January 15, 2007
Robert Anton Wilson, RIP
Announcement on his blog. Whether or not the last decade or two of his writings did anything for you, we're all the richer and wiser for the Illuminatus Trilogy. As always, watching the fnords.
January 02, 2007
When libraries fail
Removing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym in favor of some Oprah bestseller? Is this what libraries are supposed to be about?
December 24, 2006
Imagining Dawkins on Santa Claus
I can't quite decide if this is a spot-on parody of Dawkins, or if it's a friendly homage. Funny either way I think.
December 14, 2006
Howl
So, in addition to the classic, we also have howl.com from the era of the .com boom. And Yowl, the yuppie classic.
December 07, 2006
Iraq study group report
Yup, it was all an unmitigated disaster. But the report isn't quite ready to say that there's no hope. That's the job for the next committee to report!
November 16, 2006
35th anniversary of the Cannonball
Brock Yates is still reveling in his 15 minutes of fame. But it was a great moment. "At no time did we exceed 175 mph." Hopefully they'll figure some way of pulling off a 2007 version of the race...
November 02, 2006
November fiction
November is National Novel Writing Month. Check them out and get started yourself.
For shorter work, check out the six word short stories on Wired.
October 04, 2006
Quoting Adam Smith
An excerpt from "Wealth of nations"
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred of the poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. [. . .] It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate [the police] that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labor of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security."
August 25, 2006
The continuing struggle of science & education against theocrats & ignorance
Lawrence Krauss has a decent, albeit brief editorial in the New York Times after the Kansas School Board skewed back towards reality. I'm not sure in what forum his disagreement over "scientifically inappropriate attempts by some scientists to discredit the religious faith of others" appeared. Will have to take a look. Though I can see tactically why scientists might feel that, I think that it is hypocritical to argue for a reasoned, scientific approach in all matters other than other people's theology. The logical holes are there along with the incoherence of major religions, their ahistoricality, and their pernicious nature in practice (and perhaps in theory). I see little benefit in doing this, but little harm either. Deeply-held beliefs, whether sensible or not, are not likely to be changed by simple logic.
Just the other day, we see an evolving piece of the religious attack on reason and science. Due to a "clerical" (hmmm...that has two meanings...) error, evolutionary biology has disappeared from a federal list of university majors approved for federal student grants. Yup, follow the link and you can still (8/25/06) see the missing line, a blank line, for 26.1303. What a coincidence.
July 31, 2006
For the hottest day in Minneapolis...
Let's read HST's classic, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." Enjoy!
July 28, 2006
"Against the day"
Pynchon's latest (992 pages it is claimed) will be out in December. I think it would probably be the perfect Chanukah, Christmas, or Saturnalia gift for, well, for many people for whom it would be a good gift. From the claimed author's notes on amazon... Ouch! It's a reminder that Pynchon's last book appeared during the Clinton administration. Do we dare remember our crazy optimism at the time? A leader we disagreed with and even seemed foolish at times, but one you would be thrilled to have at your dinner party. We might press him on single payer healthcare, but at least we would be confident that he knew where Russia and China were. There were jobs, there was no war save for the occasional cruise missile blowing up aspirin factories or laser guided bombs hitting bridges in Serbia. But the book, yup, you can preorder it at amazon and surely at plenty of other book providers. Just like twelve year olds the day after a Harry Potter release, the Pynchon readership is likely to be out "sick" on the 5th of December. I will have to see if the convenience store in McMurdo, Antarctica will be able to get copies...
What other books are out there around a 1000 pages? Webster's 1867 dictionary to be sure, and there is Newfoundland from last summer. Oh heck, Clinton's My Life and many software manuals have gotten that long. For fiction, there's an online listing of novels longer than 1000 pages. Not sure one wants to be added to that list.
July 21, 2006
June 28, 2006
Al Gore's presidential moment
Okay, truth be told, he's had several presidential moments and we all know that's a few more than the current occupier of the oval office. Still, what to say about An Inconvenient Truth? I saw the movie over the weekend and came away with a string of opinions and a fear that someone would note that I had driven to the movie theater rather than walked...
- The science looked accurate. Scientists in the relevent field agree with a few minor caveats. Still, it's an interesting experience to hear a politician get facts straight.
- The animated bear and frog are just ridiculous.
- Not a bad powerpoint (or Keynote) presentation. I suspect that the interns/staff has a lot to do with it.
- Apple advertising! (Thanks Anne for the thought.) If this movie gets the US working towards lowering carbon emissions, someday Apple will use it in an ad.
