The Wednesday Curator – 2/26/14

February 25, 2014

So my friend Gary Stuart, great attorney and author, gave me a working over about the curator thing. Said I’m a curator. Not going to argue. Look for The Wednesday Curator for the foreseeable future. On Wednesdays.

Here’s what I’ve read this week that has stuck with me:

The Case for Blunders, a review of Brilliant Blunders:  From Darwin to Einstein—Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio. The review by Freeman Dyson, really smart scientist (and very charming writer), appears in the March 6 issue of The New York Review of Books. (I love reading reviews of books about science; I almost think I understand the stuff!)

Symposium:  How to Understand Hobby Lobby by Marty Lederman is part of the SCOTUSblog Contraceptive Mandate Symposium, and was published on Sunday February 23. The piece gets a bit dense and it certainly has a point of view, but it provides a clear analysis of the ways in which health insurance mandates have gotten twisted up in public discourse.

Remaking Film Comedy with a Straight Face, in the February 25 New York Times, accompanies the Harold Ramis obituary. Bustin’ Made Us Feel Good:  The Joyful Comedy of Harold Ramis, by Sarah Larson is another delightful piece, found on February 25 in The New Yorker.

The passing of Harold Ramis brought to mind Jonathan Winters, another singular talent. Here, from April and May 2013, is the two-part homage to Mr. Winters, written by Dick Cavett:  With Winters Gone, Can We Be Far Behind? and Missing:  Jonathan Winters. Badly. By the way, there may be no funnier and more enjoyable writer today than Dick Cavett.

And, finally, because I was wandering around The New Yorker, here’s George Packer’s article, Where Have All the Workers Gone?, also appearing on February 25.

Enjoy!

PS  A little NY-centric this week!

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