January 2010
“In a democracy, political engagement is an act of patriotism, a declaration of...”
– E.J. Dionne, Jr. writing on the role of critics in society in Dissident Magazine. The essay is part of a larger package of commentary on how “intellectuals” should participate in public discourse.
David Wiggins takes up a similar strategy in “Objectivity in Ethics,” arguing...
“The writer has falsified life, because he has pretended to harmonize something...”
– Edmund Wilson, writing “Meditations on Dostoevsky” back in 1928. This is such a powerful rant that I feel compelled to cautiously adopt it for railing against the writers I dislike, and politely ignore it for the writers I love.
But seriously, it is a fantastic articulation of why some...
I watched Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette the...
… and now I understand where Tumblr photoblogs come from: Marie Antoinette seems like the original to which all the Tumblr clichés aspire.
Seriously, though, it’s a pretty fantastic film. Sophie Coppola’s forte is mood, which she captures in dreamlike music-soaked sequences that refine and amplify Michael Mann’s experimentation in that area. But whereas Michael Mann...
Nat'l Book Critics Circle finalists announced →
Amazingly enough after the hubbub about the Publisher’s Weekly top 10 not including any books authored by women, four out of the five fiction nominees are by women authors. There is some overlap with the National Book Award finalists (& winners) already announced.
The winners will be announced in March, shortly before Pulitzer Prizes - last on the parade of literary awards - are...
“There is a more serious duty, the duty of listening to our geniuses in a...”
– Rebecca West, pulled by The New Republic’s new Book section from some previous unmentioned date; it still rings true today.
“When we use vague language, it’s easier to get an agreement. When we use very...”
– David Sirlin, sneaking in a wonderful tidbit of wisdom while writing about subtractive design and the commonplace resistance to pinning down the essence of a something (e.g. gameplay).
The Puppycam has returned! →
The next few months of my life just got a lot more awesome.
“[The Coen Brothers] career-long default mode — half-satirical, half-fabulist —...”
– Matt Zoller Seitz, writing on the Coen Brothers as part of his Directors of the Decade series for Salon. Seitz is my favorite writer on films today - even better than the great Roger Ebert - and here he’s nailing why I find the Coen Brothers films absolutely magnetic to watch.
“By his own account, Hörbiger was observing the Moon when he was struck by the...”
– (via superhamburgeramerica)
Wikipedia’s entry on Welteislehre, the “world-ice theory” of Hans Hörbiger, who proposed that the universe was created by the interaction of ice and aether.
Last evening, researching an imbalance of black bile, I came across Wikipedia’s index of “obsolete scientific...
“There has been much speculation about the new “Late Night with Conan...”
– Conan O’Brien, writing a mock review of his then-new show after it debuted to much fanfare and critical fallout.
Making models →
bobulate:
Zinsser on having models:
We all need models. Bach needed a model; Picasso needed a model. Make a point of reading writers who are doing the kind of writing you want to do. (Many of them write for The New Yorker.) Study their articles clinically. Try to figure out how they put their words and sentences together.
Study not just others’ writing, but their entire process. How do...
Nakatomi Space - BLDGBLOG →
Geoff Manaugh discusses Die Hard and the “syntax” of urban movement in an incredibly fascinating blog post over at BLDGBLOG. Not mentioned is one videogame that sought to realize the “walking through walls” technique mentioned in the post: Red Faction (and, to some extent, the sequels).
WatchJimmy Kimmel appeared on Leno last night, and was utterly vicious. So vicious, in fact, that NBC/Hulu only excerpted the first minute for a promo clip so I had to make a custom clip to show the whole mini-interview.
If you have a free hour of time, the Jimmy Kimmel Live episode from Tuesday on Hulu is well worth it. Kimmel does the entire episode in-character as Leno, complete with his band...
“Hosting The Tonight Show has been the dream of a lifetime, and I have something...”
– Conan O’Brien, just now.
“Apple says that it likes having the cash on hand because it gives the company...”
– Felix Salmon’s analysis of why Apple keeps so much cash on hand, even in the face of demands to invest it or otherwise distribute the money as dividends to shareholders.
I’m beginning to feel the pull of management theory as a future area of interest for me, largely out of...
My malady.
“Richard Nixon was a serial collector of resentments.”
– Rick Perlstein in Nixonland (p. 21 paperback).
“Writing doesn’t make sense unless it’s about something else.”
– Stephen Elliott, in the wonderful essay “Why I Write” featured in The Rumpus (originally published in Canteen magazine).
Code protecting GSM cellphone calls is broken →
Not a huge surprise - since Age + Ubiquity = Danger when it comes to tech like this - but it enables private organizations to do what was previously the domain of government-level intelligence agencies. It still takes a huge effort to even decode one call, but this breakthrough shoves it safely into the realm of plausibility.
In case you’re interested, AT&T and T-Mobile are the two...
2010 Books, from The Millions blog →
A listing of all the promising books coming out next year, amongst them new DeLillo, new McEwan, new McPhee, new Michael Lewis, new Franzen (finally!), and a Reality Hunger manifesto by David Shields that sounds readymade for violent agreement or disagreement.
News to no one, I'm sure
Due to all the subtext and unspoken conversations in Mad Men, it might be more useful to catalog one’s reactions to each episode - rather than any straight summation of the plot threads and each scene.
With that in mind, I give the season 2 episode “The New Girl” one somnambulist gaze and a deep pondering. My girlfriend gave it two exasperated sighs, a “this episode is out...
“Read voraciously, many books at a time. Only then will you hear the conversation...”
– Mandy Brown, writing maxims on ways of reading.
Scientists find out prions evolve →
I linked to the pop-science summary from Ars Technica, but the actual paper lays out the evidence that “Prions, albeit devoid of a nucleic acid genome, are thus subject to mutation and selective amplification.”
I got into an argument with the teacher on the second or third day of my college Biology class, with me asserting that prions counted as a form of life; this latest news makes...
Wikipedia blows my mind sometimes
Proskynesis, (Greek προσκύνησις) formed from the Ancient Greek words pros and kunyo literally means “kissing towards”, and refers to the traditional Persian act of prostrating oneself before a person of higher social rank.
According to Herodotus in his Histories, a person of equal rank received a kiss on the lips, someone of a slightly lower rank gave a kiss on the cheek, and...
Happy National Hangover Day!
(and New Year)
