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purepedantry | May 30, 2008I had the privilege of seeing Hamlet last night at Shakespeare in the Park. I say the privilege because the production was as usual excellent. For those of you who don't know, it is a New York tradition for the Public Theater to host plays by Shakespeare -- usually two -- over the summer free to the public. The production attract competent and relatively famous actors. This year, they decided to do Hamlet which they apparently haven't done for more than 30 years when Sam Waterston played the lead. Sam Waterston is back as Polonius. Michael Stuhlbarg plays the lead, and Lauren Ambrose…
purepedantry | January 9, 2008Keeping with my attempt to actually do book reviews, I have the first of what will hopefully be a continuing series. I am reviewing Stem Cell Century by UCLA Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy contributor Russell Korobkin -- with Stephen Munzer in some chapters.
This book examines the legal, ethical and policy-related issues in stem cell research. Stem cells as a technology are nearly universally acknowledged as possessing huge potential to improve human life and limit human suffering; however, in many cases this potential has not yet been realized. Further, the legal and ethical…
purepedantry | August 16, 2007The New Yorker has an exquisite article by Adam Gopnik on science fiction writer, Phillip K. Dick. Gopnik doesn't pull punches; Dick was in many ways bat-shit crazy. He also had a genius for understanding that the future would likely be just as wrong -- in the way that people in 60s tended to define wrong -- as the present. This sense of stability in human nature made his books ironic and deeply satirical.
Money quote:
Dick's admirers identify his subjects as..."reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation." Later, as he became crazier, he did see questions in vast cosmological…
purepedantry | July 20, 2007I am as excited for the new Harry Potter book as everyone else. I mean, come on, you want to see the end of even a bad movie, right?
But Jane Galt echoes something that I have been thinking for a long time about the series: Harry can be such a tool and his buddies aren't the sharpest tools in the shed either. I sympathize with Snape half the time. I understand. Being surrounded by well-meaning incompetence is enough make anyone turn to the dark side. At least Voldemort knows how to run an adequate organization, though being constantly confounded by school children draws even his…