All posts tagged: Robert

The Nature of Human Stupidity Explained by The 48 Laws of Power Author Robert Greene

The Nature of Human Stupidity Explained by The 48 Laws of Power Author Robert Greene

Published by José

It’s prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­teed that we now have more stu­pid peo­ple on the plan­et than ever before. Of course, we might be tempt­ed to think; just look at how many of them dis­agree with my pol­i­tics. But this unprece­dent­ed stu­pid­i­ty is pri­mar­i­ly, if not entire­ly, a func­tion of an unprece­dent­ed­ly large glob­al pop­u­la­tion. The more impor­tant mat­ter has less to do with quan­ti­ty of stu­pid­i­ty than with its qual­i­ty: of all the forms it can take, which does the most dam­age? Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Pow­er and The Laws of Human Nature, address­es that ques­tion in the clip above from an inter­view with pod­cast­er Chris Williamson. “What makes peo­ple stu­pid,” Greene explains, “is their cer­tain­ty that they have all the answers.” The basic idea may sound famil­iar, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture the relat­ed phe­nom­e­non of the Dun­ning-Kruger effect. In some sense, stu­pid peo­ple who know they’re stu­pid aren’t actu­al­ly stu­pid, or at least not harm­ful­ly so. True to form, Greene makes a clas­si­cal ref­er­ence: Athens’ lead­ers went into …

How Robert Frost Wrote One of His Most Famous Poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

How Robert Frost Wrote One of His Most Famous Poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Published by José

Sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­can stu­dents have now had the expe­ri­ence of being told by an Eng­lish teacher that they’d been read­ing Robert Frost all wrong, even if they’d nev­er read him at all. Most, at least, had seen his lines “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less trav­eled by, / And that has made all the dif­fer­ence” — or in any case, they’d heard them quot­ed with intent to inspire. “ ‘The Road Not Tak­en’ has noth­ing to do with inspi­ra­tion and stick-to-it-ive­ness,” writes The Hedge­hog Review’s Ed Simon in a reflec­tion on Frost’s 150th birth­day. Rather, “it’s a melan­cholic exha­la­tion at the futil­i­ty of choice, a dirge about endur­ing in the face of mean­ing­less­ness.” Sim­i­lar­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed is Frost’s sec­ond-known poem, “Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” whose wag­on-dri­ving nar­ra­tor declares that “the woods are love­ly, dark and deep, / But I have promis­es to keep / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” You can hear the whole thing read …

The Big Empty by Robert Crais—Book Review by The Bookish Elf

The Big Empty by Robert Crais—Book Review by The Bookish Elf

Published by skeptic

Robert Crais’s latest Elvis Cole and Joe Pike thriller, The Big Empty, marks the 20th installment in this beloved series, following 2022’s Racing the Light. This time, the wise-cracking private investigator takes on what appears to be a straightforward missing persons case that spirals into a horrifying revelation of serial murders and betrayal. The novel demonstrates Crais’s masterful ability to weave complex narratives while maintaining his signature blend of wit, action, and emotional depth. However, some aspects of the story’s pacing and certain plot developments might leave readers with mixed feelings. Plot Analysis The Setup The story begins when social media sensation Traci Beller, known to her millions of followers as “The Baker Next Door,” hires Elvis Cole to investigate her father’s decade-old disappearance. What starts as a seemingly routine cold case investigation quickly evolves into something far more sinister. Story Development Crais expertly layers the narrative, gradually revealing darker and more disturbing elements. The investigation leads Cole to Sadie Given and her daughter Anya, who hold the key to Thomas Beller’s disappearance. The author …

De Gaulle’s Gamble | Robert O. Paxton

De Gaulle’s Gamble | Robert O. Paxton

Published by skeptic

Charles de Gaulle saved France twice. The first time was in June 1940, when the World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain signed an armistice with Hitler after France’s defeat by the Germans and set up a new collaborationist and authoritarian French state at Vichy, since Paris was occupied. De Gaulle, a relatively unknown brigadier general, gathered a few dissidents in London to form what became known as Free France. He gambled rashly but correctly that by contributing, however marginally, to the war against the Axis he was assuring a French presence on the ultimately victorious Allied side. He saved France again in May 1958, when the faltering Fourth Republic faced a revolt by army leaders in Algeria who were frustrated by its failure to suppress the Algerian independence movement. As civil war threatened, de Gaulle assumed power without being elected but with the relieved assent of President René Coty and Prime Minister Pierre Pflimlin. On June 1, 1958, his authority was legitimated by a vote of 329–224 in the National Assembly. Seizing the moment, …

