According to Mental Floss, yes: Almost every syllabus, teacher and standardized test points to the ubiquitous No. 2 pencil, but are there other choices out there? Of course. Pencil makers manufacture No. 1, 2, 2½, 3, and 4 pencils—and sometimes other intermediate numbers. The higher the number, the harder the lead and lighter the markings. (No. […]
Writing in the New Yorker, Sam Sacks argues that debates about enduring literature are less about the artistic merit of the work and more about the social issues they raise: A look through the Classics section of bookstores—in America or any of the Western democracies—bears out de Tocqueville’s instincts. The offerings are wide-ranging, tilting toward […]
Jean Paul Sartre
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Two sets of links about the contemporary debate about feminism, drawn from current news sources: Arguments against feminism today Arguments in favor of renewed feminism
Farai Chideya, writing in The Nation, argues that American media is dangerously white and elite: When I was a kid, my family loved watching science fiction films and television shows. Some of them, from Star Trek to Soylent Green, featured a multiracial band of humans, plus various sentient life forms. But in other features—let’s say […]