“Men like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Washington,” Parkinson writes, “developed a myth about who was and was not a part of the Revolutionary movement; about who had an interest and who did not.” Other esteemed advocates of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine and the Marquis de Lafayette, joined the effort. According to Parkinson, these men chose to prosecute the American war for independence in a way that put race at the heart of the matter. They used—actually helped foment—racial prejudice as the principal means of creating unity across the thirteen colonies in order to prepare Americans to do battle with Great Britain. The base sentiments they promoted for “political expediency” survived the fighting, and the “narrative” that dismissed blacks and Native peoples as alien to America—and conflated “white” and “citizen”—“lived at the heart of the republic it helped create for decades to come.”
Effective war stories were definitely required because despite the colonists’ complaints about tyranny and being reduced to—of all things—“slavery,” they were
- “the least taxed,
- most socially mobile,
- highest landowning,
- arguably most prosperous people in the western world.”
Writers usually know their faults far better than reviewers
Usually the writer knows far better than the reviewer what his faults are, and if he could get rid of them he would. Nabokov, for instance, used to be told that he was pedantic – a fact he knew, and still knows, very well.
Elizabeth Warren on Gary Cohn and Financial Reform
They have also generated outrage in some quarters. “The way I see this, there was a devastating financial crisis just over eight years ago,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said. “Goldman Sachs was at the heart of that crisis. The idea that the president is now going to turn over the country’s economic policy to a senior Goldman executive turns my stomach.”
Trump’s Economic Cabinet Is Mostly Bare. This Man Fills the Void.
During that sit-down, on Nov. 29, Mr. Cohn briefed Mr. Trump on what he regarded as the chief hurdle to expanding the economy, according to people who were briefed on the discussion: a stronger dollar, which would undermine efforts to create jobs.
Mr. Darcy, You’re No Colin Firth
Rather, the “real” Mr. Darcy would have been pale and pointy-chinned, and would have had a long nose on an oval, beardless face. His hair, strangely, would have been white. And he would have been slightly undernourished, with sloping shoulders — “more ballet dancer than beefcake,” according to one of the authors of a new study.
How to save capitalism from itself
Yet, while capitalism at last stands electorally victorious and philosophically without serious rival, its performance has become manifestly unsatisfactory. Its core credential of steadily rising general living standards has been badly tarnished: a majority now expect their children’s lives to be worse than their own. It is time for “The Future of Capitalism”. Unfortunately, nobody has yet successfully written that book. In its absence, I will try to weave something from the strands of recent contributions to the field.
Who are you calling Malthusian?
My concept of a Malthusian economy involves two characteristics. First, living standards are negatively related to the size of population. This would occur if we had some sort of fixed factor of production. Typically, one might say it was agricultural land, but you could just say resources if you like. It isn’t even important that they are truly fixed. So long as the resources are inelastic, whether due to a physical limit or because bringing them into use is prohibitively expensive, you’d satisfy the first characteristic of a Malthusian economy.
‘Saturday Night Live’ is the newest, hottest place to punk — and persuade — President Trump
Politico reported this week that programs known to be must-see TV for Trump are beginning to capitalize on their presidential audiences. “Morning Joe” has more than doubled its ad rates, while prime-time shows on Fox News have hiked ad prices by 50 percent, according to the report.
Inside the 20-Year Quest to Build Computers That Play Poker
Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence research raise questions about the threat that bots pose to the online gambling industry.
Computers have surpassed the best human players at chess, checkers, backgammon, and go. Poker is a distinct challenge because of the element of chance, and because the players don’t know what cards their opponents are holding. So-called imperfect information games require the sort of human intelligence — like deceiving an opponent and sensing when she’s deceiving you— that computers lack.
Slapstick is devoted to the study of slowness
The velocity of certain actions – a swift kick to the seat of the pants, a high-speed Keystone pursuit, the sudden collision of face and patisserie – might almost persuade us otherwise, but slapstick is in truth sedulously devoted to the study of slowness.