Word: essay
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This may soon become a thing of the past. As Ray Kurzweil observes in his essay (beginning on page 114), information technology may be on the verge of removing the nitty-gritty, time-wasting, reductionist noodling from the human diary, leaving us freer to indulge in what our connective brains are best at: using the information webs to run connective scenarios based on what options for change present themselves at any given time, deciding what direction we want to go in and leaving it to the reductionist programs of our machines to get on with...
...escape, I shut down the television and radio and computer. I take up a book, one that is as far as possible from the noise - Lytton Strachey's essay on the 18th-century philosopher David Hume. It starts with a thought that is utterly alien to the culture we live in: "In what resides the most characteristic virtue of humanity? In good works? Possibly. In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps. But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such, David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar.... To have...
...appalled by the insensitivity Roger Rosenblatt showed in his commentary about the human need to write based on the revelation of the Russian submariner's last message to his wife [ESSAY, Nov. 6]. The situation aboard the Kursk should not be trivialized by relating it to existential musings on the subject of why people write. Lieut. Captain Dimitri Kolesnikov wrote to tell a truth we all suspected: the crew of the Kursk did not die instantly, as Russian authorities claimed. How could Rosenblatt fail to have addressed the issue that Russia does not value life any more today than...
...lenses, and larvae emerge from the flesh of my leg." This reasonably priced volume is ideal for the bright child who needs to know there's a world beyond PlayStation2--a world of drama, danger and grandeur; a realm both beautiful and imperiled. Lanting's gorgeous pictorial essay implicitly asks, Now that you've seen these creatures, why would you allow them to be annihilated by the army-ant march of "civilization...
Rivers penned another essay in 1995 calling for the formulation of what he called an "activist research agenda." Rivers says the call went unheeded, though Gates had always professed his respect for Rivers...