October 2010
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Here's a puzzle about a character's name that will interest detectives or dedicated Shakespeareans – and perhaps only the most dedicated of Shakespearean detectives. As everyone knows, the "heroine" and dominant figure in Twelfth Night is an audacious, sensitive, and intelligent young lady to whom Shakespeare gave the name Viola. It is Viola who, shipwrecked on the Illyrian shores, disguises herself as a man, enlists herself…
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Sometimes I can't make the slightest sense of what I read in the newspapers. Here's an example. But first some sheep news. The desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), smaller than the ordinary bighorn and one of the rarest and most endagered our native mammals, has been reduced to dry ranges in Nevada and California, near rocky…
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i''ve read All's Well that Ends Well many times (thrice just in the last week), always with puzzlement and dissatisfaction. It's a confused and confusing play. My best guess is that Shakespeare got going on some appealing but intractable material and struggled with it for many years but was never able to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. …
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A Chilean newspaper, El Espectador, has reported the results of a poll of its readers. When asked about the recent rescue of the thirty-three Copiapo miners, 49% of readers attributed the success to "ciencia" while 51% judged it a "milagro." A miracle? It what universe? What could they be thinking? The rescue was all hard work and ingenuity and high speed…
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Even moderately serious baseball-watchers know that we've just experienced a disaster of the Mickey Owens-Willie Davis-Bill Buckner variety. Poor Brooks Conrad, a journeyman infielder, playing for the Atlanta Braves in an important playoff game, committed three horrible errors. He bobbled a ball, dropped a popup, and then, with the game on the line, let a…
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I had a prescription to fill for amoxicillin. I noticed that there's a new pharmacy on Pearl Street; or at least I thought there is. It's called by the very pharmacy-sounding name Boulder Rx. I walked in: very definitely not a pharmacy. Not when there's a large illustration of marijuana leaf and a sign that reads "Headies." And a very…
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Goodness gracious! I should have known that the two films were distant cousins — after all, Woody Allen's film (one of his very best, and certainly his most genial) ends with an extended tribute to Groucho in which everyone wears phony mustaches and pretends to puff on stogies. But not having taken a look at Horse Feathers…
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The artistry of Romeo and Juliet I.v.30-41 is, I fear, under-appreciated. It's an utterly revolutionary moment in the history of the drama, but it's so subtle, so art-that-hides-art, that it easily slips under the radar. Let me quote in full. Capulet. Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet, For you and I are past our dancing…
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I read Anatomy of a Beast by Michael McLeod, cover to cover, but I'm gol-durned if I know why I did so. A bad habit, finishing bad books. And it is a bad book — badly written and badly edited. Well, I'm exaggerating. It's not all that bad. There's enough material in its 222 padded-like-an-old…