Tag: early years
The Case for Challenging Music
On December 1, 1900, at an intimate concert hall in Vienna, a respected local baritone gave the premiere of some early songs for voice and piano by Arnold Schoenberg. Today this music, though written in an elusive harmonic language, comes across as exuding hyper-Wagnerian richness and Brahmsian expressive depth. But the audience in Vienna broke into shouts, laughter, and jeers. From that day on, as Schoenberg ruefully recalled two decades later, “the scandal has never ceased.”
The author Harvey
Should Democrats Stick With Biden?
Plus: controversy over a talk about racial color-blindness
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Should Democrats stick with Joe Biden or replace him with a younger presidential nominee in 2024?
Send your responses to
Why the Harry-and-Meghan Fairy Tale Still Works
At the end of the first episode of Harry & Meghan—the five-and-a-half-hour exploration into the tender center of everlasting love; rat-bastard English people and the nasty things they get up to; heady, “Goodbye to You” defection from the British Royal Family; and the reality-show-within-a-reality-show miniseries Fifteen Million Dollar Listing—I informed my husband that henceforth he should call me “C” and I would call him “R.” This would put us in league with the glamorous young couple, and
Why the Age of American Progress Ended
The Scourge of All Humankind
If you were, for whatever macabre reason, seeking the most catastrophic moment in the history of humankind, you might well settle on this: About 10,000 years ago, as people first began to domesticate animals and farm the land in Mesopotamia, India, and northern Africa, a peculiar virus leaped across the species barrier. Little is known about its early years. But the virus spread and, whether sooner or later, became virulent. It ransacked internal organs
Against Algebra – The Atlantic
One of the most useless questions you can ask a kid is, What do you want to be when you grow up? The more useful question is: What are you good at? But schools aren’t giving kids enough of a chance to find out.
As a professor of animal science, I have ample opportunity to observe how young people emerge from our education system into further study and the work world. As a visual thinker who has autism, I
America Has Never Really Understood India
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resurrected Cold War hostilities, harkening back to a world in which the United States saw itself pitted in a Manichaean struggle, facing a choice between good and evil. The U.S. is using similar rhetoric today to persuade countries to isolate and punish Moscow. President Joe Biden has garnered support among his NATO allies to impose crippling sanctions on Russia, but his efforts elsewhere have been only partially successful. Australia and Japan—which, along with the
Bill Clinton: Why I Expanded NATO
When I first became president, I said that I would support Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his efforts to build a good economy and a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but I would also support an expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states. My policy was to work for the best while preparing for the worst. I was worried not about a Russian return to communism, but about a return to ultranationalism,
Most of Hollywood’s Writers’ Rooms Look Nothing Like America
I. “You Can Hear a Pin Drop”
Carl Winslow, the protagonist of the ’90s sitcom Family Matters, wore his badge with honor. On the show, about a middle-class Black household in Chicago, Winslow (played by Reginald VelJohnson) loved being a police officer almost as much as he hated seeing the family’s pesky neighbor, Steve Urkel (Jaleel White), popping up in his home. Carl was a quintessential TV-sitcom cop, doughnut clichés and all. In one scene, he announces that he’s
Tokyo Olympics: Where Did ‘Synchronized Swimming’ Go?”
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you may have noticed that synchronized swimming has a new name. In July 2017, the International Swimming Federation, or FINA, announced that the sport would be called “artistic swimming,” effective immediately. Not everyone was a fan—to put it mildly.
“‘Artistic Swimming’ sounds like something society ladies did with their bosom friends at garden parties or after tea in the early 20th century,” wrote Jessica Lewis, one of more than 11,000 people from 88 countries