- The bear and frog? Drop them in the director's cut.
- The whole human interest bit with Gore's son, hit by a car, reeked of cheap manipulation. The story of his sister (who died as a smoker of lung cancer while the family farm grew tobacco) was much more effective.
- There's a decent review of what's happening here from the New Haven Advocate.
- And the NYT talking about geoengineering "solutions" to ameliorate the global climate change.
June 26, 2006
Who's really screwing America?
A little exerpt from The Nation. I like the non-obvious nature of some of these listings. Dan Brown and Dick Cheney together at last.
June 08, 2006
Reading bin Laden
The Nation has a fascinating piece on the publication of the bin Laden/Al Qaeda missives. The article has even made me interested in reading Mein Kampf which I had always put into the "if I lived in the 1930s I should read it, but why bother today" category.
June 01, 2006
Cthulu Chick Tract
Do you remember those hilarious little Chick Tracts? The ones telling you that you needn't pack sweaters for the afterlife? It seems inevitable, now that the stars are right, that the Cthulu Chick Tract is now available. I want to be eaten first!
May 31, 2006
Silly patents
At Patently Silly dot com. The cordless jump rope (why bother?) and the "cylindrical object" (rock) skipping on water are my current favorites. Another beautiful demonstration of (some) failures of the patent system.
May 30, 2006
Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia?
Probably not a wise choice. One reviewer commented, "not convincingly virginal." Thanks Leni!
May 16, 2006
Words that matter: Truthiness?
I especially liked the line "Speak truthiness to power" as an explanation of Colin Powell's failure as SoS.
April 27, 2006
Best of the Twin Cities
See all of the listings online.
A special thrill was seeing Outsiders and Others be selected as best Art Gallery. My little ones have had their art hung there and they just held a most excellent sale and silent auction there last Saturday. Darn it, it looks like I wasn't the high bidder though...
April 21, 2006
Bush, the nuclear blunders
It's clear now how the Iraq distraction has harmed us in the pursuit of bin Laden, with North Korea's nuclear weapons, and now with the standoff with Iran. The US is immeaurably weaker today than when Bush decided to launch a war of aggression with Iraq.
April 07, 2006
April 03, 2006
Not sure of the original goal of the website...
...but it's pretty amusing. A bunch of quotes. Are they from the Unabomber's Manifesto? Or Al Gore's Earth in the Balance? Makes me think Ted wasn't that much of a nut. Was that the goal?
March 28, 2006
March 27, 2006
March 24, 2006
Bluffers guide to math
"If a five-piece jazz band can play 'Honeysuckle Rose' in six minutes, you might think a ten-piece could play it in three minutes. In fact, it would take at least 12, because everybody's got to have time to take a solo."
A physicist and a Mathematician were asked the same question:
Suppose you walked by a burning house. Next to the house is a hydrant and a hose laying on the ground not connected to the hydrant. What would you do?
Physicist: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire.
Mathematician: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire.
Then they were asked this question:
Suppose you walked by a house (not on fire) and also saw a hose connected to a hydrant. What would you do?
Physicist: I would keep walking, as there is no problem to solve.
Mathematician: I would disconnect the hose from the hydrant and set the house on fire, I would therefore have reduced the problem to a previously solved form.
I haven't kept up with Hitchens that well since he left the Nation
But I definitely enjoyed his spirited defense of Denmark, the free press, and democracy. And I think we can safely ignore his praise of the Iraq War. I am impressed that he's remained steadfast in his opinions, hmmm..., despite evidence that they're wrong?
The most encouraging article (well, informal essay) on free speech that I've seen in a very long time
"General: 'Mr. Arkin, do you consider yourself a journalist or an American.' I took a drink of water as my blood boiled. Me: 'Well General, because I am an American, I cherish the fact that I can call you a f***ing idiot for asking the question.'" There are more thoughtful bit as well...
Nature & Encyclopedia Britannica
The Nature study which compared the Wikipedia and Britannica is criticized by the latter party. It's an interesting business, was looking at the pdf's from both organizations attacking and defending the study (follow links at the Beeb site to find this bits). No conclusions from me exactly, but there certainly looked like an intellectual divide as much as anything else. See what you think.
March 20, 2006
Welcome to the brain of the Don
The Donald Rumsfeld that is. Plastic has an excellent resume of web links from his halcyon days in the Nixon and Ford administrations to leading two failed wars (see what sort of freedom and democracy has brought to Afghanistan?) for Dubya.
