Sunday, December 09, 2007
Blacke swan ...
... Misc. Notes, Holy & Empirical. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I, too, have not read Karen Armstrong, but that is because of the impression I got from what was written about her books - an impression different from the one I get from this post. Though I think genuine religion is grounded in experience, from which the trust referred to derives. After all, they must be some ground for the trust.
I, too, have not read Karen Armstrong, but that is because of the impression I got from what was written about her books - an impression different from the one I get from this post. Though I think genuine religion is grounded in experience, from which the trust referred to derives. After all, they must be some ground for the trust.
Very nice ...
... Fleda Brown's The Death of Cleone. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Fleda will be the IBPC judge for the first three months of 2008. Here's her web site.
Fleda will be the IBPC judge for the first three months of 2008. Here's her web site.
Today's Inquirer ....
... Book Page, featuring the Cold War, tracking down a superspy, and a novel novel.
Also, Carlin Romano talks to Peter Gay: History of 'heresy' as artistic triumph. (Here is Terry Teachout on Gay: The Cult of the Difficult. And here is Tim Rutten: Exploring what makes defiant artists tick.)
Also, Carlin Romano talks to Peter Gay: History of 'heresy' as artistic triumph. (Here is Terry Teachout on Gay: The Cult of the Difficult. And here is Tim Rutten: Exploring what makes defiant artists tick.)
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Predicting is difficult ...
... especially the future, as Niels Bohr observed. Which is why everybody - especially journalists (and maybe the new breed of scientists) ought to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan.
Update: On Yogi versus Niels.
Update: On Yogi versus Niels.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Hallelujah!
... I’ll have a double espresso. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have been drinking coffee, yes, since I was four years old. I would not give it up even it I were told that continuing to drink it would shorten my life. I wouldn't want to live without coffee. And I've given enough up. So there.
I have been drinking coffee, yes, since I was four years old. I would not give it up even it I were told that continuing to drink it would shorten my life. I wouldn't want to live without coffee. And I've given enough up. So there.
Two journalists ...
... two different views of blogs and blogging: Helen Thomas, on the one hand, and Don Surber on the other.
The future ...
... and what it may look like: Not According to Script.
Today cameras are ubiquitous and production software is easy enough to use that nearly any American with an interest in doing so can put together a film and post it online for public viewing. That many of the videos showing up on the Internet are just as or even more compelling to watch than what Tinsel Town throws up on the silver screen is both an indictment of Hollywood as well as an opportunity. It's of little mystery now what kind of war films consumers want to see. Most of them involve the good guys winning.
I think this is true of more than just film. People don't want a "take" on the information so much as the information itself.
Today cameras are ubiquitous and production software is easy enough to use that nearly any American with an interest in doing so can put together a film and post it online for public viewing. That many of the videos showing up on the Internet are just as or even more compelling to watch than what Tinsel Town throws up on the silver screen is both an indictment of Hollywood as well as an opportunity. It's of little mystery now what kind of war films consumers want to see. Most of them involve the good guys winning.
I think this is true of more than just film. People don't want a "take" on the information so much as the information itself.
USA Today ...
... pays some attention to the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance: Bluegrass Peril by Virginia Smith is up on CFBA this week!
Ah, controversy ...
... Is Our New National Literary Culture Left-Wing? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I suppose John Freeman's political views are noticeably to the left of my own - but that has never stopped the two of us from getting along (and occasionally disagreeing in, I might add, a quite cordial way). So John advocates for his point of view. So what? I advocate for mine, too.
I did think Elliott Weinberger's treatment of Bruce Bawer when the NBCC nominations were announced was uncalled for - because it was rude and because I think Weinberger thinks he knows more about geopolitics than he actually does.
By the way, I don't think reading has declined as much as we are often told it has and I certainly don't think this has anything to do with liberal vs. conservative. I will have more to say about this in the spring issue of Boulevard - but that's all I'm saying now. I'm stressed out.
I did think Elliott Weinberger's treatment of Bruce Bawer when the NBCC nominations were announced was uncalled for - because it was rude and because I think Weinberger thinks he knows more about geopolitics than he actually does.
