“It’s a sign of his range that Descartes has made such a wide variety of enemies. Psychologists, feminists, biologists, animal rights activists, and Al Gore have all lined up to denounce him. … Unloved, his arguments served up to undergraduates as target practice, Descartes has fallen on hard times.”
Category: people
Esther Williams, 91, Aquatic Movie Star (And Godmother Of Synchronized Swimming)
“With her beauty, sunny personality and background as a champion swimmer, Williams shot to stardom in the 1940s in the ‘aqua musical,’ an odd sub-genre of films that became an enormous hit with the moviegoing mainstream, fanned popular interest in synchronized swimming and turned Williams into Hollywood’s Million Dollar Mermaid.”
Watch One Of The First Female Standups Own The Room On Live TV
“At a time when many moms on television were paragons of domesticity, [Jean] Carroll’s act lampooned that image. In this clip, she’s dressed in a party dress, a choker, and heels. (She often wore fancy clothes to perform.)”
Novelist Margaret Atwood Rocks At Online. How – And Why?
“The Booker prizewinner, who has more than 400,000 Twitter followers, gets stuck into every technological initiative going, from co-writing a zombie novel with Naomi Alderman on Wattpad to changing the way artists interact with their fans online through her new company Fanado.”
Iain Banks, 59, Novelist And ‘Irreplaceable Part of The Literary World’
“After announcing his illness in April, Banks asked his publishers to bring forward the release date of his latest novel, The Quarry, so he could see it on the shelves. ‘Just three weeks ago he was presented with finished copies.'”
Abigail Heyman, 70, Photographer Who Documented The Lives Of Women In Quiet Despair
“In one of the book’s most arresting images, Ms. Heyman photographed herself undergoing an abortion.”
Nathan Lane On The Pitfalls Of Being Typecast
“Happy as Lane is to have been given the seemingly ceaseless opportunity to play lusty Broadway con man Max Bialystock, he hardly wants to be defined by one role or feel compelled to keep repeating the same surefire shtick.”
Henry Louis Gates Collects Black Sambo Memorabilia
And he’s got very credible reasons for doing so.
From Swamplands To Vampires, Karen Russell Sees Things Through Teenage Boy’s Eyes
“I remember desperately wanting to write a story [for the latest collection] that was not from the point of view of an adolescent boy, because it had felt like that was exclusively what I had been doing. … I think, if given my druthers, everything I write would have everyone be like 13 to 15 in some kind of island morass, or some B horror movie Swiss Family Robinson situation. That just seems to be where I live, narratively.”
Jazz Bassist Ben Tucker Dead In Car Crash
The 82-year-old “performed with stars from Quincy Jones to Peggy Lee before he settled in the 1970s in Savannah,” where he became one of the city’s best-known working musicians. He was struck by a motorist while driving a golf cart on Tuesday.