Weekend Reading
“Year after year, undergraduates and M.A. students find themselves on fire to do research and to teach. Some of them burn for other things as well, and follow other paths. Some discover that their vocations are not deep enough to last out the process of testing. But many stick it out—and finish—only to find that the completed quest leads into Rats’ Alley. These are the people whom our system is now chewing up.”
“Kim Jong Il once told Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, that the bombast in honour of himself and his late, great father, Kim Il Sung, was so much nonsense. Bruce Cumings, an historian, wonders what Mr Kim can be thinking, “standing there in his pear-shaped polyester pantsuit, pointy-toed elevator shoes, oversize sunglasses of malevolent tint, an arrogant curl to his feminine lip…and a perpetual bad-hair day? He is thinking, get me out of here.”’
“But sip a Lagavulin 16 Years. It’s an Islay malt, so it engulfs you with peat, though as the smoke clears, you get a long, sweet finish, something like mille-feuille. Now try a square of Valrhona Jivara. Malt, caramel and vanilla ooze across your tongue, and there’s still just enough peat on your palate to dim the sugar and keep things manly. In an evening of whisky and chocolate tasting, this was the combo that got my guinea pigs oinking with glee.”