By the way, I don't think reading has declined as much as we are often told it has and I certainly don't think this has anything to do with liberal vs. conservative. I will have more to say about this in the spring issue of Boulevard - but that's all I'm saying now. I'm stressed out.
Not in Britain, too ...
... How to Teach Poetry.
Why teach poetry, you may wonder. Because, as Heidegger - in one of his more lucid moments - observed, it is the essential form of speech. A great poem is an exceptionally precise form of discourse, which is why great poems have such depth and resonance. To borrow a phrase from Alan Watts, they are like pebbles dropped into the well of the mind. One is not really civilized if one is not familiar - and I mean familiar - with poetry. (I must add, though, that while Bryan's recommendations are all excellent, I think "The Listeners" and even "The Highwayman" are not bad poems at all.)
Certifiably not dead ...
... the stress test took longer than anticipated: I got there at 8:45 this morning, then left around 10:30, but had to come back for another photo shoot at 12:45. Results are expected by Tuesday. Considering that I walked to the office (which I estimate to be a tad over a mile) in about 17 minutes, I figure I can't exactly be at death's door.
My thanks to all who wished me well.
My thanks to all who wished me well.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Blogging hiatus ...
... early tomorrow morning I am scheduled to have a stress test. I gather that my heart will be X-rayed, among other things, and that, presuming all goes well, I will be certified as alive. Blogging should then resume in the afternoon.
Mad as hell ...
... and not holding back: I'm spitting mad, Lee Lowe says.
Small wonder. It seems like an unusually stupid decision by Faber and Faber.
Small wonder. It seems like an unusually stupid decision by Faber and Faber.
Mark your calendar ...
... at least if you're around here and interested in writing: Pennwriters 21st Annual Conference, featuring Joyce Carol Oates.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Black dog ...
... Melancholy’s Whole Physician. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Many years ago I did some editing work for the Carrier Foundation Clinic. One of the paper's I edited had to do with the history of depression. It seems that at various times and places melancholy has been practically epidemic. I was so common the English during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods that it was known as "the Englishman's disease." It was widespread among Athenians during the time of Pericles.
When I was an adolescent and even as a young man I thought of myself as melancholic. But it was delicious sort of melancholy, a kind of sweet sadness - I think of Tchaikovsky's line, that "it is all so sad and yet so sweet to muse upon the past" - but nothing remotely like the truly crippling depression I have known others to truly suffer from. In my case, even that passed with age. I have a certain dispassionate interest in things and persons that makes of life a continuing pageant. Then again, I may just be shallow.
When I was an adolescent and even as a young man I thought of myself as melancholic. But it was delicious sort of melancholy, a kind of sweet sadness - I think of Tchaikovsky's line, that "it is all so sad and yet so sweet to muse upon the past" - but nothing remotely like the truly crippling depression I have known others to truly suffer from. In my case, even that passed with age. I have a certain dispassionate interest in things and persons that makes of life a continuing pageant. Then again, I may just be shallow.
Grim milestone ...
... Yours truly has heard from a very good source that the Chicago Sun-Times will soon be the latest paper to take the ax to book coverage. As I understand it, on Dec. 30 the book pages will move to the Sunday Show section, where there will be much less space, necessitating that most reviews will have to be confined to something like 250-300 words. If all this be true, my heart goes out to book review editor Teresa Budasi.
More here: Half as Much Fun. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I didn't see this until just now (I was preoccupied last night and this morning with finishing a review for Sunday.)
More here: Half as Much Fun. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I didn't see this until just now (I was preoccupied last night and this morning with finishing a review for Sunday.)
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Sad news ...
... Jane Rule has died. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
"... Ms. Rule retreated to her bed in the middle of November with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a bar of good chocolate on her bedside table, hundreds of love letters from friends and admirers and a circle of friends and family who cared for her physical needs."
Bravo, I say.
"... Ms. Rule retreated to her bed in the middle of November with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a bar of good chocolate on her bedside table, hundreds of love letters from friends and admirers and a circle of friends and family who cared for her physical needs."
Bravo, I say.
I wonder ...
... how many American writers of protest poetry would write it if this sort of thing were a real possibility for them: Poetry of Protest. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wise observations ...
