Reviews and News:
Brexit begins: "British prime minister Theresa May signed a letter in London and sent it to the European Council in Brussels for delivery today, formally invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty."
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No, baseball is not the most literary sport: "As difficult as it may be to explain the peculiar appeal of baseball, it is just as difficult to define what makes great baseball writing great. Yet it's practically a prerequisite of modern baseball fandom to buy into the assumption that baseball, as both an athletic pursuit and a handy metaphor for everything, is uniquely poetic among sports. It's not. I say this as a lifelong baseball fan."
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We have more than enough wealth, Kevin Williamson argues in National Review, and not enough work: "We do not have a problem of privation in the United States. Not really. What we have is something related to what Arthur Brooks...describes as the need for earned success. We are not happy with mere material abundance. We — and not to go all Iron John on you, but I think 'we' here applies especially to men — need to feel that we have earned our keep, that we have established a place for ourselves in the world by our labor or by other virtues, especially such masculine virtues as physical courage and endurance. "
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Who invented the telescope? "Today, all the leading astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope, use reflecting optics. Whom should we credit for this advance? Hero, for his conception? Zucchi, for his attempt at construction? Newton, for his successful prototype? Or Hadley, who made the reflecting telescope viable?"
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A 100-kilogram gold coin was stolen from a Berlin museum. It's worth $4 million.
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The Atlantic opens a London bureau.
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Should translators be paid royalties?
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Why is everyone in Vietnam named Nguyen? "In the United States, the most popular last name is Smith. As per the 2010 census, about 0.8 percent of Americans have it. In Vietnam, the most popular last name is Nguyen. The estimate for how many people answer to it? Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the country's population. The 14 most popular last names in Vietnam account for well over 90 percent of the population. The 14 most popular last names in the US? Fewer than 6 percent."
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Essay of the Day:
In The Times Literary Supplement, Harry Mount asks: "What happened to literary politicians?"
"Partly, it's a time thing. Politicians have much less spare time these days than they did even half a century ago. Yes, Osborne has now got enough spare moments for those six jobs – but he didn't have them when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Being Chancellor is a demanding job, and the public expect it to be a demanding job.
"That expectation of the professional, 24-7 politician wasn't there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The last proper intellectual Prime Minister was Arthur Balfour, in Downing Street from 1902 until 1905. Balfour may not have been a great Prime Minister, but he was a serious philosopher. His series of Gifford Lectures in 1914 at Glasgow University, on 'Theism and Humanism', were published as a book in 1915. C. S. Lewis said it was one of the ten books that influenced him most."
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Photo: Santa Maddalena
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Poem: Michael Robbins, "Know It All"
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