Off-topic: Leon Wieseltier

If I had to choose just one popular non fiction writer whose work I find infuriating, that's Leon Wieseltier, who has appeared in this website more than once. After he left The New Republic, he was hired by The Atlantic magazine, and it seems that we'll also have to endure him in The New York Times.

Yesterday, his essay 'Among the Disrupted' appeared in the NYT's Book Review, and it's terrible. It's not very often that you find such a shameless series of straw man fallacies and gross simplifications (science opposed to the humanities? I guess that he's proposing that we go back to the times of the scholastics, right?) wrapped up in such a florid and utterly vapid style. I'll let you enjoy it before taking a look at some quick thoughts that I shared on Twitter while I was reading it. Notice point 13 and the final tweet, in particular, which I'm reproducing: