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‘A Hologram for the King,’ by Dave Eggers - NYTimes.com

Lori Nix Where is our new-millennium Norman Mailer? It’s startling, 50 years on, to look back at the work of Mailer in the 1960s — from “The Presidential Papers” to “The Armies of the Night” — and see such unabashed ambition, such reckless audacity and such a stubborn American readiness to try to…

Sep 15, 2012

Nominalizations Are Zombie Nouns - NYTimes.com

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. Take an adjective ( implacable ) or a verb ( calibrate ) or even another noun ( crony ) and add a suffix like ity , tion or ism . You’ve created a new noun: implacability , calibration , cronyism . Sounds impressive, right? Nouns formed from…

Sep 15, 2012

EastSouthWestNorth: Daily Brief Comments, December 1-31, 2011

zonaeuropa.com

[] Best Independent Civil Reporter Of The Year (12/31/2011) It is the time of year for the various websites to select their best bloggers of the year. In the new category of best independent civil reporter, the winner is consistently the microblogger Lao Rong ("Old Banyan"). He gained fame this year…

Mar 15, 2012

Broad Institute Director Finds Power in Numbers - NYTimes.com

nytimes.com

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — His Ph.D. is in pure mathematics, in a subfield so esoteric and specialized that even if someone gets a great result, it can be appreciated by only a few dozen people in the entire world. But he left that world behind and, with no formal training, entered another: the world of…

Mar 15, 2012