From Dissent, Andrew F. March reviews Paul Berman's The Flight of the Intellectuals (and a response by Berman; and more at The New Yorker and more at Guernica and more at The Daily Beast and more at Bookforum). Next week, Teddy Graubard would have graduated from Dalton, a brilliant teenager, with a mild form of Asperger’s, whose path seemed almost limitless — so what led him to the window? WikiLeaks goes for total transparency; founder Julian Paul Assange oversees a populist intelligence network. Whatever happened to deglobalization? The best response to calls of, "Globalization, heal thyself!" would seem to be, "It already has". Seth Lerer on his book Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter. What happens if the oil gushes until August? What if the oil spill just can’t be fixed? A little context for the BP oil spill: It isn't the Apocalypse. From Esquire, long before the Eric Massa scandal broke, the congressman carried the lonely burden of another secret that, if revealed, would turn his world upside down. Tom Vanderbilt reviews Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History by Sigfried Giedion. Ezra Klein on three types of arguments over policy. Gay porn's most shocking taboo: "Twincest" is pushing limits in an industry known for extremes. This post will do something extraordinary — it will make you interested in a Bayesian heteroskedastic ideal point estimator: How do we know whether a legislator is a maverick? From Reason, Radley Balko on the subversive vending machine: The liberatory history of automated commerce; Greg Beato on the implications of attaching digital reviews to real world objects; and what’s a diploma worth? Americans have always loved college and real estate — so why do these assets need government support?
