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Weirdly, the less social authority a profession enjoys, the more restrictive the barriers to entry and the more rigid the process of producing new producers tend to become. You can…

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The euphemisms for madness in the American vernacular–“nervous breakdown,” “cracked up,” “lost his marbles”–all connote a process in which the mind breaks away from the commonsense world where the normal…

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When democracy is established after the break-up of a multi-ethnic state a rash of secessionist movements normally follows. The reason is simple. For communities that fear being permanent minorities in…

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If you’re like me, you’ll agree there’s nothing so dispiriting as finding yourself in the lavishly appointed dining room of a luxury resort, flute of Prosecco in hand, about to…

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From Harper’s Magazine, November 1964:Hofstadter on the “Paranoid Style” From “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” by Richard Hofstadter, from the November 1964 Harper’s Magazine. American politics has often been…

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The sheer scale of support to the banking sector is breathtaking. In the UK, in the form of direct or guaranteed loans and equity investment, it is not far short…

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McPherson was born in 1943, in Savannah, Georgia. Later, as he writes in “Going Up To Atlanta,” he worked at odd jobs to help support his mother, brother, and sisters…

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Furthermore, the idea that women have been sliding toward despair is contradicted by the one objective measure of unhappiness the authors offer: suicide rates. Happiness is, of course, a subjective…

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Initially, any new information medium seems to degrade reading because it disturbs the balance between focal and peripheral attention. This was true as early as the invention of writing, which…

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In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton’s Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to…

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La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.” Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.” La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech,…

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What if a guy nobody’s ever heard of, from Hawaii no less, with a Muslim African father and a Muslim Indonesian stepfather and a mom from Kansas named Stanley inexplicably…

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In recent days, both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have suggested that the H1N1 flu vaccine may be unsafe and questioned the Obama administration’s recommendation that Americans get vaccinated, with…

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At first glance, the Study Area presented as a junkyard, but one in which people were living. Tents of various vintage were observed. In addition, the following materials had been…

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Yet now, he says, it is clear the American experiment has been “a failure.” It was all for nothing. Soon the country will be ranked “somewhere between Brazil and Argentina,…

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Then there is the fact that it is difficult. I got quite a good degree, a long time ago admittedly, in classics and philosophy, and thought I could understand Plato’s…

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There is a dark irony to the faintly racist idea that Afghans are unprincipled mercenaries available to the highest bidders, especially given the rampant panic in Washington at the inescapable…

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An appeal to the Golden Rule increases opposition to torture among every subgroup of white evangelicals. For example, only about one third (34%) of white evangelicals who attend worship services…

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With so many questionable loans on the books (the FBI estimates that mortgage fraud increased 10-fold from 2001 to 2007), it’s no wonder that our current housing market has been…

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It sounds like a communist utopia, but a basic income program pioneered by German aid workers has helped alleviate poverty in a Nambian village. Crime is down and children can…

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If the past is any guide to the future, people will do to us what we have done unto others, and they’ll have a hard time believing that so primitive…

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In recent years, a new genre of fiction known as the Officialdom novel has become increasingly popular in China. Fans claim that the novels offer rich entertainment while providing valuable…

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Even in areas outside national security, the Obama administration quickly came to resemble Bush’s. Gay military personnel, including those with valuable Arabic-language skills, were being dismissed at the same rate…

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Until now, passenger convenience has largely been ignored. After 9/11, a litany of sharp objects was banned from carry-ons. After Richard Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his sneaker…

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I remember some night when I am eating a Mexican dinner in the company of a Famous Eastern European Poet. As we celebrate his reading, a member of our party…

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, should be solved by the creation of a single state, which Mr. Qaddafi called Isratine, but Mr. Qaddafi stressed it was wrong to infer that…

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From Harper’s: Rachel Aviv on Child Evangelism From “Like I Was Jesus: How to bring a nine-year-old to Christ” in the August 2009 Harper’s. Rachel Aviv is a writer living…

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From Harper’s: Mark Slouka on the Humanities From the September 2009 issue. Mark Slouka is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His novel The Visible World is available in paperback…

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