Wednesday, August 15, 2012

WEB BOHEMIAN (Wednesday, August 15, 2012)

(1)- LEADERSHIP LINKAGE -- Is ruling in the genes? All but one of 43 presidents are directly descended from a King John of England, who signed Magna Carta in 1215. Only 8th president, Martin Van Buren, was not.

(2)- VINEYARD ASSASSIN -- Who would poison the vines of La Romanée-Conti, the tiny, centuries-old vineyard that produces what most agree is Burgundy’s finest, rarest, and most expensive wine?

(3)- WHAT RIGHTS? – When Obama authorized the termination of U.S. citizen Awlaki’s life after Obama concluded that the boastful, mass-murder-plotting cleric had, in effect, forfeited constitutional protection.

(4)- HISTORY AS A SCIENCE -- Advocates of 'cliodynamics'(named after the ancient Greek muse of history, Clio) say they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure.

(5)- NEW BOOK -- Whether or not the Nazi mind could be said to exist, recovered or explained, lies at the heart of this book, which examines how psychoanalysis was harnessed to political thought about Nazism.

(6)- SOFTIE BOOK CRITICS -- Critics once performed one role in print and another in life. Rebecca West could savage someone's book in the morning and dine with him in the evening. Social media has collapsed barriers.

(7)- SPEAKING TO YOUNG DOCTORS -- A commencement address to the graduates of Harvard Medical School on how their chosen profession is changing and what they’ll need to learn now that they’re out of school.

(8)- ENRIQUE OF MALACCA – He was a Malay and, it turns out, was the closest thing there was to a hero in the story of Ferdinand Magellan's horribly botched attempt to circumnavigate the world.

(9)- A LOST ART -- Unlike letter writing, there’s never been, and could not be, an anthology of best of postcard writing, because when people collect postcards, it’s usually for reasons other than literary qualities.

POLITICAL CARTOON

ENDIT