... Q & A with wordsmith Gary Snyder. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Gee, I saw him read some three decades ago, and he notice he's, well, grown old - he's 77, 11 years older than I am. Gee, I've grown old, too. Bummer.
Here's Snyder's Once Only.
Gee, I saw him read some three decades ago, and he notice he's, well, grown old - he's 77, 11 years older than I am. Gee, I've grown old, too. Bummer.
Here's Snyder's Once Only.
Good heavens ...
... Bob Hoover is not only doing video, but has also decided to join me in the ranks of the bearded:
An interview with poet Sheryl St. Germain. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
An interview with poet Sheryl St. Germain. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Interesting picks ...
... a list of Movies better than the books that spawned them. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't think The Birds is one of Hitchcock's better films, actually, and I didn't much like The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (the film; I never read Benchley's book). I didn't like Carrie, either.
I don't think The Birds is one of Hitchcock's better films, actually, and I didn't much like The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (the film; I never read Benchley's book). I didn't like Carrie, either.
Something I missed ...
... Karl Kirchwey's review of Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music: Sifting through detail for myth and archetype.
Thank you, Maxine ...
... DigitalLit and innovation.
For many, I fear, innovation is one of those things they like to talk about. Or maybe write a trend story about.
For many, I fear, innovation is one of those things they like to talk about. Or maybe write a trend story about.
Bryan 'fesses up ...
... Time to Cry.
My colleague Carrie Rickey had a relevant blog post of her own about this recently: Tell Me Why You Cry.
I found myself crying at the end of A.S. Byatt's Possession. I can also remember crying a the end of Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey - which I read when I was a teenager. I cry at movies, too. What man could see Lonely Are the Brave and not be moved to tears at the end?
My colleague Carrie Rickey had a relevant blog post of her own about this recently: Tell Me Why You Cry.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Happy 150th ...
... to Joseph Conrad. (Hat tip, Dave Lull,)
See also The moral agent.
I think J.B. Priestley got it right when he described Conrad as "the novelist of lonely men who find themselves hard-pressed and try to do their duty, of unfamiliar and unfashionable heroes who, with some tragic exceptions, are genuinely heroic."
See also The moral agent.
I think J.B. Priestley got it right when he described Conrad as "the novelist of lonely men who find themselves hard-pressed and try to do their duty, of unfamiliar and unfashionable heroes who, with some tragic exceptions, are genuinely heroic."
Equally heartwarming ...
... Lapham’s latest folly. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“When I complicate the proceedings with a superimposition of marginalia reaching across a distance of fifty years and written while traveling in cities as unlike one another as Chicago and Havana, I can begin to guess at what the physicists have in mind when they talk about the continuum of space and time.” What can we say? Mr. Lapham has mastered the art of transforming sentences into little semantic train wrecks: They begin on track, but then swerve unpredictably.
“When I complicate the proceedings with a superimposition of marginalia reaching across a distance of fifty years and written while traveling in cities as unlike one another as Chicago and Havana, I can begin to guess at what the physicists have in mind when they talk about the continuum of space and time.” What can we say? Mr. Lapham has mastered the art of transforming sentences into little semantic train wrecks: They begin on track, but then swerve unpredictably.
Heartwarming ...
... Anthony Daniels on Kahlil Gibran: The false prophet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Try this:
Dip your oar, my beloved,
And let me touch my strings.
"It is impossible to plumb the shallows of this."or this:
Try this:
Dip your oar, my beloved,
And let me touch my strings.
"It is impossible to plumb the shallows of this."or this:
"Let me leave you with a typical Gibran aphorism:
"The flowers of spring are winter’s dreams related at the breakfast table of the angels."
"If that doesn’t nauseate you, you must subsist on a diet of marrons glacés: though there is, in fact, a big difference between Kahlil Gibran and marrons glacés. It is that the first mouthful of marrons glacés is delicious."
I once saw a television interview with Alfred Knopf during which that great publisher made a sort of confession. It seems there was only one book published by Knopf that he did not himself read beforehand. When that one book sold its millionth copy, he felt he ought to read it. And so he did. It was The Prophet. "I would never have published that book," Knopf told the interviewer. Its appeal is perplexing. It's the sort of thing that's so sweet that - to borrow a phrase from Alexander King - it makes every aperture in your body pucker.War Zone ...
