Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
Acrobats (detail), Japanese handscroll, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Henry J. Bernheim, 1945.
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Miscellany
A study of U.S. Supreme Court oral transcripts from 2004 to 2005 tabulated every instance the court reporter described a justice’s remarks provoking laughter. It found that Antonin Scalia had caused seventy-seven such episodes, while Clarence Thomas had caused zero.
Happiness is no laughing matter.
—Richard Whately, 1843Lapham’s
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Roundtable
Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus
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Robert D. Kaplan
Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More