November 12, 2008 – 11:50 pm
At my age, I certainly don’t enjoy working fourteen-hour days, and right through the weekend — I had quite enough of that in my long years at the recording console (and have the receding hairline and sunken eyes to prove it). But that’s just what I’ve been doing: I have a deadline to meet, and, […]
November 10, 2008 – 9:50 pm
Work presses heavily upon me just now, leaving little time for anything else. Please feel free to wander about the archives, or try our new “Random Post” feature. Things should be back to normal in a day or two.
November 5, 2008 – 11:24 pm
I may look and sound pretty tough, but actually I’m a pushover. Beneath my gruff and menacing exterior I’m a sentimental old softie, a big ball of moosh. I’m particularly susceptible to movies: the tear-jerkers move me to unseemly and lachrymose upwellings of empathy, and the scary ones just beat the hell out of me. […]
November 1, 2008 – 3:01 pm
I have a fairly uncomplicated genealogy: Cornish, Scottish and Welsh (Pollock/Polk, and Lloyd) on my father’s side, and Scottish, back into the remotest mists of time (along the Calder/Cawdor and Morrison lineages) on my mother’s. (That my name is Pollack, not Pollock, is only due, as it turns out, to a paperwork error that happened […]
October 27, 2008 – 10:34 am
In today’s Wall Street Journal, economist Arthur Laffer (he of the famous Laffer Curve), tells us just how bad things are.
October 18, 2008 – 11:53 am
I apologize for the scanty content this weekend; we are in Wellfleet for the annual Oysterfest, and there has been little time for solitary scribbling. (This afternoon I will attempt to defend my title at the town’s annual Spelling Bee.) Back to normal later this week.
October 13, 2008 – 11:01 pm
It’s an unusually quiet night here in Brooklyn. The air on the deck overlooking my little garden is cool, dewy, and oddly fragrant; it feels more like California than Gotham. There is a full moon above, high in the sky and shining brightly through thin clouds; tonight a pale and glowing halo surrounds it, at […]
October 11, 2008 – 9:36 pm
My daughter ChloÁ« brings to our attention a short propaganda film made by Walt Disney in 1943. Called Education for Death, it explained to the American movie-goer just how Hitler’s totalitarian apparatus, having got hold of Germany’s children, turned them into obedient Nazi myrmidons. The film is apparently well known — it has a detailed […]
October 11, 2008 – 9:04 pm
The light-bulb joke is one of the tersest and most effective of all humorous forms. Always brief, in a few words it encapsulates some essential quality of its target, usually with stinging accuracy. For example: Q: How many feminist authors does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: That’s not funny! The “inconvenient […]
October 2, 2008 – 11:35 am
Reader Bob Koepp calls our attention to an interesting and informative essay. Its author, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson, makes the case that today’s banking crisis most resembles not the stock-market crash of 1929, but a European mortgage crisis that resulted from the so-called “American Commercial Invasion” of 1873. Have a look here.
October 1, 2008 – 11:15 pm
My apologies to all of you who might have visited today, or emailed me. My website and mailserver were down all day due to troubles at the hosting facility in Utah. I’ve had some bad luck in the past: when I started this blog back in 2005 I signed on with a company called 1GBHosting.com, […]
September 30, 2008 – 11:12 pm
If you have, at this point, had a bellyful of this economic crisis, and rather than dwell on it any longer, are sensibly off drinking heavily and reading something broadening, then please ignore this post. If not, however, here is another very interesting look at how we got into this mess.
September 30, 2008 – 9:52 pm
For those of you who still don’t quite get how we got into this mess: have a look here. (Be sure to click at lower left for full-screen mode, to best experience the incredible graphics).
September 24, 2008 – 10:20 am
Apparently Bluehost, the company that hosts this website, will be doing hardware maintenance this evening for a couple of hours starting around midnight EDT. We’ll be down during that interval.
