Montesquieu's Pensees, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and Fair's Cooperation with Pakistan and India

Pensees was interesting primarily int eh sections on literature and writing. Montesquieu candidly admits that he is afflicted with wanting passionately to write books and then being embarrassed by them. I felt comforted in my writer's soul! I too writhe in the night at the thought of some of my own mistakes, enshrined with finality in print. After that, I read Christine Fair's study of counter terrorism, Cooperation with Pakistan and India. This is a Rand study for the US air force, and contains some policy recommendations that struck me as basic and obvious, but useful nonetheless to the lay audience of the air force.

I have decided from now on to list the magazines I read. I won't discuss OK Magazine, which I consider entertainment on a par with junk food, but I did read Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. I love the New Yorker for its long articles on sometimes arcane subjects. This time it was the business of scrap metal, about which I knew nothing. The review section I always read as well, although I skip contemporary music. I skip the fiction and the poetry, dare I say it! Vanity Fair was a little thin, but Dominic Dunne is as self absorbed as ever, the read all about the Birley will contest in London (about the estate of the owner of the nightclub Annabel's), I was riveted by Karl Rove's Proust Questionnaire -- I despise the man's political tactics, but he makes a good pundit in general -- I reveled in the Scaife divorce exercise of 'he said, she said'. Can I spell Schadenfreude? I was bored with the umpteenth sussing of Princess Diana's inquest. There, I had a good time reading a certain level of trash. I routinely also read the New Scientist.