Edward Tenner

Was there ever really a generation gap? Recent obituaries of the retailing billionaire Donald Fisher make me wonder. Fisher apparently called his clothing and music store The Gap with reference to that unstoppable 1960s concept -- the name actually was suggested by his wife as an alternative to his original "Pants and Disks." Significantly, he was an outsider to the garment industry and retail; his real estate background prepared him for all-important skills of… More »

The Wall Street Journal reports a new wave of interest in the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, a Depression-era rearrangement of typewriter keys, developed by a psychology professor and typing expert in Washington State. Many users believe Dvorak offers speed and comfort superior to the conventional QWERTY arrangement. In the 1980s, computers brought a qualified victory, as software made it possible to remap keyboards without the massive costs of converting conventional… More »

It's good to be the king, or queen, be your realm ever so small, according to the findings of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a survey of over 100,000 working adults. The Newark Star-Ledger elaborates with a local case study:If John Beck Sr.'s happiness depended on his success, he'd probably be miserable. Sales at his Branchburg hair salon are down for the fifth straight year, a trend that began when budget chains such as Supercuts, Fantastic Sams and Great… More »

"Annie Le Was on Fast Track, Suspect Ray Clark Cleaned Cages; Did Worlds Collide?" That's the headline of abcnews.com in the recent Yale tragedy. A prominent criminologist is quoted as saying that the accused: worked in an Ivy League school where most of his co-workers were potentially successful and had advanced degrees and were looking forward to a fulfilling and happy life, he was cleaning cages.Therefore, if the accused is guilty, "relative deprivation" might… More »

Friends of photography, and of French heritage, are mourning the death of Willy Ronis, most famous for his Nu Provençal, Gordes (1949). It's striking how many of the iconic images of France were created by immigrants or their children -- Ronis, Brassaï, André Kertesz -- just as the Hungarian-born cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond created the look of all-American classics like Easy Rider, The Deer Hunter, and Deliverance. An aspiring composer as… More »

Hats off to Daniel Brook for his series on Slate about the September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. It's a gem of reporting legwork and historical insight, based on a visit to Atta's thesis supervisor in Hamburg and sharp observations in the ancient city of Aleppo, where Atta was misled by his upbringing to misunderstand its heritage: With the crumbling legacy of European imperialism and American-backed dictatorship written into its Paris-meets-Houston cityscape,… More »

For months, Germans have been stocking up on conventional incandescent light bulbs as the European Union (EU) phases in a ban on their manufacture and sale. There is open revolt even at the summit of nation's cultural establishment:Many complain that the lights are just not bright enough and that they falsify colors. The Hamburger Kunsthalle, for example, recently made a bulk order for 600 incandescent light bulbs to make sure that it can keep illuminating the… More »

Critics are using the Internet to protest technological change intended to optimize design for the Internet. More »

Readers of my post on college rankings have made excellent points about the limits of all published rankings, and their comments on the original page are worth careful reading.Nick observes that subjective and qualitative features of colleges are neglected by rankings publications, which promote excessive reliance on numbers. I agree the danger exists. Yet I haven't found strong evidence of how influential rankings have been in decisions. Has the popularity of US… More »

The Washington Post mourns the man whose enterprise, acquired 25 years ago, now accounts for 58 percent of its corporate income, Stanley H. Kaplan. He was a flesh-and-blood Frank Capra hero, and why not? Capra, also from an immigrant family, released Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939, when Kaplan graduated second in his class at Brooklyn College, but was rejected by medical schools because of academic as well as religious prejudice, according to the New York… More »

The US News college ranking issue is out again, with the usual suspects on top and the same chorus of administrators, professors, and think tanks attacking the study's methodology, on the usual grounds -- favoring research-oriented richer institutions, distorting admissions policies for artificial inflation of selectivity and test scores, and ignoring hard-to-measure outcomes of education. Of course, rankings also encourage colleges to address real issues like… More »

Dan Akst wonders:Why, given their horrific history during the 20th century, aren't Europeans more wary of the power of the state? After the horrors of WW I, the rise of European fascism, the Nazis, the Second World War, the protracted disaster of Communism etc., it would seem to me that something like paranoia would be the mildest sensible response toward government.I've often asked myself about this. For example, I studied in Germany in the late 1960s… More »

The Athenaeum Club, 1830. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.When the great and good convene to ponder the future in historic landmark buildings, there is not always happy news. A group of pharmaceutical executives and government regulators, invoking the name of one of London's most venerable clubs, seem to be ratifying the idea of an "innovation drought," according to the Financial Times.The Athenaeum Group's proposals seem unexceptionable in themselves: more efficient… More »

As Niall Ferguson defends his recent exercise in feline jollity, the outcry in some quarters recalls the European journalism of the interwar years, with which the Harvard historian of the twentieth century must be familiar. French newspaper writers could not resist gags based on the homophones Shah and chat, provoking minor diplomatic crises. In one of them, as Time Magazine reported in 1937, . . . the King of Kings was furious over "another French insult." Month… More »

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has deplored comparisons of President Obama's health care plan logo with Third Reich insignia: "It is preposterous to try and make a connection between the President's health care logo and the Nazi Party symbol, the Reichsadler," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center."Americans have every right to be critical of the President's health care plan but we demean ourselves and everything that America stands… More »

Many newspapers now run only paid memorial announcements, but the New York Times is one of a few that still publish professionally written obituaries to die for. My most recent favorite is Margalit Fox on the violin maker Carleen Hutchins. Mrs. Hutchins was known for her pragmatism. In 1957 her friend Virginia Apgar, a doctor and amateur violinmaker, began to covet a shelf made of perfect maple. The shelf was in a phone booth in the medical school of Columbia… More »

Coast to coast, airline travel beats jockeying with 18-wheelers over mountain passes. But for many shorter journeys, dread of driving of driving can be as irrational as fear of flying. More »

The feats of pilots like Chesley Sullenberger and United Airlines' Al Haynes remind us of the value of training and experience. But relying on superlative skills isn't enough. Bertolt Brecht's Galileo put it well: "Unhappy is the land that needs a hero." More »

Who really started the Cash for Clunkers concept? Why, those magnificent men and their sewing machines, the exuberant failed actor Isaac Merritt Singer (above) and his crafty lawyer partner Edward Clark, whose mutual enmity did not keep them from inventing much of modern consumer durable-goods marketing. More »

The Boston Globe reports that Harvard's attorneys are -- defensively, they say -- trademarking everything from the letter H (watch out, Sesame Street!) to "The World's Thinking" (watch out, world!):Most trademark directors at other Ivy League Schools were astounded to hear of the lengths to which Harvard goes.Yale has only half a dozen trademarks, including the university name and its bulldog mascot leaning on the letter "Y.'' Princeton, too, has only a handful,… More »