... the New Republic looks at the plight of book reviewing:
Critical Condition.
The Battle of the Book.
... and the way it was: The Judge.
Critical Condition.
The Battle of the Book.
... and the way it was: The Judge.
My wish list ...
... Light up a reader's eyes.
Amazon's Kindle hadn't come out when I wrote this - and I haven't had the opportunity to use one. I have noted that it sounds better than the Sony Reader, though.
Amazon's Kindle hadn't come out when I wrote this - and I haven't had the opportunity to use one. I have noted that it sounds better than the Sony Reader, though.
If not culture ...
... then what?For Roger Scruton, Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In her spare time ...
... Joyce Carol Oates, well, writes: The Wand of the Enchanter. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Napoleon the writer ...
... id doing better than I am. See second item in Ed Champion's Roundup.
Ed, by the way, has thrown his hat in the ring: Edward Champion for NBCC Board Member.
Ed, by the way, has thrown his hat in the ring: Edward Champion for NBCC Board Member.
At Critical Mass ...
... Thinking About New Orleans: An NBCC Reading by and for New Orleans Writers.
There's more than just this one link. So click on the main page and scroll down.
There's more than just this one link. So click on the main page and scroll down.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Advent begins today ...
... so I thought I'd post a poem of mine that I wrote on the subject. It's a villanelle and it was published in Boulevard last year. The painting is by Sassetta.
Advent
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear
(Though winter’s scheduling an arctic flight).
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
Some say a telling sign will soon appear,
Though evidence this may be so is slight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Pale skeptics may be perfectly sincere
To postulate no ground for hope, despite
The rumor that a rendezvous draws near.
And, looking up, behold a striking light:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
The king, his courtiers, and priests, all fear
Arrival of a challenge to their might:
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
The wise in search of something all can cheer
May not rely on ordinary sight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Within a common place may rest one dear
To all who yearn to see the world made right.
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
© 2006
At the TLS ...
... Books of the Year. (Let's be honest: The Times Literary Supplement is hands down the premier book review. People who think they NYTBR is to any extent comparable aren't provincial; they're parochial.)
Today's Inquirer book page ...
... with everything from World War II to a medieval buddy tale.
Online aficionados may want to pay particular attention to Visit to LibraryThing can bring together readers and collectors.
Online aficionados may want to pay particular attention to Visit to LibraryThing can bring together readers and collectors.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Going to the source ...
... an interview with Ellen Baker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here, in case you missed it, is Susan Balée's review of Keeping the House.
Haven't had time ...
... to read this yet, but it's by A.S. Byatt, so it has to be worthwhile: Novel thoughts. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who also sends along Double input.)
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Paper war ...
... Go, Fodor.
"Over the years, I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to figure out which bits of Daniel Dennett’s stuff are supposed to be the arguments and which are just rhetorical posturing."
I think that, over the years, Dennett's "reasoning" has increasingly come to resemble thought disorder.
I like this, too: "... metaphors like ‘evolution selects for what Mother Nature intends it to’ have to be cashed. The rules of the game require respectable adaptationists to give an account of selection-for that doesn’t appeal to agency."
"Over the years, I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to figure out which bits of Daniel Dennett’s stuff are supposed to be the arguments and which are just rhetorical posturing."
I think that, over the years, Dennett's "reasoning" has increasingly come to resemble thought disorder.
I like this, too: "... metaphors like ‘evolution selects for what Mother Nature intends it to’ have to be cashed. The rules of the game require respectable adaptationists to give an account of selection-for that doesn’t appeal to agency."
A Poe reprise ...
... this is just out in paperback, I see, so I thought I's post the review of it we ran, since it seems tio have otherwise disappeared:
The Beautiful Cigar Girl
Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder
By Daniel Stashower
Dutton. 326 pp. $25.95
"The ingenious are always fanciful," Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed, "and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. " Fascinated with deductive thinking, Poe wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841, introducing readers to the brilliant, logical and reclusive detective C. Auguste Dupin, who enjoyed "the infinity of mental excitement" generated by his powers of observation.
