In a time of crisis, any decision is better than no decision at all. That line–credited to Theodore Roosevelt–is pop conventional wisdom. An excellent piece at Aeon explores the full implications of the line, and may just convince you that your next impossible choice should be made by a soothsayer, a lottery, or a flipped coin.
“The sanitising effect of augury”
A Longtime Pen Pal Meets Emily Dickinson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was pen pals with poet Emily Dickinson for eight years before the two finally met face-to-face.
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Time Keeps On Slippin’
“What does it even mean to say that I am experiencing my life in a jumpy, random sort of manner? Each instant of my experience is the experience, whatever its temporal relation to other experiences. So long as the memories are consistent, what meaning can be attached to the claim that my life happens in a jumbled sequence?” Physicist Paul Davies on why you can’t remember your future.
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The Opposite of Homesick
“The legal protection the German government gave our American relationship is gone, now that we are back in America.” Alexander Chee on coming home from Leipzig with his partner.
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The Golden Ticket
“As a rare book collector and head of the English department at Ayer-Shirley Regional High School, Eleanor Capasso said that being sent what she believes could be a first edition of a Jane Austen novel felt a lot like winning the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.” Find out more about how a teacher received a two-hundred-year-old copy of Persuasion. If you’re looking for rare books, our guide has got you covered.
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Engage, Don’t Just Talk
“Perhaps no part of the First Novel Experience is as confusing and overwhelming as figuring out how to balance the demands of social media with the demands of writing more fiction.” Martha Woodroof talks with Lydia Netzer about social media in the world of publishing and book promotion. Their advice? “Try to be funny as much as you can. Try to participate in conversations, not just start your own. Try to engage, not just talk.”
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Grand Officier Yaşar Bey
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“Hemingway, a perfervid admirer of ‘grace under pressure.’”
Here’s a treat for all you literary legal buffs. A judge in the Middle District of Florida denied a request for a continuance in a murder-for-hire trial. But wait, it gets better. The defense attorney, Frank Louderback, is a perennial contestant in Hemingway Look-alike Society’s annual Ernest Hemingway Look-alike Contest, held in Key West each year, and the purpose of Louderback’s continuance was so he could travel to the Conch Republic for the competition. The judge denied the order by citing Big Papa himself. (via Nate Harris)
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Lovecraft’s Disappearing Act
A manuscript by H.P. Lovecraft has recently been re-discovered among a collection of magic memorabilia. The book was “an investigation of superstition through the ages” commissioned by Harry Houdini. (Maybe all of this magic had something to do with its disappearing act?)
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