French novelist Le Clézio wins Nobel literature prize

Independent - By choosing Le Clézio, 68, who was the clear favourite, the Nobel committee of the Swedish literary academy caused substantial pain to British bookmakers. The committee also, implicitly, restated its much-publicised criticism last week of the American literary establishment as too inward-looking and too ignorant of foreign literature and thought.

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The Swedes have no clue about American literature

Slate - It would be nice to think that the Swedish Academy was not endorsing such views when they selected Pinter and Lessing or the similarly inclined José Saramago and Günter Grass. But to prove the bad faith of Engdahl’s recent criticisms of American literature, all you have to do is mention a [...]

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If maths is boring, what is the answer?

Telegraph -There’s something about π that grabs the imagination. It crops up across the sciences, from geometry and mechanics to statistics. If its superstar status was in doubt, there is a movie named after it.

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Against Intuition

Chronicle Review - An intuition in philosophy is something far more potent than it is in ordinary discourse. Intuitions rear their heads when philosophers write such things as, “In this case, we would surely say …,” or, “It would be natural to say …” (for example, that killing a man to harvest [...]

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Hidden histories

Boston Globe - Recent advances in archeology and linguistics offer the strongest support yet that the Trojan War did take place, with evidence coming from the large excavation at the likely site of Troy, as well as new analysis of cuneiform tablets from the dominant empire of the region.

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There was simply no one else like Paul Newman

Independent - Paul Newman was one of the last two greats of his generation. There is only Clint Eastwood left now, I think. He trained in the method style with Lee Strasberg and in the beginning he was criticised for being a mini Marlon Brando. He was a bit younger than Brando, and [...]

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The camera never lies. But photographers can and do

Guardian - A stunning new twist in the story of Capa’s iconic war image shows that authenticity is more than just an artistic criterion.

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