“Here you’ll find top tips for besting your enemies as employed by the world’s best woolly-thinkers. Learn, for example: how to play the ‘biological reductionist’ card to maximum effect; how ‘language games’ can help you out of a sticky situation; and how lucky it is that ‘truth’ is relative to particular discourses (especially yours).” (Butterflies and Wheels)

Joe Queenan: “Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public’s lack of imagination.” (Guardian.UK)

Robert Fulford in the National Post: “Not long before she died, Pauline Kael remarked to a friend, ‘When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.’ Who did?”

Reversing Mass Imprisonment: “For the first time in decades, political leaders seem willing to consider the toll of rising incarceration rates. In October last year, Senator Jim Webb convened hearings of the Joint Economic Committee on the social costs of mass incarceration. In opening the hearings, Senator Webb made a remarkable observation, “With the world’s largest prison population,” he said, “our prisons test the limits of our democracy and push the boundaries of our moral identity.””(Boston Review)