fieldus

Edward Carr on the dwindling of the polymath:

In an age of specialists, does it matter that generalists no longer thrive? The world is hardly short of knowledge. Countless books are written, canvases painted and songs recorded. A torrent of research is pouring out. A new orthodoxy, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, sees obsessive focus as the [...]

Interesting article on how the ability to defer gratification varies and how important a skill or capacity it is:
From Jonah Lehrer’s article on research into self-control in The New Yorker:
“This is where your parents are important,” Mischel says. “Have they established rituals that force you to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage you [...]

From The American Spectator
Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy [...]

Guy Damman gives the theodicy another whipping…
Good God, why? | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The real problem, though, consists in the fact that an element of free will is generally agreed to be essential to the notion of goodness. Whether an action is judged to be morally good through a reflection on its ends or [...]

Cabinet Magazine Online - Vasectomania, and Other Cures for Sloth
The first Steinach operation was performed in 1918 by Steinach’s colleague Robert Lichtenstern on Anton W., a forty-three-year-old coachman who suffered from chronic fatigue: “The patient presented the appearance of an exhausted and prematurely old man,” Steinach reported in his book Rejuvenation Through Experimental Regeneration of [...]

Ken Baldwin, (c) Chronicle / Christina Koci Hernandez

Discussion of Baldwin, the bridge and the causes of suicide in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Tim Parks: headhunters, pianists - we’re all the same - Telegraph
His work raises the issue of intervention. The translator’s goal is to vanish, to prevent his own identity from influencing the writer/reader interface.
Now in his fifties, Parks says that “whereas 10 years ago I might have offered [...]

article 46 Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews Claudio Magris
HUO: …A beautiful conclusion. One last question I always ask at the end of every interview: could you tell me about an unrealised project.
CM: It risks getting long, but let’s say I have always been fascinated by cinema. After secondary school I was unsure for a long time [...]

Last Night’s TV: Imagine…Doris Lessing – The Hostess And The Alien, BBC1
I approached the film a little warily, nervous that it might settle for the clichés of formidable old age, indifferent to social and cultural convention. I’d reckoned without Doris Lessing, whose entire life seems to have been conducted with a wild daring, and [...]

Oliver Burkeman: This column will change your life | Lifeandhealth | Life and Health
…the psychologist Neal Roese explains in his book, If Only, “If you decide to do something and it turns out badly, research shows that it probably won’t haunt you down the road. You’ll reframe the failure and move on. But [...]