Wes Phillips

I've been reading Chet Raymo's Walking Zero, a meditation on the history of science focussed through a walk along the prime meridian in the UK. It's a lovely book, one I tend to linger over, reading a chapter and then mulling over it for a few days. Highly recommended.

Eugene O'Neill is currently having a resurgence everywhere from prisons to Broadway (John Atkinson ranks the Old Vic production of Moon For the Misbegotten as one of his most intense theatrical experiences). John Patrick Diggens argues that O'Neill's themes of deceit and desire are particularly timely for 'Muricans today.

Nico">http://nicomuhly.com/news/2007/bliss/">Nico Muhly writes about the joy of singing.

The secret life of the F word. Now that you know what it's about, you know not to click the link if that sort of thing offends you. Me? I live in Brooklyn—we use it because "uh" sounds so inexpressive.

Former Talking Heads frontman and the author of This Is Your Brain On Music discuss Music, language, and memory.

"The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day."

Stephen Ambrose gently suggested that the ingenuity of the American soldier was a contributing factor in the Allied victory in WWII, pointing to the GI-engineered solutions to, say, Normandy's hedgerows as an example. That creative spirit is illustrated linguistically, too, as shown in the linked list of acronyms and expressions.