Printed Word Matters

‘HOW STATES THINK’: THE RATIONALITY VS THE EMOTIONALITY OF FOREIGN POLICY

‘How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy’, a new book by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato, is a well-written and insightful examination of a central question in international relations: are states actually rational actors? That is, does the empirical record show that they are routinely rational or routinely non-rational? The issue is crucial for both the study and practice of international politics and the authors make the case that “only if states are rational can scholars a

WATERGATE IN THE COUNTRY | A Poem by Arjen Boswijk, Art by Uko Post

<div>Under threatening gray skies...</div>

THEY SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND: ON THE ONGOING ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

<div>She spoke as to a child who could not understand. All the futility that lay ahead. Yet who she knew would go on to repeat. Repeat repeat the things men had to learn....</div>

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CORINTHIANS GONE?

<div>A spirit of goodness haunts the Earth. Never quite dominant, never quite disappearing, always beloved...</div>

SON OF TERAH | Short story by Jessalyn LeBlanc

<div>He hasn’t mentioned a child in years. Not since we got the farm and the linen tablecloths and the cattle with their promise of riches. Not since that first September, when the wheat bloomed in abundance. Not since that night against the oil lamp’s unsteady flame when we came to the synchronous and silent understanding that I would not bring a baby into this world...</div>

MUSIC OF THE DEVIL-1955 | By Myron S. Lubell

<div>They called my generation of teenagers 'juvenile delinquents' – mainly because of our'wild and crazy' music. Drugs weren’t a major problem in the mid-1950’s, and the 'sexual revolution' hadn’t started. I’m not saying we didn’t think about sex – we sure did, a lot – but the 'respectable' girls knew how to say NO – at least with me...</div>

TO DEAL WITH INEQUALITY, IT MUST BE BETTER UNDERSTOOD

<div>Extreme inequality is the sometimes mentioned but not well seen elephant in the room. Mostly noted and then ignored, it continues its 45-year explosion, especially in the US and UK without pause or concerted opposition. How extreme is it?...</div>

FOUR POEMS FROM OVID’S CREEK

<div>What we cannot speak about we must indicate with sighs, shouts, grunts, tears, and shrieks...</div>

SEARCHING FOR CERTAINTY: SEPARATENESS AND THE SELF

<div>Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Over and over again. Descartes was driven to the extremity of his wits, desperate to prove to himself that the external world existed, and that such certainty came with a sense of personal agency within that world. Once again, he fell back on Plato’s allegory of the cave: not for him is that which is what it appears to be!</div>

HOW HUMOUR LAID THE WORLD BARE, FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT | Katharina Van Cauteren

<div>Homer’s gods can roar with laughter. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and the rest of the cabal — grinning, giggling, splitting their sides. Anything man can do, the gods can do better. The Greek pantheon is a projection of the terrestrial on to the celestial. It’s only when God becomes man that he stops laughing. Jesus doesn’t do stand-up. There are no gags in the Bible, no guffaws or gales of laughter. The Christian faith is an awfully serious thing...</div>

WHAT DO WE OWE ANIMALS?

<div>For most of human history our conceit has ordained that animals exist for us, to do with them as we please. We employ them for sport, entertainment, experiments, and work; their lives are crushed by inhumane methods of slaughter, transport, battery farming, and more. Their legal status in most countries differs little from a chair or a table...</div>

GARY SOTO’S PILGRIMAGE

<div>In the brief essay 'Catholics,' from his first book of nonfiction, Living Up the Street (1985), prolific Chicanx poet and author Gary Soto depicts himself as an elementary school student in a parochial school 'standing in a waste basket for fighting on the day we received a hunger flag for Biafra'...</div>

THE PALE HORSE OF OLYMPIC CEREMONY

<div>One Friday night, over the dark tides of the Seine, the river that cuts through the body of Paris, the ancient city of Catholic and secular faith, a metal horse with a rider on it appeared. It came from the Pont d'Austerlitz, galloping toward the Eiffel Tower. Water poured out that night, horizontally from above as rain and vertically from below as a river...</div>

THE MODERNITY IN ROUSSEAU’S AUDIAL SELF

Psychology urges that we are never so authentic as when we encounter the self; philosophy counsels that we are never so modern as when we ponder the self. Might one then speak of a perspective that sees the self as both authentic and modern? These two disciplines seem to speak with two distinct voices. And the insistence of early twenty-first century society on specialization seems to encourage the segregation of one from the other. Indeed, we live in a culture that accords status only to the s

THE PARTHENON WARS | AN ICON OF FOUNDED UPON GREED AND DECEIT?

<div>As history’s pendulum swings once again, ominously, towards the political far-right, the iconic, enduring symbols of democracy take on a fresh significance...</div>

HOW NEW IS THE NEW TESTAMENT?

<div>How is it that the Old Testament (OT) seems to predict the coming of Christ? Was the OT inspired by the God revealed in the New Testament (NT)? Could be, but an answer internal to the Bible itself is persuasive...</div>

FROM FAME TO FOLLY | THE ORIGINS OF (POLITICAL) DEMORALIZATION

Tension between the people and their leaders is a theme in democratic history because it is rooted in human nature. Large groups of people ('The People') can be fickle. Recognition of this condition preoccupied the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They wanted to tie government purposes to a protection of 'natural rights' of individual liberty. So, too, did the Framers of the Constitution, who wanted to insulate subsequent generations from the unceasing struggles of 'factions'—struggle

WAR POEMS | Three Poeams by Lucas Carpenter

<div>We moved mostly during the day. They moved at night. So we set our ambushes at night, and they during the day...</div>

BACKLIGHT: TECHNOLOGY AGAINST EVIL

<div>Man is locked in his physical and digital cell, blinded by the lights, as the singer sings, with that deep, Kafkaesque, not fully conscious sense of being completely alone in a 'cold and empty city of sin,' with no one around to judge him,' but in fact only alone and judged. Judged not by people like him - that wouldn't solve the problem of evil - but by technology, an increasingly autonomous creature of the human mind...</div>

READING SOLZHENITSYN FOR THE FIRST TIME

<div>I first read The Gulag Archipelago during my first year in Israel, where I eventually settled. I remember feeling that here was something powerful and new...</div>