Although he had written a masterpiece - a milestone in the genre of crime fiction - Poe understood the story's limitations. "Where is the ingenuity in unraveling a web," he asked, "which you yourself have woven for the express purpose of unraveling? " So, a year later, he gave himself a more challenging assignment: get Dupin to discover the murderer of real-life victim Mary Rogers before the New York City police solved the crime.
Well-crafted and suspenseful, Daniel Stashower's The Beautiful Cigar Girl recounts the lurid coverage of the crime by New York newspapers, which circulated rumors that Mary Rogers was alive and rushed to judge Joseph Morse, an engraver with muttonchop whiskers who beat his wife and was seen arguing with a young woman who looked like Mary. Parallel chapters describe a depressed, disputatious, dissolute but daring Poe as he (and Dupin) raced to trump reporters, cops and prosecutors with the factually fictional story "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt. " As the third installment of the tale went to press, Stashower reveals, investigators announced a break in the case. Rogers, they now believed, had died after a botched abortion at Nick Moore's Tavern, not far from Weehawken, N.J. And the perpetrator(s) had made it look as if she had been raped and strangled.
Stashower shows how Poe struggled to incorporate these developments into "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" without contradicting Dupin's already published analysis of the evidence. After a dazzling demonstration that the crime had been committed by a single individual and not a gang, the detective speculated that a naval officer was implicated in the murder. Marie (and Mary) had disappeared briefly three years before her death - and then returned to work at the tobacco emporium. The villain had, in all likelihood, seduced her, gone off to sea, and then returned to reclaim her. In dressing the victim after her death, he had used a sailor's knot to fasten her bonnet under her chin. Poe ended the story by alluding to but not identifying a clue that Dupin used to trace and apprehend the killer.
In an Agatha Christie-ish epilogue, Stashower rounds up the usual suspects - and points an accusing finger at each of them. John Anderson, the proprietor of the emporium where Mary had worked, he suggests, may have impregnated her - and then paid Poe to write "Marie Rogêt" to divert attention from him. Daniel Payne, Mary's fiance, who later committed suicide, may have killed her when she broke off the engagement after a successful abortion. Payne had an airtight alibi, but perhaps the murder did not take place until two days later. Perhaps Poe had inside information, gleaned from reporters, that a naval officer had indeed committed the crime. And then again there is the "intriguing speculation" that Poe himself did away with the cigar girl in a fit of "alcoholic insanity. "
Stashower, it seems, is exercising his Poetic license. Not long after he wrote "Marie Rogêt" Poe published a mock scientific treatise entitled "Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences. " "Rightly considered," Poe observed, diddling "is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin. " Daniel Stashower is a diddler. And in The Beautiful Cigar Girl he makes murder a beguilingly edifying and entertaining subject.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
The Beautiful Cigar Girl
Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder
By Daniel Stashower
Dutton. 326 pp. $25.95
"The ingenious are always fanciful," Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed, "and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. " Fascinated with deductive thinking, Poe wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841, introducing readers to the brilliant, logical and reclusive detective C. Auguste Dupin, who enjoyed "the infinity of mental excitement" generated by his powers of observation.
Although he had written a masterpiece - a milestone in the genre of crime fiction - Poe understood the story's limitations. "Where is the ingenuity in unraveling a web," he asked, "which you yourself have woven for the express purpose of unraveling? " So, a year later, he gave himself a more challenging assignment: get Dupin to discover the murderer of real-life victim Mary Rogers before the New York City police solved the crime.
Well-crafted and suspenseful, Daniel Stashower's The Beautiful Cigar Girl recounts the lurid coverage of the crime by New York newspapers, which circulated rumors that Mary Rogers was alive and rushed to judge Joseph Morse, an engraver with muttonchop whiskers who beat his wife and was seen arguing with a young woman who looked like Mary. Parallel chapters describe a depressed, disputatious, dissolute but daring Poe as he (and Dupin) raced to trump reporters, cops and prosecutors with the factually fictional story "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt. " As the third installment of the tale went to press, Stashower reveals, investigators announced a break in the case. Rogers, they now believed, had died after a botched abortion at Nick Moore's Tavern, not far from Weehawken, N.J. And the perpetrator(s) had made it look as if she had been raped and strangled.
