This one won’t do much to lift the Sunday spirits, but it’s an important read nonetheless. Here’s Ed Miliband’s thoughtful essay at the London Review of Books on the growing inequality problem in Britain, which should look very familiar to those of us stateside. Here are a couple of less depressing Britain-related links to bring you back around.
God Save the Queen
When is a Blog Not a Blog?
The New York Review of Books gets into the blog game with...well, it's not a blog, exactly, but then I guess neither are we these days. With The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post also clamoring for the attention of bookish web-surfers, there's more book-focused content online than ever. So why do I find most of it gives me a headache?
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Measuring Hell
"Given his devotion to empirical fact, it seems odd to think that Galileo’s most important ideas might have their roots not in the real world, but in a fictional one." Galileo’s crucial contributions to physics may have come from measuring the hell of Dante’s Inferno.
Gah!
Despite your lifelong aversion to robots and crash-test dummies, the Uncanny Valley might not actually be real. At Boing Boing, Maggie Koerth-Baker looks at the evidence that unsettling dolls are just that, unsettling.
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Virtual Poetry Seminar
The University of Iowa’s International Writing House is offering a free 7-week virtual poetry seminar this February. The course will be taught be poet Margaret Ross, and it is open to anyone with an internet connection. Attendance will be capped at 15, however, and the deadline for applications is January 28th. More details can be found here.
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A Double-Shot of Deborah Eisenberg
MacArthur Genius™ Deborah Eisenberg, whom we've often celebrated here, publishes her 1,000-page Collected Stories this month - we ardently commend it to your attention. If you've read 'em all already, get your Eisenberg fix at the NYRB, where she reviews Dezsõ Kosztolányi's "quiet, shattering, perfect" novel Skylark.
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