September 17, 2008 – 10:41 pm
I try to keep my ear to the ground, which may account for my having missed an outré little story. Scientists from the Supernova Cosmology Project, who have been using the Hubble Space Telescope to scour the heavens for faraway stellar cataclysms, stumbled across something very odd.
September 14, 2008 – 11:16 pm
The other day I read a little article about Google’s News Archive Search service, and thought I’d take it for a spin. I wanted to search for something that wouldn’t have been written about much for a long time, so after a moment’s thought I typed in the name “Czolgosz”, which readers will remember as […]
September 11, 2008 – 11:48 pm
I headed home late from the kung-fu school this evening, and all the way along Eighth Avenue I could see the twin beams of light stabbing into the sky from across the river. They light them up every year: two colossal searchlights marking the place where all those people died, and the world changed, seven […]
August 26, 2008 – 11:30 am
Surrounded as I am by family and friends while on holiday, I continue to find time alone for writing to be in short supply. But here’s a gem for the “Shameless Filler” category: the “Old Perfesser” himself, the great Casey Stengel, testifying on July 8th, 1958 at the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearings. This […]
August 26, 2008 – 11:08 am
Here’s the latest in lethal technology: the wasp knife.
August 22, 2008 – 1:41 pm
A quiet, lazy midday having presented me with an opportunity to switch on my laptop, I thought I might, at the very least, offer those readers who’ve made the effort to stop by (and I think them for doing so) a tidbit or two.
August 16, 2008 – 10:07 pm
There seems to be little doubt that the world’s oceans are in trouble. Here in Cape Cod, which was named for shoals of fish once so numerous that you could “walk across the water on their backs”, the fishing industry is all but gone, the result of near-total depletion of a fishery that once seemed […]
August 14, 2008 – 11:17 pm
A reader calls our attention to an item that is making the rounds today: in a startling breakthrough, researchers have found that when we drink alcohol, it can make others appear more attractive! This astonishing result may even just be the tip of the iceberg: apparently booze can even make things just generally seem more […]
August 6, 2008 – 11:27 pm
I am eager to pick up our discussion of meaning and morality where it left off a week or so ago. It paused on what I thought was a promising note: a comment by Peter Lupu that aptly summarized the tasks a naturalist account must accomplish.
August 2, 2008 – 11:54 pm
Reader J. Kapok, knowing that I have been out of touch the past few days, and concerned that I not overdo it so soon after my recent misadventures, has kindly sent some blog fodder my way: items that he knows would have attracted my attention had I not been distracted by larger and more clamant […]
Well, it’s Friday afternoon, I’m back home, and it appears that I might not be “falling off the branch” just yet after all.
In the comment thread in the previous post I mentioned that I felt unwell enough to visit the hospital on Tuesday. I haven’t left yet. Here’s the story.
There seems to be something going round the blogosphere lately; a number of folks seem recently to be afflicted by a debilitating malaise, an enervating ennui, that has made it hard for them to carry out their duties. Dennis Mangan is on open-ended leave; Deogolwulf has expressed his own weariness with the undertaking; Bill Vallicella […]
I’ve been very busy with work and travel, so I might have scant time for attending to my duties here for the next few days (though I will as time permits). I have also been given plenty to mull over in our ongoing meaning-of-life dust-up. Back by Monday or so, if not sooner. Meanwhile, the […]
If, against all odds, I make it to the age of 80, I might have quite a birthday. A smallish asteroid called 99942 Apophis (which will also be making a close flyby the day I turn 73, on Friday, April 13th, 2029), might be blowing out my candles for me. Have a look here, and […]
It’s too late for a serious effort here tonight: the memsahib and I spent the evening in Prospect Park, enjoying the New York Philharmonic’s annual outdoor concert. It was a splendid event, and well worth the arduous half-block trek to the park. The weather, by some freak accident, was delightful, with balmy breezes and a […]
This afternoon the lovely Nina and I, realizing that today was our last chance, took in the Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum, which is just a short stroll from our home. If you aren’t familiar with Murakami’s oeuvre, it is both lighthearted and disturbing, playful and serious, and squashes high and low art, […]
There’s so much to talk about: politics, moral responsibility, and even the meaning of life. But these holiday weekends are so full of amusing diversions and distractions that it’s hard to get down to business — which, I suppose, is really not such a bad thing at all. So for now I’ll just wish you […]
Tonight, so soon after the death of Tim Russert, we must sadly note the death of another nimble and influential mind: George Carlin. He was only 71.
