Donald Hall, the former poet laureate of the United States, has died. He was 89.
A short history of the fork in America:“On June 25, 1633, when governor John Winthrop, a founding father of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, took out a fork, then known as a ‘split spoon,’ at the dinner table, the utensil was dubbed ‘evil’ by the clergy.”
Van Gogh and Japanese art: “The inevitability of artistic imitation provides a premise for the blockbuster exhibition Inspiration from Japan, which wraps up its three month-long run this weekend here at the Van Gogh Museum. Presenting 60 paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh along with more than two dozen relevant works of mid-19th century Japanese art, the exhibition’s argument is that, through willful imitation of Japanese art, the once uncertain van Gogh became the van Gogh we know, a figure who might be the world’s most famous painter.”
Is this the earliest work by Leonardo da Vinci? “A small square tile with the profile image of a beautiful angel has been claimed not only as the earliest surviving work by Leonardo da Vinci, but as his own self-portrait as the Archangel Gabriel.” The claim is disputed: “The chance of its being by Leonardo is less than zero. The silly season for Leonardo never closes.”
Speaking of silliness, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name has been removed from a literary prize “over concerns about how the author portrayed African Americans and Native Americans.”
Did Shakespeare’s Richard II start a rebellion? “Due to an odd detail that came out during his trial, the short-lived, comically inept 1601 rebellion of Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, looms large in the imagination of Shakespeare enthusiasts. It turns out that the day before Essex and his allies tried to rally the city of London to support him, several of his men attended a public performance of a play. They not only commissioned this performance, but paid the company extra, likely because the play they were asking for was unpopular. That company was the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, most famous today for a writer/actor/shareholder named William Shakespeare. And the play? Signs point to Richard II, Shakespeare’s dramatization of the usurpation and murder of an unpopular ruler.”
Essay of the Day:
In The New Atlantis, Adam J. White argues that the real danger of Google is not exactly its near monopolistic control of the market but the “quiet alignment between ‘smart’ government and the universal information engine”:
“Google exists to answer our small questions. But how will we answer larger questions about Google itself? Is it a monopoly? Does it exert too much power over our lives? Should the government regulate it as a public utility — or even break it up?
“In recent months, public concerns about Google have become more pronounced. This February, the New York Times Magazine published ‘The Case Against Google,’ a blistering account of how ‘the search giant is squelching competition before it begins.’ The Wall Street Journal published a similar article in January on the ‘antitrust case’ against Google, along with Facebook and Amazon, whose market shares it compared to Standard Oil and AT&T at their peaks. Here and elsewhere, a wide array of reporters and commentators have reflected on Google’s immense power — not only over its competitors, but over each of us and the information we access — and suggested that the traditional antitrust remedies of regulation or breakup may be necessary to rein Google in.
“Dreams of war between Google and government, however, obscure a much different relationship that may emerge between them — particularly between Google and progressive government. For eight years, Google and the Obama administration forged a uniquely close relationship. Their special bond is best ascribed not to the revolving door, although hundreds of meetings were held between the two; nor to crony capitalism, although hundreds of people have switched jobs from Google to the Obama administration or vice versa; nor to lobbying prowess, although Google is one of the top corporate lobbyists.
“Rather, the ultimate source of the special bond between Google and the Obama White House — and modern progressive government more broadly — has been their common ethos. Both view society’s challenges today as social-engineering problems, whose resolutions depend mainly on facts and objective reasoning. Both view information as being at once ruthlessly value-free and yet, when properly grasped, a powerful force for ideological and social reform. And so both aspire to reshape Americans’ informational context, ensuring that we make choices based only upon what they consider the right kinds of facts — while denying that there would be any values or politics embedded in the effort.”
Photo: Wengen
Poem: Donald Hall, “The Man in the Dead Machine”
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