gleans + 1xlagniappe at 4:55 PM MT. 09/29

 

Missile Defense Didn't Win the Cold War <== TV did
By David Hoffman

 

The 10 Craziest Things Ever Said During a U.N. Speech
By Joshua Keating

From the impassioned to the provocative to the truly bizarre, here are the 10 most unforgettable remarks to come out of the U.N. General Assembly speeches in the last 60 years.

 

Nero's rotating banquet hall unveiled in Rome

 

Inside the Navy's Command Center of the Future

A prototype being worked on at a Navy laboratory in San Diego is showcasing the kinds of spaces that geographically dispersed military decision makers will use to plan strategy in the future.  Read full story 

 

Save the Subjunctive! <== damn right!

A critique of grammar, style and usage in The Times. This week: familiar missteps.

 

 

DAVID BROOKS

The Next Culture War  <== recommended

The United States needs a revival of economic self-restraint to restore its financial values and make it a producer economy again, not a consumer economy.

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lagniappe

 

Turner Cassity's "The Last Newsboy" is a great poem.  Click on "Preview this book", go down the page a bit, and click on "The Last Newsboy" - with any luck at all, there it will be.  You might like to read some other poems too - feel free.

 

Book overview

As he approaches eighty, Turner Cassity may finally be out of control. His hatchet has never fallen more lethally, meaning if you have the stomach for him he is more enjoyable than ever. Under the blade come Martha Graham, Johann Sebastian Bach, musicologists, tree huggers, Frank Gehry, folk music, folk art of all times and all places, folk. . . . There are, however, his unpredictable sympathies: Edith Wilson, skyscrapers, Pontius Pilate, Pilate’s legionnaires. He obviously has a soft spot for Pop Culture, although he cannot avoid seeing it de haut en bas. As usual, he is all over the place geographically. One feels he would slash his wrists before he would write a poem about any city on the traditional Grand Tour. Manaus, Campeche, Trieste, Budapest (as destroyed by Godzilla)—these are his places. He has a disturbing willingness to write on both sides of an issue, resembling in this Bernard Shaw. You have to read very carefully to see whether he tips his hand. One looks forward to Mr. Cassity’s posthumous poems, when he is beyond the reach of libel. For now, at least, we have Devils & Islands. Limited preview - 2007 - 57 pages - Juvenile Nonfiction Preview this book