If you're interested in curious cultural phenomena, you may have taken notice of the tiny Pacific nation of Niue—an idyllic Polynesian Eden, which is depopulating itself so dramatically that it will soon turn spontaneously into a wildlife refuge.
It wasn't long ago that painters were celebrities; when Picasso died in 1973, it was big news to everywhere. Paul McCartney wrote a song about it. In the 70s, painters and paintings were still a part of mainstream culture; around that time, though, the art world moved from modernist and…
Who is the history's greatest explorer? Marco Polo, Magellan, da Gamma and Cook are the main contenders, along—of course—with Christopher Columbus, whose star has fallen over the last few decades. Vancouver, Peary, Amundsen and Scott all have their partisans, as do Lewis and Clark. There are Cortez…
There was news a couple of weeks ago that a U.S. Navy cruiser—the Lake Champlain— collided with a South Korean fishing boat in the Sea of Japan. I remembered reading a few years ago that one our Navy destroyers had collided with a Japanese oil tanker—in 2012, in the Strait of Hormuz. Two collisions…
The UK's Telegraph newspaper published an interesting report last week, the upshot of which was that Germans laugh very little. One in three Germans laughs fewer than five times a day. "When they do allow themselves a chuckle," writes the Telegraph, "it's more likely than not to be at the expense…
What is the world's most effective weapon? During the First World War, gas killed about 90,000 people. During the Second World War, it was used to kill 6,000,000 Jews. Directly and indirectly, the two atomic bombs killed about 200,000 Japanese; the Japanese used anthrax, cholera and the bubonic…
There aren't too many scholarly journals that can be read recreationally; one of them is the Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR). Despite what the name might suggest, the BAR is in no sense a religious publication; it is, rather, a serious academic look at discoveries and developments in the…
An American landmark began getting uglier last week, as construction began on a giant suicide net for the Golden Gate Bridge.
Something very peculiar has gone on in the comic book world over the last two weeks.
Partly because France surrendered to the Nazis before any harm could be done to Paris, Paris is the art capital of the world. Consequently, it has an impractically large number of great museums. Tourists can't reasonably be expected to visit all of them—Paris has a dozen or so museums dedicated…
No doubt many WEEKLY STANDARD readers have heard the news about the "Big Bend" skyscraper planned for 57th street in Manhattan, just below Central Park. It will be a giant, upside-down U that looks a little like the St. Louis arch, if someone told it to stand up straight. It was an eye catching…
One of the greatest pianists who ever lived, Dinu Lipatti, was born 100 years ago yesterday, on March 19, 1917. Lipatti was a child prodigy, a virtuoso pianist and a Romanian who died at 33, just 15 years after his career began. Of course there are many child prodigies who become virtuoso pianists;…
Last week, at the Geneva International Motor Show, Ferrari debuted its newest model, the "812 Superfast." The Superfast revives an old Ferrari name from the 60's, when the Ferrari "America" was updated to the "Superamerica," and then to the "Superfast." The new Superfast will not, contrary to a lot…
So far, as president, Donald Trump has said all the right things about space. He wants NASA focused on exploration again. He wants men flying back to the moon in 2018. In his pseudo-State of the Union last week, he reminded the country that "American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a…
Auguste Rodin— almost the last great figure sculptor—shares a rare distinction with history's two greatest visual artists, Leonardo and Michelangelo: Like the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's (first) David, Rodin's "Thinker" is ubiquitous; every person in the western world, no matter how uninterested…
In the months following John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge to put men on the moon, NASA conceived a plan wherein an Apollo capsule and its three crewmen would descend to the lunar surface atop a giant, multi-stage rocket; when it was time to go home, the rocket would be powerful enough to blast the…
A few years ago I moved from New York City to a forest in New England. It's very peaceful here, and very bucolic, and very spread-out: Every trip now requires a car. Which is fine—in fact, it's great; I love driving. But I can't stand the god-forsaken infernal traffic. I could have written this…
On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration as president, a well-known neo-Nazi named Richard Spencer gave an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was on a street corner in Washington, near an anti-Trump protest. During the interview, one of the protesters punched Spencer in the…
What if, instead of a wall, we were to build, along the southern border, a cargo shipping canal?
