From February 1958.

I recently reorganised the books in my study, and collected my remnants of feminist theory on a separate shelf; a fragment of another world. There were copies of Feminist Review, work by Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly. There was also Adrienne Rich’s pamphlet, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” a dense and learned tract about the repression of lesbians. Consciousness-raising made little distinction between street and boardroom thuggery and the effects of laws in repressive states…. Consensual homosexual acts between adults are still illegal in as many as 70 countries. Most countries have moved to a liberalisation of those unjust and repressive laws. In Uganda, however, the Hon David Bahati has sponsored an anti-homosexuality bill far more draconian than the already existing code…. Bahati wants to get rid of those pesky “sexual rights activists seeking to impose their values of sexual promiscuity”, as well as gay pornographers and paedophiles. There is no distinction in his mind between people who fall in love with people of their own gender, and sexual sleaze and crime: it’s all a filthy mess of HIV, pornography, western values, decadence, feminism and predation. The draft bill separates “the offence of homosexuality” from “aggravated homosexuality.” –“Uganda is Sanctioning Gay Genocide,” Sigrid Rausing, New Statesman

Armstrong’s lack of prejudice extended to Jews, an attitude that was comparatively rare among blacks of his generation. Outside his marriages, his closest adult relationship was with Joe Glaser, a Jewish gangster from Chicago who became his manager in 1935 and with whom he was intimately associated from then on. Armstrong described Glaser as “my dearest friend,” and those who knew both men well agreed that this was nothing more than the truth. He was similarly admiring of the Karnofskys, a family of Jewish peddlers from Lithuania for whom he had worked as a boy in New Orleans. In 1969 he wrote a lengthy memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys called “Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907.” … The young Armstrong saw the Karnofskys’ problems up close, for they took him under their wing, treating him almost like a relative. “They were always warm and kind to me, which was very noticeable to me— just a kid who could use a little word of kindness,” he recalled. He shared meals with them and borrowed money from them to buy his first cornet. Thereafter he would identify with the Karnofskys and the other Jews of New Orleans so closely that he became an ardent philo-Semite who wore a Star of David around his neck (Joe Glaser gave it to him). “I will love the Jewish people, all of my life,” he wrote, adding that he learned from them “how to live— real life and determination.” –“Satchmo and the Jews,” Terry Teachout, Commentary

Money gives us pleasure, Brecht needlessly told us, but that is not what will be meant here— not the kind of pleasure ignited by money because we lust after the unlimited opportunities it promises. We should rather be thinking of something more banal and mysterious: of the intrinsic sensuousness of the actual money itself— small metal discs, or oblong strips of rustling, crackling paper. In Balzac, an artist tries to marry into a bourgeois family; he carelessly remarks that money is there to be spent—since it is round, it must roll. The father of the family, reacting with the deepest mistrust, replies: “If it is round for prodigals, it is flat for economical people who pile it up.” The opposite approaches of the bohemian and the rentier (by the end of the tale they have comfortably fused) converge in images of the concrete pleasures of money. Both are thinking of the ways in which hands unconsciously encircle coins, a physical sensation. One man high-spiritedly lets them roll loose, the other deliberately stacks them on top of each other, with greedy precision. The spendthrift and the miser both feel the coins between their fingers. –“Money as We Knew It?” Joachim Kalka, New Left Review

From November 1958.

As a devoted football fan, you are undoubtedly aware of the phrase “not in my house,” a defiant cri de coeur that is generally shouted by a swaggering defensive end who’s just sunk a running back for a loss on third-and-short. Well, imagine for a moment that the Almighty is a 265-pound linebacker with meaty arms, a penchant for smashmouthiness, and one of those scary dark visors on His helmet. –“The Texanist: Is it wrong to wear your football team’s jersey to church?” by David Courtney, Texas Monthly (via)

