"In the 20th century, neither Kafka nor Nabokov, Borges, Bellow or Kundera could have clothed their worlds in fiction without the pattern furnished by their Spanish ancestor. One might go even further: Don Quixote's influence has been super-literary—without it the French revolution, with its notion that individuals can be right, society wrong, might never have happened, and Martin Luther King Jr might never have delivered a speech that contained the words 'I have a dream.'"

"A rational Quixote" by Julian Evans at Prospect.

I can hear the cries of "digital terrorism" if and when this actually goes down: "'Nuclear Option' Mass Immediate Response."

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Insomnia."

Happy birthday Dante Gabriel Rossetti!

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Tonight I Can Write" by Pablo Neruda, translated by W. S. Merwin.

Report from the Land of Fear #772:

"But my primary objection isn't the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they'll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card, at least for the purposes of this essay, is much simpler.

"It won't work. It won't make us more secure." "National Insecurity Cards" by Bruce Schnieir, at AlterNet.

"The Pope and Science" by Richard Gallagher and Ivan Oransky at The Scientist. The stuff regarding ethics makes sense to me, but what exactly does "as much as possible" re the church's exhortation that scientific research be kept "free from the slavery of political and economic interests" signify, exactly? An apology in advance?

"Good-bye Hunter S." is John Cusack's brief, poignant eulogoy for Hunter S. Thompson.

Poem of the Day Dept.:

Ann Lauinger's pastiche of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," "Marvell Noir" was yesterday's Poetry Daily poem, and if you're any kind of enthusiastic reader of poetry and you've got an internet connection, then you go there on a regular basis (or you should anyway) and so you've likely already read it, but it is such a charmer that I thought I'd throw it up here anyway.

"Shakespeare's drama still thrills us because it allows us to see his world from the standpoint of a world that men and women are still struggling to create. Shakespeare's gift to our time is an extraordinary one: the power to view the past that shaped the present as if we were already citizens of centuries to come."

From "Creator of worlds" by Kiernan Ryan, at the Guardian Unlimited website.

BTW, The Huffington Post is now live. (And it looks pretty interesting indeed!)

"The Uncle Tom Award" by Jonathan Matthews from the archives at Freezerbox.

More on the history of the filibuster and Fortas: "The Facts About the Fortas Filibuster: Why Orrin Hatch Is Wrong" by John Dean at HNN.

Report from the Land of Fear #771:

"Vigilante Man" by Mike Davis at Mother Jones.

"Great Dane" is Harold Bloom on Hans Christian Andersen.

It's All About Art Dept.:

"Who needs this when the classics are already bursting with sex?" by Ivan Hewett at the U.K.s Telegraph. Speaking of the manufactured sexiness of pop-classical performers like the girls of Bond. In the case of Bond specifically, the sexuality is obviously and annoyingly manufactured, though I'd say the music on their albums is actually somewhat more interesting, you might say sexier, than the public-image--the bubble-gum-bimbo dress, etc. But then again, as E. E. Cummings said, "a pretty girl who naked is/is worth a million statues."

"Iran's massive annual literary fest has something for everyone: Thomas the Tank Engine, interior decorating, Microsoft Windows programming, 'How to Kill an Israeli' and Jean-Paul Sartre."

"Political literature meets Mr. Tickle at Tehran book fair" at the Lebanese Daily Star.

"Europeans fear Google project" by Elaine Ganley. Why such a bother? Isn't every book from every library in the world already available through KaZaa?

"Filibustering Judicial Appointments Is Unprecedented?" Not quite, according to historian David Greenberg, at HNN.

"Whitman discouraged aspiring poets" because ". . . there is no particular need of poetic expression. We are utilitarian and the current cannot be stopped." Thus in an interview published in 1888. Perhaps it hasn't, that current. Though that probably shouldn't discourage aspiring poets, even now when poetry has been marginalized and trivialized in ways even Whitman could not have foreseen. Still, he had some other words of wisdom, both idealistic and practical, for aspiring writers and may have merely been throwing down a challenge to his interviewers. I'd like to read the original college newspaper piece.