Stashower shows how Poe struggled to incorporate these developments into "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" without contradicting Dupin's already published analysis of the evidence. After a dazzling demonstration that the crime had been committed by a single individual and not a gang, the detective speculated that a naval officer was implicated in the murder. Marie (and Mary) had disappeared briefly three years before her death - and then returned to work at the tobacco emporium. The villain had, in all likelihood, seduced her, gone off to sea, and then returned to reclaim her. In dressing the victim after her death, he had used a sailor's knot to fasten her bonnet under her chin. Poe ended the story by alluding to but not identifying a clue that Dupin used to trace and apprehend the killer.
In an Agatha Christie-ish epilogue, Stashower rounds up the usual suspects - and points an accusing finger at each of them. John Anderson, the proprietor of the emporium where Mary had worked, he suggests, may have impregnated her - and then paid Poe to write "Marie Rogêt" to divert attention from him. Daniel Payne, Mary's fiance, who later committed suicide, may have killed her when she broke off the engagement after a successful abortion. Payne had an airtight alibi, but perhaps the murder did not take place until two days later. Perhaps Poe had inside information, gleaned from reporters, that a naval officer had indeed committed the crime. And then again there is the "intriguing speculation" that Poe himself did away with the cigar girl in a fit of "alcoholic insanity. "
Stashower, it seems, is exercising his Poetic license. Not long after he wrote "Marie Rogêt" Poe published a mock scientific treatise entitled "Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences. " "Rightly considered," Poe observed, diddling "is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin. " Daniel Stashower is a diddler. And in The Beautiful Cigar Girl he makes murder a beguilingly edifying and entertaining subject.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Impartial, yes ...
... objective, no: The Nature of Objectivity.
I kept thinking, while reading this, of Thomas Aquinas's view of the intimate relation between knower and known, that the two are in fact one. Bear this in mind the next time you read Ulysses. Joyce was an avid Thomist, who read a page of Aquinas daily - in Latin.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Readability ...
... The Blog Readability Test. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You'll be pleased to know you only need an elementary school education to comprehend these ruminations. You have to have gone to Junior High to grasp Glenn Reynolds!
You'll be pleased to know you only need an elementary school education to comprehend these ruminations. You have to have gone to Junior High to grasp Glenn Reynolds!
I'm with Dawkins ...
... at least on this: Dawkins publisher may be tried for attack on 'sacred values'.
Storing knowledge ...
... When the Library Is Online: The Future of Knowing.
Grafton seems to be seeing an either/or proposition where a both/and exists. There is no reason why the digital library or digital books need to replace real books or real libraries. Nor will they. The good thing is that, when you find something you want to quote from a book, you will be able to find a digital version, which you can then copy and paste into a text you are writing - no need to type it all out by yourself. And that's just one example.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
I'm famous ...
... or notorious, or something: Bloggers' brunch at Profile books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"People were impressed that not only do I know Frank Wilson, evidently a highly respected and popular figure, but that I've reviewed books for his publication, the Philadelphia Inquirer."
Imagine that. I doubt if many people here can.
"People were impressed that not only do I know Frank Wilson, evidently a highly respected and popular figure, but that I've reviewed books for his publication, the Philadelphia Inquirer."
Imagine that. I doubt if many people here can.
Congratulations ...
... to Jesse Freedman, Friends Select School Upper School History Teacher and Hemingway scholar, who has been selected to present his paper, ‘“In the Dead Hours of the Night”: Edward R. Murrow, Ernest Hemingway, and Narrative Ego,” at the Thirteenth Annual Hemingway Conference, to be held in Kansas City on June 9-15, 2008.
Here's a link to The Hemingway Society.
Here's a link to The Hemingway Society.
Science and religion ...
... united in William Blake. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
View from the lab: Science's debt to William Blake.
Face to faith.
Happy 250th, Bill.
View from the lab: Science's debt to William Blake.
Face to faith.
Happy 250th, Bill.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Lots of good stuff ...
... over at Chekhov's Mistress - Zbigniew Herbert, Witold Gombrowicz, and more.
Can you believe it ....
... Blogosphere still uncharted entity for traditional media. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It certainly is uncharted territory for whoever wrote that editorial, which reads like a number of such that were written last year, or maybe the year before.
It certainly is uncharted territory for whoever wrote that editorial, which reads like a number of such that were written last year, or maybe the year before.
