To Pan Books or Not to Pan Books
It's been a few months since the bookish among us pondered the question of the value of negative book reviews, so Francine Prose and Zoe Heller are reheating the issue…
Scott Whitmore Reviews Summer of Long Knives
I think he kinda liked it. Set in Munich three years after the Nazis assumed power in Germany, The Summer of Long Knives by Jim Snowden (@snowdenlit) is a wonderfully tense murder…
I Adored This: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz My rating: 5 of 5 stars Think about the last time you were wrong. Can you remember it? I…
Portrait of Denialism: The Magical Thinking of Mike McGrath
Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, which I'll probably praise to the skies once I'm through with it, pointed me to a particularly extreme case of post-hoc…
The Supersnow Conspiracy
Just the other day, I blogged that one of the reasons we should treat a conspiracy theory as suspect is the assertion that the perpetrators have superpowers. Witness the latest…
The Ordeal of Alexander Aan
I've been going on a bit lately about the Knox case and the mistakes that led to her and her former boyfriend's becoming unwilling cast members in the world's longest…
Congrats to the Seahawks, Redux
Again, I'm not a Seahawks fan, but it should be interesting to live in a city whose team is celebrating a major championship. Good for them.
The Day Hitler Became Chancellor
80 years ago yesterday, Adolf Hitler, the strange Austrian who headed a movement that combined violent thugs with some of Germany's leading industrialists, was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.…
How To Tell If A Conspiracy Theory Is Daft
In 2011, Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor responsible for making a pig's breakfast of the Monster of Florence case and damaging, possibly beyond repair, the futures of Raffele Sollecito and Amanda…
An Insomniac’s Pleasures
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer, the way Henry Hill wanted to be gangster. I grew up on Carl Sagan, and my Mom took me…