If the world were healthy, would there be daily news?

James Wood comes (New Yorker 13 Apr 09) across in the social criticism of George Orwell, born Eric Blair, a wonderful example of the how the world has changed -- since 1914 and the Great War, "the sound of the radio is more normal than the sound of birds." In Orwell's words, "in a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned foods, aspirins, gramophones, gaspipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc. etc." The daily newspapers are failing -- maybe our world is getting better?

Everyone wants to live downtown -- just like me

Alan Ehrenhalt cites (Governing March 2009) a poll by Lesser & Co.: 80 million Americans were born since 1980; 77% of these millennials want to live in the urban core. There are 65 million baby boomers, of whom 71% say walking to work is their most important criterion in choosing a home. Ehrenhalt's response to this demand is to "urbanize suburbia," because building all the houses downtown would take just too many skyscrapers. Blurring the lines of city and suburbs recalls Breugmann's book, Sprawl: There is no longer a clear distinction at the city line, or at least between city and near-in suburbs. One of Breugmann's counterintuitive conclusions is that Los Angeles is the densest city in the country. While NYC is denser downtown, NYC is sparse in the suburbs; LA is consistently across the metro area.

Dante in space

Jamie McKendrick claims (LRB 26 Mar 09) that the view of Earth from space -- iconic of serene transcendence -- originates in Dante's Paradiso. Canto 22 finds Dante and Beatrice on Saturn, looking at Earth small in the distance: "L'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci" "That little threshing floor that makes men fierce" (as in the new translation by Robin Kirkpatrick, which apparently echoes the Bible). Chaucer echoed the image (making Troilus look down from "the eighth sphere . . . [at] this little spot of earth that with the sea / Embraced is") as have writers, cinematographers, and astronauts since.

the subjunctive tense

Timothy Barnard of Montreal complains (LRB 26 Mar 09) about grammar: "The LRB and its authors continue to have problems grasping the use of the subjunctive tense in English. Henry Siegman writes: 'Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on the condition that Israel ended is blockage.' Does one have to be of a certain age for this to grate on one's ears? Israel never ended its blockade. Hamas offered to extend the truce on condition that Israel end its blockade, which it refused to do." To which the editor responded: "If Timothy Barnard hadn't called the subjunctive a tense we would have been more ashamed of ourselves."