Oh to sing the joys of Sunday morning with the NY Times Book Review section, where we can discover which books are going to get their second Times review. This morning the winner was E.L. Doctorow’s novelistic treatment of the hoarding Collyer brothers, a story apparently of immense import to the editors of the Times. Our first indication that Doctorow was about to get a Full Friedman wasn’t Michiko Kakutani’s review in the daily Times on August 31st. No, it was the PR-gener... Read Full Story

You’re third in line for takeoff, finally ready to depart La Guardia and get to your lunch meeting in Chicago. The pilot comes on the P.A. for a last-minute cheery message: “Thanks for your patience. We hope to make it up one we’re in the air and get you to O’Hare on time. Or at least someplace not too far from there. We’re thinking maybe Gary or Indianapolis. As the President says, we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the essential. So wish us luck.” What if that were acceptable?... Read Full Story

In the golden days of radio the great symphony orchestras of the world broadcast over short and long wave bands, creating pockets of listeners all over the globe. In isolated Japan in the 1940s the young composer Toru Takemitsu learned the ways of Western music from the Armed Forces radio network. In Maine, Charles Ives listened to the premiere of his 2nd Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, over the radio. When FM came in after the Second World War, sound quality improved, but the sinc... Read Full Story

Eleven-thirty Saturday morning in Tiburon, California. The radios are on throughout the house. We’re listening to a live broadcast from London of Beethoven’s Fidelio, the 50th Proms concert of the season, with 26 left to go. The world’s largest music festival — thousands of performers, many world premieres, many of the world’s great orchestras. Of all the glories the Internet has given us, for me, this is the one I would part with last. Cultural hegemony is a two-way street. American culture... Read Full Story

Dear Fellow Sethian (I can say this since my complete name is Gerald Seth Sindell) – I was delighted to see your recent thoughts about critics that matter, and in particular, your singling out the prodigious Robert Morris for his 2000 book reviews on Amazon. A hallmark of Morris’s reviews is that he always tells you what the value is of each book (or movie) that he’s reviewing. He wastes as little time as possible telling you how smart he is by nitpicking. Instead he jumps right in and... Read Full Story

I don’t idealize a great many people that I’ve known, but Richard Maddy is an exception. A violin maker, legendary string instrument rebuilder, WWII paratrooper, and son of the founder of Interlochen Center for the Arts, I met Richard when we were both serving on the alumni board of the organization his father had founded. When the board would get bogged down in the minutiae and politics of whatever problem had wound its way around us, Richard was always there to remind us what we supposed to... Read Full Story

The current civic war over health care restructuring that’s raging in Congress and across America is instructive to anyone who is interested in improving things anywhere. I often wonder why, 48 years after the establishment of the Peace Corp, or 90 years after the creation of the League of Nations (that held among its goals ending malaria, yellow fever, and preventing typhus epidemics) that progress, as measured by world health and poverty, seems so slow. One thing we can see clearly in the m... Read Full Story

Isn’t it great that our kids are stuck with us for a fairly lengthy period of time? If we screw up and say something that perhaps wasn’t the best possible parenting expression, they’re going to be around tomorrow, too. We’re going to get another chance to do better. This is extremely important in the realm of parenting. Most of us have absorbed the wisdom that our kids will perceive negative comments about themselves so powerfully that it will take from 10 to 20 times the number of positive ... Read Full Story

You turn on the radio, and someone is giving an opinion about something that’s currently in the news. How long does it take for you decide whether or not that person might have something important to say? You’re in a meeting at work and a person from another department, someone you haven’t met before, has joined the meeting. When they finally speak, how long will it take for you to make a judgment about their knowledge, their communication skills, and even their intelligence? In a previous po... Read Full Story

We all know that the world treats you better if you’re good-looking. Tall is helpful, too. Tall men make more money than short men. They are more likely to become CEOs. They are seen as not only more powerful, but more intelligent. Do you care if people see you as intelligent? If you do, then you might want to practice a few simple things that can make it more likely that people will grock you as smart. Let’s start with posture. If you occupy your clothes as if they’re still on a hanger, you’... Read Full Story