Peter Murmann

One of the most compelling moments in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner occurs when a son points out to his father that they have fundamentally assymetrical duties toward one another. Three days ago I started to read Don Quixote. It is hard to put the book down. I just came across a wonderful passage [Read More]

It is so much fun to watch children because for them everything is new. Teenagers already know quite a lot about the world, but they are still willing to experiment with new identities and become someone entirely different from one day to the next. When people reach middle age, this all seems to stop. People [Read More]

I found a wonderful poem by Edgar Allen Poe that possesses remarkable musicality. It was many and many a year ago,       In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know       By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other [Read More]

Until today I believed that the current elections in the U.S. are calm and civil compared to places like Ukraine where the opposition candidate became very sick in the weeks leading up to this coming Sunday’s fateful election because he was apparently poisoned by the incumbent party.  But then I read this short report about [Read More]

I discovered Harold Bloom last year and have become a big fan of his literary criticism. Even when he writes about authors I know quite well, he brings a fresh perspective on the material. Many of his 100 creative minds I have not had the chance to read in detail, but my appetitive for their [Read More]

Peter Parker a.k.a. Spiderman once again finds himself with too many heroic acts on his daily calendar. This prevents him from excelling at his studies at Columbia University and making sufficient money to pay his rent. New York needs a fulltime Spiderman just to keep the city functioning. Again Spiderman battles a mad scientist who [Read More]

From The Economist print edition, Sep 23rd 2004, p. 95 New Evidence that people have been promiscuous for a long time. LOTHARIOS everywhere will be pleased to hear that monogamy does not appear to be a natural human state. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study conducted by Michael Hammer at the University of Arizona [Read More]

Last Sunday a fantastic new series started on the WB Channel. It follows how a teenage boy become president of the USA in 2040. The writing is clever and insightful. One has the feeling that Washington insiders have written the script. In the middle of a presidential campaign, it is all the more fun to [Read More]