It’s a truth as old as academia: graduate students moan about the lengths of their dissertations. But which grad students are most entitled to complain? Herewith, a chart that compares dissertation lengths by major.
In true Seinfeldian fashion, Arthur Martine, the Victorian writer behind Martine’s Handbook of Etiquette, drew up a detailed taxonomy of the various species of bore. These include the Loud Talker, who “silences a whole party by his sole power of lungs;” the Malaprop, who masters the art of inappropriate conversation; and the Life-Sharer, who may be familiar to the Facebook addicts of today.
The pleasure we derive from sex is also bound up with our recognizing, and giving a distinctive seal of approval to, those ingredients of a good life whose presence we have detected in another person. The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
The new book by Alain de Botton, How to Think More About Sex, addresses exactly what you’d think it would based on a glance at its title. Read more excerpts at Brain Pickings.
“This was, in fact, the year of the diary for me.” - A Year In Reading: Maria Popova
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Some book spine poetry, inspired by Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova.
This one, is made up of Ben Thompson’s Ways of Hearing, M.T. Anderson’s Feed, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Adam Levin’s The Instructions.
What a fun way to revisit your book shelves. Show us some of your book spine poetry this afternoon, just tag your post #bookspinepoem and we’ll be sure to see ‘em. We’ll share some of our favorites here on Tumblr all day tomorrow.
Source: brainpickings.org