Read his own words, justifying what has been accomplished in the past three years in Iraq. Believe any of it? Like Rummy's $50 billion dollar and 5 week estimates of the war costs and length? And what's up with his comparisons of very and sundries with Hitler? Do we really fear that a 1000 year Venezualan Reich is right around the corner? Or is he projecting a bit?
Going back to the resume, we have to reflect on his successful running of the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon and his back-room efforts to help get the US out of the Vietnam War. For that he was shuffled off to be NATO ambassador. Then triumph as chief of staff and defense secretary under Ford, fighting against the whole nastiness of detante. Off to the private sector until Dubya decides to bring the Nixon crowd all back to the White House. The epic Shinseki-Rumsfeld fight seems now to be a footnote in the story, but certainly marked part of the White House team's decent into unreality.
Afghanistan. Iraq. Some investigations into what Rumsfeld has wrought.
March 02, 2006
Atwood (yep, one and the same) makes long-distance signing (of books) a possibility
It's a pretty weird tale of an author tired of exhausting book signing tours. And a science fiction solution.
Breaking the last undeciphered Nazi German naval coded transmissions
They aren't especially significant transmissions, but there still something quite cool with finally deciphering these M4 Enigma transmissions. Let me also note, that since I went through a phase a year or two ago when I did quite a bit of reading on the U-Boat operations during World War II, that the "knife-edge" of victory over the German submarines is a myth.
Even when the Germans were winning, they were barely able to sink ships faster than they were being built, and they never were intercepting more than a percent or so of the ships bound for England. Clay Blair's two volumes (Hunters (1939-1942) and are certainly the definitive works on the Battle of the Atlantic. No knife-edge. No near thing. The U-Boats were suicidal operations by 1942 and even when they were most successful, were a small effect. There never were enough submarines to have a serious effect on British transport. And with the radar and cipher advantages, and by 1942 with the US also in the war, the contest was extremely uneven.
March 01, 2006
February 27, 2006
Worst book I've read...
...for sure recently, perhaps the worst science fiction book I've ever read, maybe even the worst book period that I have ever read. Certainly the worst good-guy vampires and secret agents travel to the hollow Earth to fight Nazis alined with ancient talking serpent people book I've ever seen. Oh yeah, there's also a plotline about a piece of Cthulhu that got stuck in a decapitated head and some nasty pedophile-baiting program from the NSA crossed with FEMA. Then everything suddenly ends 40 pages from the back of the book. Nuclear explosions, plotlines finished off. Characters that had a lot of development (not that you'd give a damn) who do nothing in the book die. The end.
The jacket picture is far better than anything in the book. The artist certainly didn't read the book, the "good guys" flew to the underland in a Nazi Serpent-person-antigravity powered flying saucer, they didn't walk down the stairs. Oh, did I mention the DNA memory of the Nephilim invansion of Earth? Merlin as the President's National Security Advisor? Vampires removing their fangs with plastic surgery (to better fit in, though they only go out at night still)? The off-screen 1-page death and rebirth of the main character? Within 50 pages of the end of the book.
And this book is some part of a quartet!?! With positive back cover reviews from Michael Moorcock and The Bloomsbury Review? I'm not sure how this book could have been worse. No, wait, it could have used a less readable font. Nope, that would have helped. Okay, I'm lost here, I can't think of how to make the book worse.
Wait! Would you like to borrow my copy? Anyone who is interested, just email me. It took me less than four hours to read it. Hours that I could have spent flossing a neighbor's cat or doodling on my forehead with a sharpie.
February 22, 2006
Class email
A good piece in the NYTs on emails to professors about their class and learning. I've definitely been struggling to deal with the volume of email from a large lecture class.
February 21, 2006
In secret, previously declassified documents are being reclassified
It's a pretty bizarre back-attack on Bill Clinton's 1995 declassification order. That was supposed to speed the declassification of materials that had no need to remain secret.
Documents that have been reclassified range from bizarre to embarassing:
- "The CIA's assessment on 12 October 1950 that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was 'not probable in 1950' - two weeks before Chinese troops crossed into Korea."
- "A 1962 telegram from the then US ambassador to Yugoslavia containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program."
- "A 1948 memorandum on a CIA scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain to drop propaganda leaflets."
If you made a copy of them while they were public, you may now be in violation of the Espionage Act. Heck, pretty soon owning a copy of the Constitution is likely to be illegal, so a coverup of CIA misdeeds of 60 years ago may be the least of our troubles.
February 15, 2006
If you haven't looked at hotzone before...
...you should now.
