“I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?” or, FB continues to make people feel a little awkward.
Oh, and congrats, btw.
The Naipaul Test
V.S. Naipaul (seemingly a professional misogynist at times) rankled many by suggesting there are no women writers that can equal him and calling Jane Austen “sentimental.” Now the Guardian offers up a quiz that challenges readers to identify the gender of an author simply by reading a passage of his or her writing.
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How the Fulbright Started
“Whatever the [Fulbright] program became,” writes Boston Globe correspondent Sam Lebovic, “it was first conceived as a budget-priced megaphone to transmit American ideas to the world, rather than as a genuine international dialogue.” Indeed, one 1940s newspaper columnist dubbed the program “an ingenious piece of higher mathematics…[that] found a way to finance out of the sale of war junk a worldwide system of American scholarships.”
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Occupy and Occupy!
As the various Occupy protests endure another week, Todd Gitlin‘s excellent piece in the LA Review of Books is an eloquent exploration of what the movement means. Across the country, Brooklyn-based n+1‘s ambitious gazette, Occupy!, is available for free download (PDF).
The Immortal Book
Not-so-breaking news: Books are the best way to store information. CDs, flash memory, hard drives, and other digital storage devices aren’t nearly as durable as good old fashioned paper. So the next time someone says you have too many books, just say it’s your attempt at immortality.
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Anxiety of Influence
“Cursed Child … is an act of overreach that feels mandated not by [J.K.] Rowling’s desire to fill out details but by an entertainment industry intent on reviving and rebooting anything that’s ever made money.” Sophie Gilbert reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for The Atlantic.