August 2010
I think I’ll divide the world into two kinds of people, because who doesn’t like dichotomies? Today: people who read reviews (book, movie, music, etc.) before they experience the item under review, and people who read them after. Read, not skim. Reviews, not blurbs or trailers or teasers or excerpts or back covers. (I refuse to acknowledge the dubious possibility that there might be...
Does Your Language Shape How You Think? →
It’s actually pretty reasonable! I like this:
Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds...
Compounds of meaning for which there should be a...
See: exhibit A.
“The world is infinitely more interesting than any of my opinions concerning it.”
– Nicholas Nixon, re: his objective style. (I finally got my hands on the New Topographics book!)
In American Prospects, his book of very serious-looking and objective photographs with very serious-looking and objective captions, Joel Sternfeld has a picture called Approximately 17 of 41 Sperm Whales that Beached and Subsequently Died. I am probably the only one in the world that thinks the caption is funny, but I do. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but certainly worthy of typing “lol”,...
Swarms
I’m fascinated by swarms. Not swarms of insects, but simply the image of a swarm: a mass of individuals that descends on a place or a creature, inhabits it for a moment, then leaves. The swarm acts in concert, but need not necessarily do so consciously. It emerges from a sea of individuals, like a wave, then dissipates. The concrete example I have in mind is temporary habitats for people:...
The Accidental Confederate →
As we were transferring against the rush of oncoming people, I spotted a relatively average Japanese twenty-something in a white T-shirt with a huge red-and-blue Confederate flag and the catchy slogan:If at first you don’t secede…. Try, try again. I literally stopped in my tracks and turned to my companions to tell them to check the shirt out, but all that came out of my mouth was something less...
“Most family photo albums are a form of propaganda.”
– Martin Parr. (via)
Roger Casement →
Casement was mentioned briefly in The Lost City of Z for his humanitarian work: he wrote a series of reports from Belgian Congo and Peru where he exposed the atrocious treatment rubber companies gave their native employees. I did not know that he was also an Irish revolutionary who was hanged for treason. (Then again I don’t know much about Ireland. Sorry, inky.) Casement was honored for his...
“To be is to be the value of a variable.”
– W.v.O. Quine, On What There Is. Also: “a theory is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true.”
Timing
I ordered a book from Amazon on March 30, or so their records tell me. The book was listed as in stock. It apparently was not. The book finally arrived today at the address I specified in March.
I moved yesterday. 500 kilometers, give or take. Thanks a lot, Amazon.
No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto →
Major nerdery (if you’re reading this blog, you should be used to it):
It should be obvious that π is not “wrong” in the sense of being factually incorrect; the number π is perfectly well-defined, and it has all the properties normally ascribed to it by mathematicians. When we say that “π is wrong”, we mean that π is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant. In particular,...
“I think magic is an indication that the universe recognizes certain people as...”
– Ted Chiang.
Bingo Calling For Beginners →
I didn’t realize bingo lingo was so complicated. Then again, I’ve never played bingo, out of dual concerns for its inherent boringness and its demographic, which I picture as seventy-plus and conservative. My three years as a technician for a radio bingo show have done little to dispel that stereotype. Since I recently did my last shift, I’ll take that as permission to ridicule...
Communities Erect: Thoughts on the Intrinsic Value... →
I mean, seriously. I’ve stood in several general areas on more than one occasion—and, yes, haters—I’ve been diligent about ALWAYS programmatically notifying the API of a web server as to a) where I’m standing, b) what I’m doing while I’m standing there, c) whether it involves eating (or waiting to eat) something, and d) whether the thing I’m eating (or waiting to eat) turns out to be more...
In the Jungle (pdf) →
Rian Malan’s history of the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight, from the Zulu original through a series of shady business deals and re-recordings through the appearance in Disney’s Lion King. Solomon Linda, the original songwriter, sold the rights to the song for less than two dollars and never saw any royalties; he died a Zulu hero, but in poverty. His family got a tiny share of the...
Documents, Maps, and Files of a Fictional... →
One of the more interesting student projects I’ve seen in a long time used a “document-based” approach to architecture to fabricate an entire fictional world—one in which top secret underground research labs, militarized bacteria, artificial earthquakes, and much more were all found conspiring beneath the streets of Berlin, Baghdad, and Istanbul.
I eat this stuff right up. The...
1491 →
I’m a little late to discover Kevin Kelly’s “best magazine articles ever”, but this doesn’t strike me as a very urgent matter anyway. Although I’d hesitate to call it one of the best articles ever — then again I hesitate to call anything the best anything, ever — Charles C. Mann’s article about the Americas before Columbus is great. I...
1 tag
I’m reading House of Leaves and it reminded me that the strangest shit that ever happened in my house — which is to say my parents’ house, in which I’m enjoying a few more days before I move out — was a shit.
Years ago, my parents built a new bedroom for my sister on our first floor, which is built into a slope so that in front it’s at street level and in back,...
There’s something about photography that makes it more something from something than the ex nihilo arts: when you sit before a fresh block of stone or an empty musical sheet, canvas, or piece of paper, there is a sense that you’re creating something from nothing, from emptiness, by systematically adding (painting, music, literature, some sculpture) or taking away (sculpture). While...