Scalia, Violence, Marriage, Pirates, Breakfast
Alone On His Own Ice Floe
Michael O'Donnell | Washington Monthly | 1st June 2014
Amid much nil nisi bonhum, a recollection of the living Scalia. "Somewhere in the mid-2000s, Scalia ceased to be a powerhouse jurist and became a crank .... He is toxic. He has corroded the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. His vituperative rhetoric has undermined its tradition of collegiality. His ethical improprieties have besmirched the Court’s reputation. No one believes him anymore. And no one is listening" (2,395 words)
Why Men Fight
Thomas Page McBee | Quartz | 11th February 2016
Transgender man takes up boxing to understand male violence. "When I transitioned at 30, I entered a world I didn’t understand. Without a boyhood, I don’t quite know how to translate the camaraderie, when to ask a guy who’s bleeding if he’s okay and when to leave it alone ... I see that perhaps being trans makes me a specific sort of pragmatist. I worked for this body, I gave up so much to live within its hairy walls" (8,000 words)
Romance After Ten Years Of Marriage
Heather Havrilevsky | The Cut | 9th February 2016
Dating is a process of "looking for proof". Early romance is "a giant, suspenseful question mark". But once you have been married for ten years — if things go well — you don’t need any more proof. You have the deeper pleasure of acceptance, of being loved for who you are. "At some point, let’s be honest, death supplies the suspense. How long can this glorious thing last? You, for one, really hope this lasts a whole hell of a lot longer" (2,100 words)
The Robin Hood Of Science
Simon Oxenham | Big Think | 13th February 2016
A website built by a Kazakh student makes paywalled scientific papers freely available to anybody online. The site, Sci-hub, uses access keys donated by sympathisers in academia to get papers from behind publishers' paywalls. Whenever Sci-hub obtains a new paper, it donates a copy to LibGen, an open archive of 48 million already-pirated papers. Publishers are pursuing Sci-hub through American courts with limited success (2,000 words)
What Has Always Been There
Philip Gourevitch | Lucky Peach | 8th February 2016
Breakfast in Rwanda. "Just say the word maracuja, which is what they call passion fruit, and I can picture the long raking light of daybreak. Say mango, and I’m pulling on my shirt in a cacophony of birdsong. Say avocado, and I’m tucking a fresh notebook in my back pocket and stepping out to meet the morning. Show me a bunch of those little, creamy bananas, and I can smell the coffee" (900 words)
Video of the day: Life In Norman Times
What to expect: BBC educational cartoon. The life of a 10-year-old in 11th-century Britain (2'22")
Thought for the day
In a conflict, the middle ground is the least likely to be correct
Nassim Nicholas Taleb