She has intense self-belief, and considerable intellectual poise; her current reading is the philosopher and essayist Fernando Savater, a present-day Voltaire.
Brought up in the Austrian-controlled city of Trieste, the pianist, composer, and pedagogue Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) spent his life filtering the traditions of German music through an elegant Italianate prism, never losing his intellectual poise as the turbulence of the fin de siècle raged around him.
The BBC chose light entertainment duh-speak and was punched by the rightwing press for lacking knowledge of every damp dignitary and seagull on the flotilla, which is fair comment if you want an intellectual framework poised over a reverse lynching.
By the end of the 16th century the battle of Reformation and Counter-Reformation had commanded much of Europe's energy and attention, while the intellectual life was poised on the brink of the Enlightenment.
Such is the particular thrill that a metropolitan daily newspaper -- poised between intellectual detachment and journalistic immediacy -- can provide that history books rarely do.
And so we have come to an impasse: a moment in our history that can only be called a tipping point - a pivotal moment in our lives when we are poised for social destruction or intellectual evolution.
Now Mr. Mishra seems poised for a fresh round of intellectual battle.
"Now Mr. Mishra seems poised for a fresh round of intellectual battle," she wrote, with the publication of "From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia".
Many of them are so poised and well-mannered, so refined and intellectual, that you feel clever, rather than guilty, when you play them.
Last year, when Congress was poised to pass laws intended to protect intellectual property and prevent online piracy, tech companies, led by Google, struck back with one of the most effective lobbying tactics ever used: they shut down for a day.
