Sublime

Interestingly, the lucky latitudes maintained their good luck even during the fossil-fuel era of the past two centuries. By sheer accident of geology, the lucky latitudes contain major geological reserves of coal. The reason is coincidental: Around 100 million years ago, much of today’s lucky-latitude land was tropical swampland. Dead plant and ani

... See more

Here lay an aesthetic problem: whiteness versus color. The alarming history of European marble “cleaning” includes a chapter on this statuary describing a drive to make ancient Greek art white that nearly destroyed the art itself. In the 1930s workers in the British Museum were directed to remove the dark patina with metal tools on the mistaken ass

... See more

But what was the labor movement’s fight for shorter days and workweeks about, if not the social morality of time? And how about the way we’re always recalibrating our feelings for our friends, or our sense of how they feel about us, with the neurotic precision of a Larry David, based on how many minutes they’ve kept us waiting? If other people’s us

... See more