A short story ...
... The Cry Of The Peacocks.
The line from from Wallace Stevens's "Domination of Black" - "And I remembered the cry of the peacocks" - meant a good deal more to me when I heard what a hair-raising scream it is.
The line from from Wallace Stevens's "Domination of Black" - "And I remembered the cry of the peacocks" - meant a good deal more to me when I heard what a hair-raising scream it is.
Ah, yes ....
... Anne Fadiman on coffee: Bean and gone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Having observed the frisky goats, the imam of a nearby monastery - a sort of medieval Carlos Castaneda - roasted the berries in a chafing dish, crushed them in a mortar, mixed them with boiling water, and drank the brew. When he lay down, he couldn't sleep. His heartbeat quickened, his limbs felt light, his mood became cheerful and alert. "He was not merely thinking," wrote Jacob. "His thoughts had become concretely visible. He watched them from the right side and from the left, from above and from below. They raced like a team of horses." The imam found that he could juggle a dozen ideas in the time it normally took to consider a single one. His visual acuity increased; in the glow of his oil lamp, the parchment on his table looked unusually lustrous and the robe that hung on a nearby peg seemed to swell with life. He felt strengthened, as Jacob put it, "by heavenly food brought to him by the angels of Paradise."
Somebody should track down the imam's blend. Sounds potent.
A lot to ponder ...
... Judith Regan, Editor, & Bernard Kerik, Author, and the Case of the Missing Red Garter Belt. It’s All About the Thread Count.
Where is Choderlos de Laclos, now that we really need him?
Where is Choderlos de Laclos, now that we really need him?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Oh no ...
... Sabbatical. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Those who think blogging is easy, something you can just do in an odd few minutes, ought to consider this post and others like it that seem to pooping upo with increasing frequency. Or maybe they ought to try blogging for a while. At any rate, I think we can all agree that Michael's is, hands down, one of the absolutely best book blogs.
Those who think blogging is easy, something you can just do in an odd few minutes, ought to consider this post and others like it that seem to pooping upo with increasing frequency. Or maybe they ought to try blogging for a while. At any rate, I think we can all agree that Michael's is, hands down, one of the absolutely best book blogs.
Check out ...
... these.
"I rarely set out intending to write a poem," Art says. "Poems happen." I know what he means, though I wouldn't exactly put it that way. For me, what happens is an experience that, for some reason, strikes me as needing to be worked out, completed as it were, in a poem. There is something about the experience that demands as precise an utterance as I can manage. There may be nothing especially "poetic" about the experience. This morning, for instance, at Mass, the thought occurred to me that Biblical literalism and scientific materialism complement each other rather nicely. For the former words are merely signs and statements strictly one dimensional. For the latter everything is nothing more than its ingredients. One could explore this in an essay, but it came to me as a poem in potentia. Now comes the time of waiting and listening.
More reviews ...
... to be precise, More short reviews.
In particular, check out this: Bill Liversidge: A Half Life of One.
In particular, check out this: Bill Liversidge: A Half Life of One.
Art and aggression ...
... In salons for writers, beware giving a black eye to literature. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Interesting how intellectuals so often talk a good game about aggression.
Interesting how intellectuals so often talk a good game about aggression.
Today's Inquirer books page ...
... featuring Iceland, Vienna, and the first presidential campaign, and much more, including, in case you missed it, Maxine's take on The Reincarnationist and John Freeman's look at Denis Johnson's NBA winner.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
And you thought ...
... nuclear waste was hard to store. Well, take a look Inside the tomb of tomes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Choose your faith ...
... Taking Science on Faith. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"... both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.
"... the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency."
But suppose there is an external agency?
"... both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.
"... the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency."
But suppose there is an external agency?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Forget global warming ...
... seems we've screwed up the entire universe! Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'.
Oh, what can we do!
Oh, what can we do!
Speaking of Maxine ...
... she's rounded up some Reviews of Beowulf and reveals that Blogs move into the mainstream.
Wow ...
... Kindle looks pretty amazing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Only they're sold out.
Apologies to Maxine, though: Kindle fatigue.
Only they're sold out.
Apologies to Maxine, though: Kindle fatigue.
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