Archive for May, 2007
Sunday, May 27th, 2007
Why I no longer love Stanford Shopping Center
I used to big a big fan of Stanford Shopping Center going the 1980s. I love the outdoor atmosphere and the selection of shops, which, though not great, is certainly better than most malls. I’m disappointed that some of my old favorite stores are no longer there: Hear Music, Phileas Fogg’s Travel Shop, EB Games, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Monday, May 14th, 2007
Can we care about genocide?
Nicholas Kristof has an interesting column in the Times about our inclination to care about individuals rather than groups. He uses a paper by Paul Slovic at the University of Oregon as his starting point. Slovic writes, “Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Rick
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
Sarah Kerr on Joan Didion
Sarah Kerr has a very toughtful consideration of Joan Didion’s nonfiction work in the April 26, 2007, issue of the New York Review of Books. The highlights:
The problem is something like this: A writer writes from a point of view. This point of view is partly a factual matter of physical or social positioning (either [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
The demise of book reviewing
The New York Times uses the occasion of the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s eliminating the position of book review editor held by Teresa Weaver to once again cover the dichotomy between traditional newspaper coverage of books and coverage in the blogosphere. Newspaper reviews, for me, occupy a sort of middle-ground: they can never cater to niche [...]