Being rather worn out tonight, I shall refrain from posting another political screed; I also have a busy day at work tomorrow, and shall have no time for responding to the inevitable reactionary hagiographies of whatever Progressivist huckster I might have chosen to poniard. I do feel the need, however, to take a moment to […]
We’re back in Gotham after a splendid visit to San Francisco (and a long break from blogging). The cool and breezy weather was a delightful respite for a thermophobe like me, and each day the lovely Nina and I walked for miles, hammering in pitons as needed, and rappelling down the steeper blocks. One of […]
We’re off duty for the next couple of days: the lovely Nina and I are enjoying a brief visit to San Francisco (look below the fold for a view of Nob Hill, with fog rolling in, as seen from the 12th floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel). But I did want to take time out […]
Off to the West Coast for a few days.
It is hard to write at the moment; all of us here in Gotham have been reduced to shambling, gibbering zombies by recent meteorological events. Just a few days ago — though it might as well have been decades, so utterly has the recent catastrophe effaced any lucid memory of happier times — all seemed […]
Well, we’re back. Our latest “Service Notice” post generated a reasonable question from reader Charles L., namely: why do I bother announcing that I won’t be posting? After all, it’s not as if the trains won’t be running, or the beer will stop flowing, and I realize it must seem a bit presumptuous to imagine […]
Sorry – between work, travel, and social obligations, there’ll be nothing new here until Sunday or Monday, most likely. Apologies as always.
After months of training and preparation, our friend Kevin Kim is now beginning his transcontinental walk, whose theme is interreligious dialogue. He’ll be starting his journey in British Columbia, and heading east. We can follow his progress at his website, Kevin’s Walk. This should be interesting.
Well, perhaps “nothing here until Friday at the soonest” was overly pessimistic; I’ll squeeze in one brief item. Following on our post about the pros and cons of conversing with one’s enemies, here is a relevant item from the opinion page of today’s Times, about JFK’s unwisdom in agreeing to the Vienna summit of 1961, […]
Due to a particularly grueling schedule Wednesday and Thursday, we’ll have nothing here, I’m afraid, until Friday at the soonest. I realize this has been happening more often of late, but there it is. At least there’s still no talk of a rate increase.
We’ll most likely be off the air until Sunday or Monday. Apologies to all.
From our old friend Dave Pauley comes a link to some extraordinary photos of the Chaitén volcanic eruption in Chile. As Dave points out in his note to me, a local villager could understandably think there were more than “merely” natural forces at work here. Have a look.
With a hat tip to our occasional commenter Addofio, here is the work of a most remarkable artist. Go have a look.
One of the main reasons that the USA, despite its ethnic diversity, has held itself together as well as it has (well, aside from that little scuffle back in the mid-1800’s) is that we all speak the same English language. But that’s only in the most general sense; American English takes a lush and delightful […]
April 25, 2008 – 11:45 pm
Sadly, today seems to have been entirely consumed by worldly distractions, and with a busy weekend coming up, we’ll likely be off the air until Sunday or Monday. Apologies to all.
April 22, 2008 – 11:17 pm
Our commenter Jeanie Oliver has asked why the overwhelming majority of comments at this website are from men, and I’ve often wondered the same thing. I know that there are more than a few female readers out there, and if you are one of them I just want to make it clear to you that […]
April 20, 2008 – 11:35 pm
…but not forthcoming, I am afraid. Worn out and feeling a little under the weather, I am neglecting my duties here for at least another day. Apologies to all.