Salon

One man’s quest to determine if human beings can be — and have ever been — swallowed alive by whales:

“If, I’ll pretend for a moment, you were swallowed, it would happen like this: You would first be chewed. Sperm whales’ teeth are 8 inches long – longer than most blades in your knife drawer. Then you would be gulped to the fauces, the back of the mouth, and forced down. Here is where Bartley apparently touched the quivering sides of the throat. You would also touch the throat, perhaps claw at the sides of the throat like you would sliding down an icy slope. There would be no air, and you’d suffocate in acid and water, but, we’re saying, you somehow survive. Imagine a black and mucous-smothered tube sock slipping over you.

“You would then enter the first stomach, coined by 19th century naturalist Thomas Beale as the holding bag. It’s lined with thick, soft and white cuticle. At 7 feet long by 3 feet wide and shaped like a big egg, the first stomach would easily fit you. If you were kept in the holding bag for over 24 hours, you would likely be joined by squid, but a coconut or shark might come, too.”

I try to remind myself of who we are now and why it’s best that we are over. I think about the day he asked me for a divorce. Aug. 4, 2009. Just two days earlier, I had left for Warsaw, Poland, on a two-month research trip for a book I was writing. It was one of the few times in our relationship that I had done the leaving. I always feared that if we were both bouncing around the world for the sake of our careers, we’d never last.

A 2000 interview with Denis Dutton, founder of the Arts & Letters Daily site. (Dutton died Dec. 28, 2010.) “The site is intended to expand the reader’s sphere of interest. It’s a grave mistake in publishing, whether you’re talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established reader interests. A few years ago Bill Gates was boasting that we’ll soon have sensors which will turn on the music that we like or show on the walls the paintings we like when we walk into a room. How boring! The hell with our preexisting likes; let’s expand ourselves intellectually.”

After my wife died, music and movies we once loved became the very triggers I tried my hardest to avoid. A song, a poem, a scene from a film triggers memories. You’re startled, moved, shaken. And you’re faced with two options: 1) engage with the work and the memories it calls up, or 2) retreat, postpone, avoid.

Germany’s workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong

The study that launched a thousand parenting nightmares. They’ve been blamed for everything from masturbation to drug abuse. No wonder I can’t bear to let my son use one

Lori Gottlieb talks about her controversial dating book, which has some women foaming and Hollywood courting

A congressman writes to his constituents: “Thank God for gerrymandering”

It isn’t just a tween phenomenon. Women in their 30s and beyond are addicted to Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga, too