They have an ongoing, excellent, series of articles offering vignettes from both sides of the Israel/Palestine war. Doctors, film-makers, innocent victims. It's good reporting in a blog format.
February 09, 2006
Thinking about William Gibson, Joseph Cornell, and Count Zero
There's this old article by Gibson in Wired magazine on re-mix culture. Makes an interesting case to connect Cornell and the boxes to mash-ups and remixes.
February 02, 2006
"A screaming comes across the sky."
100 of the best first lines in literature. Hmmm...well, in novels anyway. According to some folks or other. Though I do remember some of these, and what's not to like with the Pynchon, "dark and stormy night," Ishmael, and Joyce?
January 31, 2006
The Frey publisher responsibilities?
The publishers assert that fact-checking is too costly. Nan Talese didn't have to pay a fact-checker, the Star-Tribune told her years ago that (at least) parts of Frey's work were false. She acts as though she had forgotten that though. Let's see, Talese and Frey make money, book buyers spend money, foolish people believe the books, and we're left with what? The power of the marketplace or some such?
John Dolan's thoughts are, probably, especially apt, if not a bit over-the-top.
January 30, 2006
"Beaver" on Wikipedia
No, no, no! It's safe for work. We're talking about the rodent here.
Take a look at this, since fixed, entry on the second largest rodent. I especially liked the "citation needed" bit.
January 27, 2006
Frey's end on Oprah
Booed by the audience, kicked out of the book club, and Oprah regrets defending him.
January 17, 2006
Earwax removal
Me, I often have quite a bit of ear wax buildup though I do clean my ears on a daily basis. (Was that too much information?) Anyhow, this Canadian Medical Journal article details the emergency removal of earwax with a supersoaker loanded by a local four year old. It was "an off-label use" of the device. Not generally recommended, but something to add to your emergency medicine knowledge...
January 11, 2006
Instead of reading Frey...
Wasted, by Black Flag
I was so wasted
I was a hippie
I was a burnout
I was a dropout I was out of my head
I was a surfer
I had a skateboard
I was so heavy man, I lived on the strand
I was so wasted
I was so fucked up
I was so messed up
I was so screwed up I was out of my head
I was so jacked up
I was so drunk up
I was so knocked out, I was out of my head
I was so wasted
I was wasted.
And save the "Million Little Pieces" of money.
December 19, 2005
December 15, 2005
Turkey and the EU
Read about Orhan Pamuk's upcoming trial for mentioning the Armenian Genocide. It seems certain that the EU is watching very closely to see if Turkey can distinguish itself better than in the past.
I hesitate to post this...
...since several of my friends who are religious will take this link as a statement of my thoughts on the subject. However, let me make the link to Harris's atheist manifesto with the proviso that some of his backing evidence as to how religious nations are more violent, etc. is not completely solid. The notion of the lack of sensibility for the label "atheist", likening it to the terms "non-astrologer" or "non-alchemist" is especially interesting, and, in my experience, novel.
December 14, 2005
City News desk closes
Chicago's famous City News service is closed down by parent company The Tribune Corp. Many stories...some are in the short article.
December 02, 2005
What's happening in Southern Fiction today
Plagarism "due to his 'ignorance concerning the principles of fair use.'" This from a Ph.D. in English, working as a professor.
November 30, 2005
Decent discussion on the future of newspapers
At slashdot. I can see the "local" argument of the original poster, but the experiences of the advertiser (scroll down on it) provide a good counterpoint. Today, there's no way that I'd give up my Sunday newspaper, though I may endlessly gripe about the lack of good news coverage and the crazy right-wing nuts writing editorial (or "culture") columns.
November 17, 2005
Austria and Herr Doktor Irving
David Irving arrested in Austria for Holocaust Denial. He's a pretty repulsive figure, trying to be the academic while speaking in front of neo-Nazi groups, always claiming to be objective, but the whole Holocaust Denial as a crime thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
November 01, 2005
Globe Shakespeare Company
We saw "Measure for Measure" at the Guthrie Theater here in Minneapolis. It was interesting to see a traditional-style of presentation for the play. Quite funny and definitely reminds one of the Monty Python -> Shakespeare connection.
October 30, 2005
Even Anne Rice is getting swept up in the religion thing
As religion, or psuedo-religious hysteria, sweeps the US, Anne Rice launches a new novel of a young Christ. Drinking the blood of heathens?
October 24, 2005
One in three people...
...in the UK have bought books to appear more intelligent. It's cast as a slightly negative story, since it is shallow and many of those books don't get read. Still, I'd take it as a good sign overall. Reading and books, it's not just for terrorists and the French any longer.
