January 2008
The myth of the generations
I’ve always been deeply suspicious of all kinds of generational thinking. It seems to me that the cart drives the horse with the generations: advertizing and marketing convince us there is a generation gap, and we consume in such a way as to empahsize it. But, underneath the products, are the generations all so different? For the most part, no. The perceived “generation gap” is...
Machine Animals in France
Les Machines de l’ile de Nantes are massive mechanical animals on exhibition in Nantes, France. Designed by François Delarozière and Pierre Oreficee, the fantastic creatures in the menagerie include an elephant, squid, Manta ray, and more. Dark Roasted Blend posted some beautiful photos of the hydraulic beasties. Link to Dark Roasted Blend, Link to Les Machines site, Link to video of elephant...
Paper Ballots, Tinfoil hats
I, for one, have never quite gotten the paper ballot fetishism that seems to be so common„ particularly among Democrats. Electronic machines do certainly seem to have their problems (as the Keystone cops had their problems!), but don’t these folks remember 25 years ago, when old-fashioned mechanical machine fraud was the means of stealing elections? Or when stuffing ballot boxes was?...
Martin Amis writes again
God, how sick I am of mediocrities like Martin Amis, who come to us pretending to be wise and erudite and blathering on like doped up college undergraduates. Amis knows nothing about Islamic extremism, or geopolitics, or how o get one’s way. The one thing he knows about is the self-indulgent excess of the silver-spoon-in-mouth set of those approximately his age in greater London. Other than...
Jan. 15, 2001: Enter Wikipedia, for Better and...
Perosnally, I’m kind of tired of folks emphasizing the few bad entries that have come up on wikipedia—the real story is that wikipedia is an absolutely amazing resource. And a testament to the basic decency of humanity. Wired Science : Discoveries RSS By Tony Long Email 01.15.08 | 12:00 AM The reliability of Wikipedia information has been an issue since its debut in 2001....
Mundell Lowe
JazzWax is a very fine jazz blog that I highly recommend. Here’s the opener of a four-part interview with Mundell Lowe, who has a fine new CD with Jim Ferguson in our rotation called Haunted Heart. JazzWaxMarc Myers blogs daily on significant jazz artists and recordings « Sunday Wax Bits | Main January 14, 2008Mundell Lowe: Part 1 When it comes to the jazz guitar, few...
George MacDonald Fraser, Author of Flashman...
Flashman was one of the companions of my misspent youth. There was a public library with a very fine pretzel merchant (best spicy mustard ever!) outside of it. This was often my lunchtime destination. Pretzel finished and mustard licked from fingers, I usually whiled away the rest of my lunch period in the library. Flashman was one of my great discoveries. Though I can’t say I’ve...
CJR: Making the Story you want
eric: A lot of ideas pop into my head reading this story. It’s pretty ironic that on a day that I briefly editorialize about the Record-Eagle being completely irrational about Hank Meijer’s denial of knowledge of the Acme debacle that the flagship paper of their former company also gets caught doing the old wishful-thinking as fact routine. One wonders if the Fox regime has already...
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Homo Ridens no more
eric: Laughter has long been thought to be exclusive to humans (manking has been called homo ridens—man the laugher—in recognition of this). But recent research is indicating otherwise. Some years ago Jaak Panksepp recognized that rats seemed to laugh when tickled (the rats in the video are spitting images of our family pets, Marburg & HeyYou). and now this … BBC: ...
Alfred Kazin
The critic Alfred Kazin at Smith College in November 1954. Kazin is the author of A Walker in the City, one of my favorite (autobiographical) treatments of the urban experience. He also wrote On Native Grounds a great treatment of the American literary tradition—one of those books that you may disagree with—Kazin is extremely opinionated, even by literary critic standards—but...