On Sheep, Wolves, And Sheepdogs
Dave Grossman | PoliceOne | 4th July 2008
Extract from On Combat, by Dave Grossman, police trainer, army veteran, and founder of the Killology Research Group. “If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence, and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you are a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who can walk into the heart of darkness and walk out unscathed” (3,200 words)
News By The Ton
Benedict Evans | 15th June 2020
On the microeconomics of the newspaper industry. Per capita newspaper circulation has been falling since the 1950s in developed markets; so has the newspaper industry’s share of total advertising spend. People say of Google and Facebook that “if you’re not paying, you’re the product’. But it was the same with print newspapers. “If you read old accounts for, say the New York Times Company, you can see that they were giving the product away at close to cost and making the money from selling your attention” (1,660 words)
Trade Wars And Class Wars
Adam Tooze et al | Phenomenal World | 13th June 2020
Conversation. Adam Tooze talks to Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein about the underlying causes of current trade frictions, with particular reference to China and Germany. Pettis: “We argue that the reason we have trade wars is because we have persistent imbalances, and the reason we have persistent trade imbalances is because around the world, income is distributed in such a way that workers and middle class households cannot consume enough of what they produce” (4,700 words)
Wallace Shawn: The Art Of Theatre
Hilton Als | Paris Review | 1st July 2012
Enlightening throughout. Topics include liberalism, radicalism, Harold Shawn, parenting, Diane Arbus. Ten years ago this would have counted as an inspiring conversation. Now it is a museum exhibit. “I knew that people suffered, I knew there were problems. But I didn’t think they were my fault, and I somehow thought there was plenty of time to take care of them, and in the meantime it was interesting and fascinating and rather amusing to be alive, and I enjoyed the fascinating spectacle of it all” (11,800 words)
The Intelligence of Earthworms
Alexander Lee | History Today | 6th June 2020
Towards the end of his life, Charles Darwin was preoccupied with the question of whether worms think. “Night after night, he would go out into the garden of Down House with shovels, lamps and whistles, hoping to prove that these worms were cleverer than they looked”. Why so? Because if people think, then other animals shoud think too. “As Darwin knew, the problem of vermicular intelligence went to the heart of man’s relationship with animals – and threatened to destabilise his life’s work” (2,200 words)
Video: Concatenation 2 | Enrico Astoli. Mash-up of flips and twists from various Olympic Games (1m 09s)
Audio: Hearing Architecture | Seriously. Architect loses sight in his forties after brain-tumour surgery; discovers the importance of senses other than sight, and begins to design accordingly (29m 19s)
Afterthought:
“Write about what you don't know about what you know”
— Eudora Welty
