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Bush-League America
On the eve of the 2006 World Series, with an important national midterm election looming soon afterward, it’s worth reconsidering what the literary scholar Jacques Barzun wrote half a century ago:...
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The Crypto-History of the Historic Collapse of the New York Mets
“The greatest late September collapse in the history of major league baseball is now complete.” That’s what Mets’ announcer Gary Cohen said after Luis Castillo struck out to end the team’s 162nd game,...
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Zoroastrianism and Cosmopolitanism
Zoroastrianism was mentioned in John McCain’s interview last week on the ABC morning television show The View. (It happens at 2:10 in the YouTube clip above.) Trying to get McCain to talk about the...
View ArticleNYUAD Institute Talk
By all accounts, the lecture that I gave for the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute on Wednesday night went well. The title of the talk was “Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism, and the Promise of Literature.” Like...
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Freej
I picked up the first two seasons of the television show Freej at one of the duty-free shops in the Abu Dhabi airport. Freej is a 3D animated cartoon produced in Dubai, which has been a big hit in the...
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Globalize My Playlist
One of the things that I have loved about attending the Candidate Weekends at NYU Abu Dhabi is hearing about all the different kinds of music that the candidates have on their iPods. So I’m asking for...
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11-9-11
Here in Abu Dhabi (as in many parts of the world aside from the US) we write today’s date this way: 11-9-11 I like the symmetry of that, which won’t be repeated for another hundred years. It makes...
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L (Significant Birthday)
9 October 2011 6:15 a.m. Gulf Standard Time (GST) The alarm goes off. I think to myself that back in New York, where it is 10:15 p.m. EDT, it is still October 8, and I am still in my forties. I...
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Moby-Dick Big Read, Day 73
This chapter provides further evidence of Ahab’s superstitious nature and gives the Pequod’s mates an opportunity to think about their surprise shipmate, Fedallah. Ahab has given permission for the...
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