While it was previously unclear just what food was on the table, we now see that it is neither Paschal lamb nor, as some had supposed, bread alone. There are three large serving platters in the picture, and although the one in front of Christ is empty, the two before Andrew and Matthew—the fourth figures to his right and left—are heaped with food. The plate to our left appears to contain about half a dozen whole fish, while the one on the right is damaged to the point of being all but illegible. Fortunately, the preservation of the three small serving dishes on the right side of the composition is sufficiently good to suggest that we are looking at, in fact, sections of grilled eel garnished with orange slices. Other pieces of fruit—pomegranates perhaps, some still with their leaves attached—complete the menu along with plenty of bread and wine, the only sacramental necessities in any depiction of the Last Supper. –“History’s Table: At Supper with Leonardo,” John Varriano (PDF), in Gastronomica (via)

And then there’s the sad fact of the “dancing” [in the big wheelchair number in Glee]; the choreography sucks. The one potentially interesting move that McHale supposedly “does” is a cut– he wheelies on one rear wheel. The rest is notable only for the way that it shows that able-bodied, non-wheelchair-using folk really do think of chairs as bicycles you move with your arms. There’s absolutely no body-chair integration at all. They think of sitting in a chair as being only about not being able to move their legs (and in Artie’s case as being about having his hips and legs twisted to one side). That mistaken understanding leads to some very weird-looking people in chairs. On chairs would be a better phrase for it. The fake paralysis of their legs somehow wends its way up their bodies so that they are really only able to push with their elbows (no wonder they have sore arms!). –“Glee,” Wheelchair Dancer

From November 1958.

“Maybe this is too personal,” says Charlotte, “but I wasn’t as careful with my virginity, with my heart and my body, when I was a teenager, and maybe that’s where I’m escaping to. I’m rescuing the shy virgin in me that didn’t get to be a shy virgin as long. I want Bella to be protected. And Edward does that. Albeit in a scary, dangerous way.” She’s careful to say, however, that her regression is pretty benign. It’s not like she actually wants to be 15 again…. Actually, what “Twilight” has brought flooding back for many fans is not just the high drama of first love and betrayal but warm memories of a different relationship altogether. “For so many of these women, this is the first book they’ve read cover to cover in 10 years,” says Kirsten Starkweather. “Now they’re grabbing the new book, whatever it is.” Charlotte agrees. “Reading is an act of defiance in the world today. I owe Stephenie Meyer a thank you note for reminding me of that.” –“‘Twilight’ of Our Youth: It isn’t just a tween phenomenon. Women in their 30s and beyond are addicted to Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga, too,” Sarah Hepola, Salon

White geek Nick Douglas had a theory about Black People Twitter a while ago. His friend suggested “These people don’t have real Twitter friends. So they all respond to trending topics.” This is so obviously wrong. (“No, they have their own communities and their own friends that you are not paying attention to,” wrote Maria Diaz.) And then Douglas himself posted a great response to his poor dumb friend: “It’s the nature of how we craft these environments to suit our core comforts and fine tune our twitter experiences. Twitter’s addition of the trending topics bar has simply shattered our insulated perception of how everyone uses this thing.” –“What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?” by Choire Sicha, The Awl

In the experiment, preliminary results of which were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, scientists allowed one group of rats to run. Another set of rodents was not allowed to exercise. Then all of the rats swam in cold water, which they don’t like to do. Afterward, the scientists examined the animals’ brains. They found that the stress of the swimming activated neurons in all of the brains. (The researchers could tell which neurons were activated because the cells expressed specific genes in response to the stress.) But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm. –“Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious,” Gretchen Reynolds, The New York Times

From January 1952.

Over the past few years the U.S. military has been engaged in an extensive internal debate about counter-insurgency warfare. This is partly a debate about COIN tactics and techniques — in other words, about how to do COIN better — but the more important debate is about the priority that COIN should receive in U.S. defense planning. Specifically, should the United States continue to focus primarily on preparing for “great power” wars and strive to retain “command of the commons” through air power, naval power, and other sophisticated warfare capabilities, or should it retool for the various small wars that it seems to have been fighting lately?… Unfortunately, this line of argument ignores the fact that these wars are the result of past American mistakes. The first error was the failure to capture Bin Laden and his associates at the battle of Tora Bora, which allowed Al Qaeda’s leaders to escape into Pakistan and thus ensured that the United States would become enmeshed in Afghanistan… The second mistake was the foolish decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which led us into yet another costly insurgency. Not surprisingly, those charged with waging that war eventually focused on COIN, because that was the problem they were expected to solve. But the only reason they had to do so was the fact that the Bush Administration decided to wage an unnecessary war in the first place. In short, the current obsession with counterinsurgency is the direct result of two fateful errors. We didn’t get Bin Laden when we should have, and we invaded Iraq when we shouldn’t. Had the United States not made those two blunders, we wouldn’t have been fighting costly counterinsurgencies and we wouldn’t be contemplating a far-reaching revision of U.S. defense priorities and military doctrine. –“Building on 2 Blunders: the dubious case for counterinsurgency,” Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy

My love and I had come to Paris in search of the mythic cheeses said to thrive an ocean away from the FDA. At longing last, we were in our tiny rental in the Marais, hovered over a single plate, tasting a Langres. This cheese, as it’s described in one rather bland guide, originates from the high plains of Langres in Champagne. It is shaped like a cylinder and has a deep well on top called a fontaine, a kind of basin into which Champagne or marc may be poured. This is a pleasant way to eat this cheese, and is characteristic of wine-producing regions. We didn’t have the funds for Champagne on this evening, but we had managed to get tipsy on a serviceable vin de pays, which is also a pleasant way to eat a Langres….“It doesn’t play well with others,” [my love said,] the thick smack of pâté slowing her speech. “It doesn’t respect lesser cheese.” “It’s like a road trip through Arizona in an old Buick,” I offered. “It’s like Charlus, but early in Proust.” “It has a half-life inside your teeth.” “It has ideas.” “It gradually peels off the skin on the roof of your mouth.“ “It attains absolute crustiness and absolute creaminess.” The problem with most descriptions of cheese, the sort you find in guides, is that they’re reductive. Officially, the Langres is sticky, wet, shiny, firm, and supple, “melts in the mouth,” and has “a complex mixture of aromas.” Such descriptions convey, at best, a blueprint of the tasting experience, like a score does a symphony.–“Illegal Cheese,” Eric Lemay, Gastronomica

One of the most notable characteristics of Ouija lore is the vast-and sometimes authentically frightening-history of stories reported by users. A common story line involves communication that is at first reassuring and even useful–a lost object may be recovered through the board’s counsel–but eventually gives way to threatening or terrorizing messages. One group of Ouija enthusiasts reported ghostly knocks on their apartment doors after contacting the spirit of a serial killer. Others claimed physical and sexual assaults from unseen hands after a night of Ouija experimentation. One famous murder trial in 1933 involved claims that Ouija had “commanded” an Arizona girl and her mother to kill the girl’s father. Hugh Lynn Cayce, the soft-spoken son of the famous American psychic Edgar Cayce, once cautioned that his research found Ouija boards among the most “dangerous doorways to the unconscious.” –“Ouija,” Parabola

From October 1923.

But China– or Mao’s China, which was the only one on view to Westerners in 1974—was entirely opaque to him, a string of stereotypes, or bricks, as he called them, borrowing a term from cybernetics. The one thing he loved was what he had already seen in Japan: calligraphy, “their only work of art,” he said of the Chinese, “absolute counter-vulgarity.” “The rest: Soviet realism.” He dutifully toured the factories and schools and museums with his friends; he listened to the same sermons again and again; he had migraines; enjoyed the food; made an effort every now and again to get a bit of semiotic mileage out of the repeating signs. One result of this was an essay he published in Le Monde: “Alors, la Chine?” Alors, nothing much, was the answer. Barthes had seen Antonioni’s 1972 film about China– he told the director that it was the reason he took the trip– and kept returning to the sense that he had nothing to add to that portrait. On one of his last days there he drew up a kind of balance sheet. He couldn’t write favourably of the place or coherently criticise it. “Impossible,” he said of both options. He didn’t want merely to describe his experiences: that would be “phenomenology,” meaning, I take it, just phenomenology. All that was left was “Antonioni,” an approach that had been excoriated in China and in the West as a betrayal of the Revolution. –“Presence of Mind,” Michael Wood, London Review of Books

An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong. –“Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective,” Steven Pinker, The New York Times

