In Princeton, New Jersey, a short stroll from the university you have heard of, there lies a little campus home too the Institute for Advanced Study. It was founded in 1930 not to confer degrees nor—God forbid!—to make money, nor even to conduct research toward any end in particular.The institute proclaims that its purpose is “the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.”
Founder Abraham Flexner reckoned that brilliant minds, once freed to pursue “useless satisfactions,” would stumble upon discoveries of “undreamed-of utility,” as he wrote in a magazine a few years into the institute’s work. It seems to have worked for Albert Einstein, who had an office there. J. Robert Oppenheimer, too.
Enjoy this week’s useless satisfactions. I look forward to your theory of everything the week after.
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Tuesday, January 20, 2025
- Whereas Swedish institutions select the winner of every other Nobel Prize, the award for peace is conferred by a committee from what country?
— from Anne Applebaum’s analysis of Donald Trump’s threatening Greenland letter - What 1986 sports movie follows the boys of tiny Milan High School to their state-championship victory over Muncie Central?
— From Keith O’Brien’s article on the end of the underdog - The Barbz are—or were—the fan base of what “Anaconda” rapper, who recently alienated many of them when she appeared at a Turning Point USA event alongside Charlie Kirk’s widow?
— From Spencer Kornhaber’s essay on
