone the House of Representatives.

This means that the still-ongoing intra-conservative debate over the shutdown’s wisdom is not, I’m sorry, the kind of case where reasonable people can differ on the merits and have good-faith arguments and ultimately agree to disagree. There was no argument for the shutdown itself that a person unblindered by political fantasies should be obliged to respect, no plausible alternative world in which it could have led to any outcome besides self-inflicted political damage followed by legislative defeat, and no epitaph that should be written for its instigators’ planning and execution except: “These guys deserved to lose.”

oupacademic:

Printing at Oxford University Press in the 1920s: Compositors

The compositors arrange the type for printing. Here, they are compiling a Syriac dictionary, which seems to demand very complex type! (Incidentally, a meeting of compositors is called a chapel.)

These clips are from a silent film made in 1925 by the Federation of British Industry, illustrating industrial life and including the work of Oxford University Press. See more video clips on our Tumblr OUP Archive stream to learn about the History of Oxford University Press. OUP’s Archive Department collects, catalogues, and preserves all material of long-term importance associated with the Press’s commercial and social activities in Britain, from the 17th century to the present day.

A different illustration is found among the elves of Lorien, in their love of beauty and their love of nature. They are Sylvan Elves (East Elves) but the rulers they choose to obey are Eldar (West Elves). They choose to be ruled by people better than themselves, in other words, exactly as we choose to be ruled by people worse.

Meanwhile standard-bearer lists like the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies or Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Poll are sorely underrepresented. None of the AFI’s top 10 American films are currently streaming on Netflix; just 14 out of the list’s 100 titles are currently available there. The pickings are even slimmer from Sight & Sound’s top 100 (or 102; they rank with ties), where just 11 movies are streaming at the moment. You’ll have to look elsewhere if you want to watch Citizen Kane or The Godfather or The Rules Of The Game or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Breathless or Seven Samurai or Vertigo or Psycho (at least Hitchcock’s version; Netflix has Van Sant’s). And if students aren’t looking elsewhere, that’s troubling.