For Hans, it is hardly a surprise that much of Shakespeare does resonate so in Punjab. “For the English, Shakespeare is something sacred,” he tells me, “They are incapable of a natural response. Our response, on the other hand, is not born of ritual admiration. The plots make sense to us, you want to read King John, think of the story of Aurangzeb. Take the Two Noble Kinsmen, and the plot is no different from any Hindustani film. Two cousins fight over the same woman. One claims he has the right to her hand because he loves her more, the other says she is his because he saw her first. They both die fighting.” Hans doesn’t have to say it, but even as we speak, somewhere in a Punjab village, a similar story may well be playing itself out. There are other correspondences that may be mapped too. “We share an attitude with the England of Shakespeare’s times—it extends to matters such as wine, women, wealth and even sex. The psychology of death is similar.” There are differences as well. For one, Hans is quick to point out, Punjabis lack the idea of courtesy that is so central to English culture. –“Though This Be Madness, There Is Method In’t: After sixteen years of work, Surjit Hans’ mission of translating all of Shakespeare into Punjabi is nigh an end,” Hartosh Singh Bal, Open (via)

From June 1923.

The inspiration for the name [Blue Dog] comes from several sources. It’s a play on the old phrase “Yellow Dog Democrat”—for those who’d sooner vote for a yellow dog than a Republican. It expresses the sense of the group’s founders, in 1995, that they were being “choked blue” by their party’s liberals. And most surprisingly, it is partly homage to the Cajun artist George Rodrigue, specifically his famous faux-naif painting of a blue Chihuahua, copies of which adorned the office walls of two Louisiana members who hosted early organizational meetings…. The Blue Dog Coalition has proven attractive to members who, for various reasons, want to be seen as having a centrist credential. One finds entrenched veterans like Jane Harman of California’s district covering the southern beaches; she is one of the House’s richest members (her husband owns Harman-Kardon, which makes stereo equipment) and is liberal on almost all matters except national security, having supported the Iraq war and survived a 2006 primary challenge from a candidate who criticized her for doing so. And there are newcomers with wobbly support in their districts—the wobbliest of all, by seeming consensus among Congress-watchers, being Walt Minnick of Idaho, a one-time Nixon aide of libertarian bent who resigned in protest over the Saturday Night Massacre, became a Democrat in 1996, and won a close race in a very Republican district. He was helped along when his opponent was caught heckling a Minnick aide during a television interview (and by $900,000 of his own money). Just six members of the fifty-two-member Blue Dog group are women, two are Latino, and none is African-American.–“Who Are the Blue Dogs?” Michael Tomasky, The New York Review of Books

Robyn, 30

What have you learned about sex and dating from reading the Twilight series? What could men learn if they read the books?

The intensity of being drawn together by chemistry is amazingly sexy. Being so focused on each other, and having such a deep passion for one another. That’s what I’ve learned.

Grace, 18

What’s the best way to pick up a Twilight fan?

Whisper in their ear, “You’re my personal brand of heroin.”

Jeff, 23

My new girlfriend gets a little rough in the bedroom. The other day she bit my shoulder — hard! It was more disturbing than hot, but I love how worked up she gets. How can I tell her not to draw blood, without sounding like a wimp?

Everyone needs a good bite once in a while, but for most of us, there’s definitely a pain threshold we’d rather not cross. I always find a simple, earnest “Ow!” usually breaks the mood enough to get your point across without stopping the momentum. Or, she could be a vampire. A little blood isn’t such a bad price to pay in return for eternal awesomeness. –“Sex Advice From: Twi-Hards,” Nerve

Opening a kilo of coke takes time. The outside layer of this particular package bears a colorful pattern of palm trees that makes it look like a birthday present, a thick paperback maybe. Other layers nest beneath the trees: layers of plastic, of carbon paper, of tracing and butcher paper, one stamped producto de calidad and numbered. Below the first layers, the entire brick is slathered in diesel-engine degreaser to keep it moist and mask the smell from detection dogs. Jesse attacks the package with a pocketknife and his fingers, showing neither haste nor undue caution. After all, he has done this many times before. Yet there is something about the kilo that makes it different from the rest; it is, Jesse says, the first kilo of the last shipment of cocaine that he will sell here in Pittsburgh, bringing to a close a successful career that began when he was eleven. –“Game Over,” Robert Anasi, Virginia Quarterly Review;