APA Member Interview: Robert Engelman

APA Member Interview: Robert Engelman

Published by skeptic

Robert Engelman is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His research interests are in social and political philosophy, 19th and 20th century philosophy, and aesthetics. 1. What excites you about philosophy? Philosophizing well increasingly strikes me as involving creative practices of carefully and honestly attending to and reflecting upon one’s experience and its objects, including philosophical texts and conversations. This might be because philosophical method is an object of philosophical scrutiny, and because good philosophy is both sensitive to and dextrous with the subtleties of its objects and the ways in which the latter can be engaged with (or not). Unlike in a range of other disciplines, in philosophy one is not required to adopt a particular method of inquiry, nor to engage with an object as a particular kind of phenomenon that fits neatly into such a method; abiding by any such supposed requirement in philosophy is dogmatic. Instead, we are called upon to develop and attune our methods, and thus, in a way, our selves, to our objects as we continue …

Works by Matisse, Frida Kahlo, and Robert Capa Enter the Public Domain

Works by Matisse, Frida Kahlo, and Robert Capa Enter the Public Domain

Published by skeptic

Every year, January 1 marks a new crop of artists and artworks entering the public domain, a holiday affectionately known to some as Public Domain Day. This year, works by Henri Matisse, Robert Capa, and Frida Kahlo lose their copyright protections, as do novels like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The comics characters of Popeye and Tintin are also entering the public domain alongside those works. The UK-based organization Public Domain Review and Duke University’s Center for the Public Domain each published lists of works entering the public domain this week, the former with an advent-style calendar. Related Articles In the US, UK, and some European countries, works of single authorship generally retain copyright protections for the life of the author plus 70 years. However, according to the Center for the Public Domain, in the US, those protections are only guaranteed if the work in question was not otherwise registered with the copyright office or published with a copyright notice. Due to the 1998 Copyright Term …

38 Photographs of 1940s Paris by Robert Frank Acquired by MFA Boston

38 Photographs of 1940s Paris by Robert Frank Acquired by MFA Boston

Published by skeptic

A total of 38 photographs by Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank (1924-2019) was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), the institution announced in a statement last week. The acquisition includes 34 photographs donated by the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, and four works that were purchased using donated funds from the former Citibank chief executive John Reed and his wife Cynthia. The 38 images were made while Frank was in Paris in 1949. Some offer glimpses of street scenes such as children watching a blind street performer and a “circus” trolley car. Though Frank is primarily known for his highly influential 1958 book ” Related Articles The Americans, which captured post-war American society, the recently acquired photographs were taken when he returned to Europe after living in New York for two years. “We are thrilled to add these important photographs to the Museum’s collection which give insight into Frank’s career while contributing to our ability to tell the story of artistic transatlantic connections,” said Kristen Gresh, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs …

Donald Trump to Nominate Anti-Vaccine Activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Oversee US Public Health

Donald Trump to Nominate Anti-Vaccine Activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Oversee US Public Health

Published by skeptic

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would nominate former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s the fulfillment of an implied promise that Trump made at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in late October, where he said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.” Kennedy, a former Democrat and scion of the wealthy political family, first rose to prominence as an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist. Around 2015, he joined the board of the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, which alleges that conditions like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are caused by environmental factors, including harmful agents in vaccines. Kennedy has repeatedly spread misinformation about vaccines and in 2021 was named by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as one of the “disinformation dozen,” spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. He has suggested, in contradiction to all reputable scientific research, that Covid-19 may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and …

Remembering Robert L. Allen | Blog of the APA

Remembering Robert L. Allen | Blog of the APA

Published by skeptic

This past July, Robert L. Allen passed away at 82. As an undergraduate student, Allen had a very large impact on me. I took three courses with Dr. Allen, and I still remember the enthusiastic way he would say my name: “Ah, Thomas!” My appreciation of Allen’s scholarship and influence has continually burgeoned as I have continued my studies over the past two decades. Each year, it becomes even clearer how much I have benefited from being his student and being exposed to his work. Robert Allen was born in 1942, growing up in Atlanta, GA, next door to Morehouse College’s campus. As he often remarked, as a child, the form of segregation surrounding him was so pronounced that he knew only the Black world and had no conception of a white world beyond it. In his adolescence, this condition would be altered. Developments such as the murder and mutilation of Emmett Till (who was only a year older than Allen) would prompt him to begin to make sense of the broader world he inhabited, …

The Cure’s Robert Smith blasts artists who blame ticketing sites for high prices amid Oasis furor

The Cure’s Robert Smith blasts artists who blame ticketing sites for high prices amid Oasis furor

Published by skeptic

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free The Cure frontman Robert Smith has criticized artists who blame ticketing sites for fans experiencing high prices. Smith, who has been a vocal critic of Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” system, made the comments after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into the events company over its handling of Oasis’ UK and Ireland ticket sales. “I was shocked by how much profit is made,” Smith said of modern ticketing in a new interview with The Sunday Times. “I thought, ‘We don’t need to make all this money.’ My fights with the label have all been about how we can price things lower. The only reason you’d charge more for a gig is if you were worried that it was the last time you would be able to sell a T-shirt.” Last year, Smith hit out at Ticketmaster after The …