On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a well-known neo-Nazi named Richard Spencer gave an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was on a street corner in Washington, near an anti-Trump protest. During the interview, one of the protesters punched Spencer in the…
Trafalgar Square sits in the center of London, just north of the Palace of Westminster. It was christened to celebrate Horatio Lord Nelson's annihilation of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Spain's Cape Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson's victory cemented British naval…
For a lot of obvious reasons, the U.S. is filled with space enthusiasts. Most space enthusiasts, you'll find, have a favorite mission. For many, it's Mercury-Atlas 6, John Glenn's orbital flight. For many it's Gemini 4, when Ed Young made the first American Spacewalk, or Gemini 6, the first ever…
If you leave out writers and composers, there are only two serious contenders for title of greatest artist in history: Michelangelo and Leonardo. They tie for the title of greatest painter; Michelangelo is in sole possession for the title of greatest sculptor. In fact only one Leonardo sculpture…
One of the most interesting figures in the bible is King Hezekiah—reformer, builder, and entirely historical, attested to in a passel of extra-biblical sources. New sources have been excavated over the last few weeks.
Who is the greatest Spanish artist who ever lived? Though it's light on writers and composers, and has only the one architect—Gaudi—Spain has a rich history of great painters; Goya, Dali, Miro, Juan Gris, El Greco. Really, though, there are only three contenders for the Spain's-greatest-artist…
When John McPhee's four-book geologic tour of the United States was collected in 1998 and published as the Annals of the Former World, McPhee was forced to confront a serious omission. McPhee's geology tour ran along the 40th parallel, on route 80; the first two books covered America east of…
If you've ever been to Paris, you've likely seen the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; it's directly across the street from the east end of the Louvre. Surprisingly, despite its central locations, it's off the tourists' beaten path; it's too close to the much more famous Notre Dame Cathedral and…
Something to remember 75 years after Pearl Harbor: The United States Navy is the best in the world, by an order of magnitude. No other navy is remotely as powerful. There are 40 in-service aircraft carriers in the world; 19 of them are ours. (Russia has just one, and it's in bad shape.) By a…
The greatest painting in Paris is not the Mona Lisa. It's a different portrait by a different renaissance master, conveniently located only a hundred feet away from the Mona Lisa, in an adjacent Louvre gallery. It's Rafael's Baldassare Castiglione.
In 1514, King Manuel I of Portugal gave Pope Leo X a white Indian Elephant named Hanno. When Hanno arrived in the Vatican—after sailing from Conchin, on India's southwest coast, to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Rome, he was an enormous sensation. He marched in parades and gave audiences. He was…
This week, Bob Dylan finally gave the Nobel people an answer to their offer of the Literature Prize—he's happy to accept, but he's afraid he's too busy to go pick it up. Everyone's having a good chuckle at that. Nonetheless, the Nobel Prize-committee has explained that declining to accept in person…
Some indigenous North American tribes still whale, at a subsistence level. The whaling is allowed because whale populations have rebounded beautifully since commercial whaling ended, and because whaling is an important part of the tribe's culture, tradition and history. I've spent years trying to…
After more than 20 years of planning, development, near cancellation, blood, sweat and tears, the construction of the James Webb Space Telescope is complete; it was was just completed. It took seven years longer than it was supposed to and went seven billion, two hundred million dollars over…
Two years ago, I wrote a piece in these pages about my multi-year struggle to see Gianolorenzo Bernini's greatest bust—possibly his greatest sculpture—his Constanza, which lives on the top floor of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, the national sculpture museum. The Bargello, whose…
California is one of the newest parts of North America. Not long ago—just a couple hundred million years ago, which isn't much on a geologic timescale—North America ended, roughly, in Nevada. To the west of Nevada was the Pacific Ocean, and in it, a great chain of islands that no longer exists. The…
Rising From the Plains, John McPhee's third installment in his multi-volume geological history of the United States Annals of the Former World, tells the story of Wyoming: its birth on the supercontinent Pangea, its arrival in North America, the growth of its mountains, the source of its fossils…
John McPhee's five-book Annals of the Former World tracks the author's geologic journey across the United States, at the fortieth parallel, on Interstate 80, using the highway's exposed rock "roadcuts" to peek into North America's geologic past. McPhee's trip was broken into five books,…
As America and THE WEEKLY STANDARD celebrate the first 100 years of the National Parks Service, worth a read is writer John McPhee's five-book series Annals of the Former World, a geologic history of the United States that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. McPhee began the series more or less by…
The Met museum in Manhattan has turned a large part of its Asian art floors over to a temporary exhibition of all the finest Chinese paintings from its vaults: "Masterpieces of Chinese Painting From the Metropolitan Collection" will be on until October 11.