How accurate is the wikipedia?
The Guardian asks some experts. It's an interesting article, I think, because the limits of wikipedia need to be made clear. It's sort of like Consumer Reports, if you really like cars, you'll hate their car reviews as much too shallow, if you're an audiophile, the stereo reviews grate, but we all appreciate the toaster reviews.
October 21, 2005
October 13, 2005
Nobel Literature Prize
Harold Pinter. It comes as a minor relief to me that I have, finally, actually heard of the winner before the prize. Looking back at the list of Nobel Laureates in Literature I'm reminded of the controversy this prize generates.
Look at those early winners, who do we remember other than Kipling? Then the 1930s-1960s seem reasonable---some of those folks are not as esteemed today, but still, they are sensible if somewhat anglophile choices. Then the prize branches out, but Patrick White? Odysseus Elytis? Novelty factor? Then again in the 90s, Gortimer? Saramago? And the controvery over last year's winner, Elfriede Jelinek, and her truly difficult work. Anyway...
September 23, 2005
Slate spotting bogus stories in the national media
Trend story from the NYT. On top (female) college graduates wanting a momma degree.
Also check out earlier exposes of bogus stories, such as the increase in child prostitution story. Or the EPA budget "cuts" article.
September 21, 2005
Old technology fighting new technology
Some authors try to block google's digitalization efforts. Has the Author's Guild never heard of fair use? The whole content is blocked unless the author allows for it to appear.
September 14, 2005
August 13, 2005
Read an online book, maybe even a banned one
I still prefer a book in my hand, but there's some impressive stuff available online.
August 07, 2005
Book lists
Everyone has their lists of what they have read, should read, are embarassed to have not read, and read but regretted the hours we so wasted.
I feel pretty good about this list. I may be doing well for having never been an English major. Some more reading to do though...
The Times Online has a great list of summer reading books. Good stuff!
July 25, 2005
Slate (and Nation) fest
I used to be pretty consistent in reading Christopher Hitchens in The Nation and now have to admit to reading a bit of his work in Slate as well. In fact, I have a slew of interesting Slate articles to link to here. Can't say I agree with all of them, but there's some good Bosnia and Zimbabwe articles here.
- Hitchens arguing in favor of intervention, from Srebrenica to Bagdad. He loses me somewhere in the middle.
- On the Dutch reaction to the investigation of their troops at Srebrenica.
- Genocide in Sudan and its Islamist origins. Have been reading Bernard Henri Levy's War, Evil, and the End of History which is an amazing work of liberal, internationalist thought barely capable of dealing with the death, destruction, and evil of war in the Sudan, Angola, Sri Lanka, and the list goes on. The section on the Sudan has convinced me that twenty-year genocide will rank as one of the great failures of the Cold War and post-Cold War West. If anyone will even remember the tale.
- Children's drawings of the Darfur Genocide in Sudan, part of the continuing saga. "After all, who remembers the Armenians?" - A. Hitler
- "Cruel to be kind." A request to not provide food aid to the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
- An earlier article on food aid distribution in Zimbabwe. Food as a political tool.
- Article from 2002 on Mugabe's "Last Stand." He's doing better than predicted, politically, and making the country a bigger mess than anyone would have guessed.
- A short Mugabe biography from 2000.
- Stanford University hosts an excellent set of web-links for Zimbabwe.
- Continuing with Slate, there's a good book review of Harry Potter and his connections to the current "War on Some Terrorism." See also a summary of Harry Potter coverage.
- And some coverage of the US change of policies with India. There has been shockingly little coverage of this (I don't see any online in The Nation), though it practically destroys the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT) and reverses the Cold War cold shoulder to India. Then we were the solid supporter of Pakistan against the Soviet-supplied India. That stance never made a lot of sense, the world's largest democracy should have been our more natural friend, rather than a military dictatorship which ran the Taliban and a good fraction of Central Asia's other badies.
July 18, 2005
Spot the taboos
I won't link the image, but it's a Casper, you know, Friendly Ghost, cartoon. Man, if I had realized, I would have cared about comics as a kid. The site, Super Dickery, has lots of unfortunate sexual innuendo, ridiculous propaganda, racism, and the like. All from the comics. I'm told that this site is even funnier if you cared about the comics, or Superman, or the like.
July 05, 2005
Interesting amazon item
Happy 10th to amazon.com and just wondering who the heck would buy 1082 books with a single click. Hmmmm...actually, it would be an interesting art project...let me start writing the grant application...