Newsletter 1034
Best of the Moment
Margaret Thatcher: Lady Of The House
Dominic Lawson | Literary Review | 13th June 2013
Another fine review of recent Thatcher biographies by Charles Moore and Robin Harris. "When people attain a certain level of fame, their notable acts have been so exhaustively described and analysed that what we crave to know about them is the banal and everyday: what they might have in common with the rest of humanity, rather than what sets them apart. This is true of the Queen, for example. It is even truer of Margaret Thatcher"
Europe’s Reluctant Hegemon
Zanny Minton Beddoes | The Economist | 13th June 2013
Germany accounts for one-fifth of the EU's production and one-quarter of its exports. It has low unemployment, a balanced budget, and falling government debt. Power in Europe is shifting to Berlin. For Germany, this ought to be a time of triumph. But Germany isn't like that, at least not yet. It has no historical experience of successful international leadership, and no great desire to lead. Can it rise to the opportunity?
My Life As An Amateur Taxidermist
Hayley Campbell | New Statesman | 16th June 2013
Icky in parts, also funny, original, and highly informative. "You can buy a mole for a tenner on eBay. Three crows might cost you twenty. Merely searching for these things changes eBay’s profile on you and they start suggesting sheep thigh bones, dental picks and disembodied hawk feet." Nor had it occurred to me, before reading this, that the giblets bagged up inside a store-bought chicken are not going to be the bird's own
Albert O. Hirschman And The Power Of Failure
Malcolm Gladwell | New Yorker | 16th June 2013
Essay pegged to Jeremy Adelman's book, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman, centred on Hirschman's insight that the greatest progress is made not when things go exactly as planned, but when they go wrong in a big way, and an innovative solution has to be found. "The entrepreneur does not see himself as a risk-taker, because he operates under the useful delusion that what he’s attempting is not risky"
Video of the day: Submarine Test
Thought for the day:
"Philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs"— John Gray