Athens
Florence is one of the two or three cities that sit on top of the art world. It has most of Michelangelo's greatest sculptures, all of Botticelli's greatest paintings, Bernini's greatest bust, and the two best Italian-Gothic churches. It has the lions' share of the world's great 13th, 14th and 15th…
More often than not, a writer of history has to choose either to entertain the masses or to fill a hole in some subject's scholarly literature. George Goodwin's new Benjamin Franklin in London has the dust jacket of the former but the minute detail of the latter. It is not a book to be entered into…
At a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society in 1919, Arthur Eddington announced a discovery that turned physics on its head. Eddington had measured the position of a star cluster near the limb of the sun during a total solar eclipse; the stars appeared to have moved…
Confirming a new attorney general is near the top of the new Senate's to-do list. The power not to confirm the president's nominees is near the top of the Republicans' new consignment of political clout. Needless to say, without the White House, the GOP can't implement their preferred policies, but…
Any leverage Washington has over North Korea has been invested in stifling their nuclear program; so you might think the U.S. government has just two available responses to the Hollywood hack: Do nothing or declare war. But, happily, there’s a third option, and it’s firmly grounded in the…
I live in Connecticut, and I don’t travel much outside of the Northeast corridor. But through a few strokes of luck, and some happy happenstance, I’ve been in Florence five times in the last seven years.
At the end of the 19th century, physicists smugly proclaimed their field closed.
In 1882, Louis Bamberger bought the stock of a bankrupt dry goods store and used it to open a store of his own in Newark, New Jersey. By 1928, it was one of the largest and most profitable businesses in the country: Bamberger’s department store had expanded from a rented storefront to a million…
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union opened the space age by orbiting Sputnik, history’s first artificial satellite. Four months later, the United States launched its own first satellite and began hiring astronauts in the hopes of beating the Soviets to a manned space flight. President Eisenhower…
On July 21, 1969, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin joined Neil Armstrong on the moon’s surface and launched a new epoch of human history. It’s safe to say that this is the best-known item on Buzz Aldrin’s résumé.
Science doesn’t make a splash in the news too often. But a year or so ago, when the CERN labs announced that they might have observed the “God particle,” everyone got very excited. A year of peer-review later, it appears they were right: After a 50-year search, the Higgs boson has been found.
The economist Leonard E. Read once explained the effectiveness of free markets with the parable of the pencil: Pencils seem simple enough, just some wood with graphite inside and a bit of rubber at the end—but, he said, “no one in the world knows how to make a pencil.”
In June 2010, the nation’s capital was atwitter with stories of the Washington Nationals rookie Stephen Strasburg, a starting pitcher who threw 100 miles per hour with a wicked changeup. On days when he pitched, attendance doubled; television sports shows asked their panelists to weigh in on…