The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home | New York Times: "What is of account, in Naipaul's view, is the larger global political situation -- in particular, the clash between belief and unbelief in postcolonial societies. ''I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery,'' he said. To what extent, he wondered, had ''people who lock themselves away in belief . . . shut themselves away from the active busy world''? ''To what extent without knowing it'' were they ''parasitic on that world''? And why did they have ''no thinkers to point out to them where their thoughts and their passion had led them''? Far from simple, the questions brought a laserlike focus to a central paradox of today's situation: that some who have benefited from the blessings of the West now seek to destroy it. "

Alun � What came first Addition or Multiplication?: "A lot of thought on numbers requires assumptions which we don�t even acknowledge existing. A problem I�ve been thinking about for a while is the origin of mathematical operations. Which came first addition or multiplication? It would seem to be a no brainer, but it�s not. Clive is not entirely happy with this and it still needs a lot of work but it�s a problem worth thinking about. Why do we use mathematical operations? This first came to me while reading either Walter Burkert on Pythagoreanism or Carl Huffman on Philolaus."

FrontPage magazine.com | My Failed Catholic Education | Mark Gauvreau Judge: "Whenever I have occasion to reflect on how my Catholic school education failed me, and how it continues to fail young souls, I often remember a particular afternoon in 1976. I was twelve years old and in sixth grade at Our Lady of Mercy school in Potomac, Maryland, the suburb outside of Washington where I was raised. On this particular afternoon Mr. Sewell, our teacher, was trying to teach us social studies, a course suffused with proto-PC dreck about the 'values of all cultures' and other nonsense.

The class wanted no part of it.,."

Bend and Stretch,
Reach for the Stars

Yahoo unveils beta of blog ad network | CNET News.com: "Yahoo on Wednesday debuted the beta version of an advertising network tailored for small and medium-size Web publishers.

As earlier reported, the service is designed to let publishers access Yahoo's ad products and content through a self-serve platform. The company said the beta offering will be available in the U.S. only through invitation."

The American Enterprise | It Will Come Down to Fortitude: "Yet this hasn�t happened. There is no �Guernica� painted for 9/11. Nothing like The Red Badge of Courage, or All Quiet on the Western Front, or Slaughterhouse-Five has been written. No �Music for Prague 1968,� or anything close, is now being played. The Manhattan creative class hasn�t produced even a Forrest Gump to capture in popular form the circumstances and emotions of that searing day."