January 2011
Will 2011 be the next 1989? Who knows. I’m not here to discuss that. But, as Joshua Tucker points out, nobody saw the events of 1989 coming. And it’s not like the fall of communism was an oddity in that regard: our collective track record when it comes to predicting technological, social or political transformations is pretty dismal. But if you read history, you wouldn’t know it....
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not...”
– Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian. (via)
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“This is not about picking a person [i.e., Mubarak] or picking the people of a...”
– White house press secretary Robert Gibbs trying to have it both ways. When two sides are fundamentally opposed, I’m pretty sure it is about picking sides; especially when “can’t we all just get along” is code for “please don’t make a situation messy for us.”
Snobbery
I have yet to develop an adult palate. This makes me sad. I’m probably a little paranoid, but I do at times sense a subtle condescension as it becomes apparent that no, I have not grown to appreciate the kinds of food that adults like but almost no children like, or that yes, I have indeed retained my affinity for stuff that kids like that adults grow tired of very quickly. I haven’t...
“You can already stay glued to the box. But this box is a facilitator. It can...”
– Bill Gates, in 1994, about the internet. Haha. Good one. “The internet saved me so much time, I’m going to go spend it off the computer!”
“Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” Films aren’t very good at conveying flow. Just look at computer programmers in movies: no one wants to see a movie of people staring at a computer screen and punching buttons for a prolonged...
Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown →
Got nothing better to do? Here’s a free documentary on Lovecraft, both the man and his works, with analysis by, among others, Neil Gaiman and Guillermo del Toro. Probably not groundbreaking info for diehard fans, but since I hadn’t actually read Lovecraft until recently (despite being aware of some of the mythos), I think it’s fine.
The Tullamore Balloon Fire - First Air Disaster in... →
This talk about ballooning’s got me interested in the history of early modern aviation. Here’s one of the things I found googling around: the world’s first air disaster happened in 1785 in the Irish small town Tullamore. The first manned hot-air balloons had flown just two years before. In one of the first attempts at flying in Ireland, an air balloon collided with a barrack...
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Vedem →
This is sweet, awesome, and very sad: Vedem was a Czech literary magazine published from 1942-44. It was produced entirely by a group of boys in their early teens in the Terezín ghetto. The magazine consisted of poetry, literary reviews, jokes, drawings, dialogues, etc. It ceased publication after most of the contributors were sent to Auschwitz. (found here)
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Interstitial
One of the most profound mysteries of the universe, seen from a human perspective, is surely the existence of consciousness, of subjective experience. Or, more precisely, of the existence of two seemingly completely different sorts of stuff, or modes of existence, or whatever you want to call it: the subjective and the objective, material. This wasn’t a problem for most of human history,...
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Interstitial
One of the most profound mysteries of the universe, seen from a human perspective, is surely the existence of consciousness, of subjective experience. Or, more precisely, of the existence of two seemingly completely different sorts of stuff, or modes of existence, or whatever you want to call it: the subjective and the objective, material. This wasn’t a problem for most of human history,...
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Drifting
Continental European thinkers, not entirely unfairly, are known for their impenetrable prose. Combining Marxism and French intellectuals is an almost certain recipe for obscurantism. The density and show-offy lingo of their writing doesn’t mean that nothing they had to say, when they had something to say, is of interest to those of us who are neither Marxists nor particularly fond of...
Drifting
Continental European thinkers, not entirely unfairly, are known for their impenetrable prose. Combining Marxism and French intellectuals is an almost certain recipe for obscurantism. The density and show-offy lingo of their writing doesn’t mean that nothing they had to say, when they had something to say, is of interest to those of us who are neither Marxists nor particularly fond of...
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Double entendres where both meanings are entirely...
“Nice morphology you have there.”
The Year of Practical Thinking →
Giles Turnbull learned something every day in 2010, and he wrote it all down for us. His daily wisdom includes nuggests such as “Starfish have a water vascular system that they use to move themselves around. They suck seawater into their bodies through a sieve-like organ on their upper surface, and push this water through a series of tiny tubes to their feet. By varying the water pressure,...
Greatest Hits →
I don’t generally like reposts and metaposts, but I spent some time reorganizing and updating this page, dividing it into categories and generally (I hope) making it more user-friendly, so I figure I may as well mention it. I subscribe to Cursive Buildings’ blog theory: “Creating a good blog is like hiding your treasure under piles of new treasure. Creating a bad blog is like...
“An essay about Japan that every Chinese person... →
Someone told me there used to be a Starbucks in the Forbidden City. That’s funny, I thought, so I googled a little to find out what happened to it: as it turns out, it opened in 2000 and was closed in 2007, after half a million people signed an online campaign protesting its existence. The campaign was ignited with a blog post by the influential Chinese tv personality Rui Chenggang. But...
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Supertasks →
A supertask is a task involving an infinite number of actions carried out in a finite amount of time. The concept of a supertask is a modern invention, but Zeno’s ancient paradoxes of motion are examples. For instance, consider Achilles, who wants to move from point A to point B. But, having traversed half the distance between A and B, in order to reach his destination, he needs to travel to...
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Supertask →
A supertask is a task involving an infinite number of actions carried out in a finite amount of time. The concept of a supertask is a modern invention, but Zeno’s ancient paradoxes of motion are examples. For instance, consider Achilles, who wants to move from point A to point B. But, having traversed half the distance between A and B, in order to reach his destination, he needs to travel to...
The Map and the Territory
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”
“About six inches to the mile.”
“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We...
The Map and the Territory
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”
“About six inches to the mile.”
“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We...
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Dinuba Sentinel Portraits →
I recently added a new series to my website, Dinuba Sentinel Portraits. It’s a series of portraits of the employees of the Dinuba Sentinel, a small town newspaper in California that was owned by my aunt & uncle. The portraits were taken with a reproduction camera with 12×20″ negatives and contact printed. Using a camera the size of a truck presented some technical challenges, which I’d like to...
An ode to cosmopolitanism by proxy, sort of
I don’t know why I read Monocle magazine. Just scanning the pages, it’s immediately clear that I’m not in the target demographic. A particular passage from the Mediterraneo, Monocle’s mag-on-newsprint from this summer, is illustrative. Here’s editor in chief Tyler Brûlé:Phoeniciar is a transport business the market is currently lacking. Ever tried to get from Bodrum...