October 2009
“Kansas City linebacker Mike Vrabel has one touchdown catch this season,...”
– Patrick Hruby, encapsulating the Chiefs’ awful 1-6 record in one sad fact.
Then and Now
During the Civil war:
Sometimes the pressure of burials at [Richmond’s] Hollywood [hospital] became so great that as many as two hundred bodies would be awaiting internment. Chaplain Joseph Walker explained how he worked to be at once respectful and efficient in his treatment of the dead. “It was our habit to have one service for several bodies that were uncovered in adjacent graves...
"Small Worlds" by David Shute →
A lovely little game that’s just about exploring landscapes; the map reveals itself as you travel through it, slowly revealing the overall environment. Very relaxing and wonderful.
Epiphany while watching Speed (aka. The Bus That...
For years, I have been confusing Jeff Bridges and Jeff Daniels. One is The Dude and in TRON, while the other was in Speed and Dumb & Dumber.
My only consolation is that I didn’t fall into the Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman trap. I also talked to a friend who hopelessly confused Jeff Bridges with his older brother Beau Bridges, as well as one of my students who insisted that Jodie Foster (and...
“Nowadays people that are called polymaths are dabblers—are dabblers in many...”
– Carl Djerassi, quoted in an Economist publication asserting the age of the polymath is over.
The academic tendency to sub-divide and sub-divide fields into specialized niches has destroyed the ability of any one person to carry much of the liberal arts in their head; inter-departmental feuds and...
“The greatest love letters are always encoded for the one and not the many.”
– Mark Z. Danielewski in House of Leaves, paperback pg. 393.
While the existing body of love-related literature (sonnets, stories, etc.) is stunning in its breadth and width and depth, including personal missives explodes it several magnitudes further. Investing hours of effort into words for someone...
Nature abhors a Higgs boson? →
In one of the sci-fi coolest physics theories I’ve read, a pair of scientists argue that actually making a Higgs boson particle is so unsettling to the universe that consequences ripple backwards through time to prevent it from happening.
This, they argue, was the cause of the unexpected Superconducting Supercollider cancellation in the 90s, as well as the malfunction one year back during...
1 tag
"Buycotting" →
The NY Times Week in Review section takes a look at “Buycotting,” the sort of socially-charged consumption that focuses on buying ethically-grown foods, fair-traded products, and other sorts of things. More cynically, it’s an attempt to have the doing-good feeling of boycotting but without actually having to give up the things we want.
When I was in college, I took a wonderful...
“The question boils down to this: How grave a price would Americans pay if...”
– The NY Times Week In Review on the big choice in the Afghanistan war.
Five Days: Saving Morgan Stanley →
It’s not really a follow-up to The New Yorker’s amazing “Eight Days” article, but this piece of financial reporting reads like one.
It covers a slightly later but overlapping time-span where it looked like Morgan Stanley was going to collapse and set off another panic in the market. It’s not as solid at explaining some of the systemic weaknesses as the New Yorker...
Spoon - Paper Tiger
I was letting Lala stream...
1 tag
WatchIs it wrong to admit that I watched all ten minutes of this hypnotic, abstract video designed for babies?
Yes? Well I’m still gonna.
“In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news...”
– Andy Grundberg, writing about how “the camera can lie” in the NY Times almost two decades ago. (source quoted in House of Leaves)
WatchA 5-minute clip from the upcoming film 2012.
I am not kidding when I tell you this may be the best movie ever.
“Among Chicago’s leading citizens there was always a deep fear of being...”
– A paragraph from Erik Larson’s excellent The Devil in the White City, a book on both the 1893 Columbian Exposition and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who set up shop nearby.
It’s really weird to be reading this book as the Olympics selection drama plays out; hopefully Rio de Janeiro will...
“In the American political system, it’s not enough to be popular among the...”
– Ezra Klein, with a wonderfully evocative description of what effect the Senate has on legislation passed through Congress.
Specifically, he’s evoking it to explain how the public option garners a clear majority of support but still has had difficulties making it through the Senate (Finance...
Texas Gov. Perry prevents hearing on execution of... →
Remember The New Yorker’s write-up of the near-conclusive evidence showing a man executed in Texas was actually innocent? That all the evidence levied by the state was either circumstantial, possible fakery, or just plain pseudo-science?
Well, a hearing was scheduled to take place tomorrow (Friday) but Texas Governor Rick Perry cancelled it by replacing the chairman of the examining Texas...
