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.
April 18, 2008 – 10:48 pm
As suddenly and astoundingly as ever, it is Spring again in New York. The weather these past few days has been simple perfection, and the trees and flowers, having awakened in a celebratory mood, are getting about their morning’s work with extravagant exuberance. But not all is renewed, and even as the living world stirs […]
April 17, 2008 – 11:43 am
Having toiled at my Midtown office until 3:15 a.m. last night — and with a joint-locking seminar to attend this evening at the kwoon, and a long mixing session coming up on Saturday — published content may be rather thin these next few days. I apologize: in particular, I owe the estimable Deogolwulf a better […]
April 15, 2008 – 11:12 pm
What is strange to me now, after 15 years of steady Internet use — during which time an truly ungraspable immensity of information has become available to all — is when there is something I can’t get hold of online. Sometimes it is a particularly obscure quotation, or passage from a book that I would […]
If you’re like me, you like nothing better than tucking into a heaping plate of short-snouted seahorses. Problem is, they’ve become annoyingly rare. Well, I’ve got good news! Story here.
As a paternalistic and morally deficient bigot, I of course have a collegial interest in the ideological shortcomings of others — an interest that is not limited to my own species. So I was gratified when a recent item over at Dennis Mangan’s place led me to an engaging and informative piece about the extent […]
In a recent post, Silence!, we remarked upon the indictment of an Austrian politician, Susanne Winter, for her having suggested that there might have been a whiff of sexual impropriety in the Prophet Mohammed’s taking of the six-year-old Aisha as his wife (though to his credit, he did not consummate the marriage until she was […]
My friend Salim Ismail, with whom I have just enjoyed a delightful lunch, has introduced me to a marvellous website that I must share with you all. It’s called Idle Words, and features the writings of one Maciej Ceglowski, who seems to get around a bit. You can find it here, or from today forward, […]
One of the little advantages of living in the pre-Internet world was that it was far easier to flatter myself, in my cleverer moments, that I’d had an original idea. It now requires only a trivial exertion to confirm that I haven’t.
March 31, 2008 – 12:35 am
Like may others I am an admirer of Winston Churchill, and have lately been reading an excellent book by the managing editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham. It’s called Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, and as you can imagine from the title, it chronicles the enormously important friendship between Churchill and […]
March 28, 2008 – 10:23 am
The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has released his short film Fitna, which is harshly critical of Islam. If you are interested you can watch it online here.
March 25, 2008 – 12:35 pm
From our friend Jess Kaplan comes news of a new breed of bank robber. Story here.
This just in from The Borowitz Report: Amid calls for him to resign, embattled New York Governor Eliot Spitzer held a hastily-scheduled press conference in Albany today. “After much deliberation, I have decided to resign my membership in the Emperors VIP Club, effective immediately,’ Mr. Spitzer said. “I hope that in doing so, I will […]
Our friend, the inquisitive and irrepressible blogger and author Kevin Kim, is an American expat who has been living and teaching in Seoul for years. Now he is planning to return to the US for an ambitious project: a transcontinental walk to foster interreligious dialogue. He’s started a new website exclusively for this project: Kevin’s […]
February 29, 2008 – 10:05 pm
The conservative commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks offers us a remembrance of his mentor, the great William F. Buckley. Here.
February 27, 2008 – 1:44 pm
I’ve just learned that William F. Buckley has died. Story here.
February 25, 2008 – 2:51 pm
Here’s something useful, just sent to me by the lovely Mrs. Pollack: a website that lists hundreds of companies, with instructions on how to navigate through their automated telephone menus to get through to a real live human being. (How to get through to an intelligent human being, or one that cares whether you live […]
February 21, 2008 – 10:42 pm
After exhausting the subject in the comment thread of yesterday’s post, I’m not about to comment on the admittedly remote possibility of there being any whiff of political bias in the front-page, above-the-fold “human-interest story” about John McCain in today’s Times. (We’ll leave that to every other blogger and pundit west of the Azores.) So […]
February 20, 2008 – 11:23 am
Not surprisingly, Christopher Hitchens has weighed in with an article on the Rowan Williams dustup. I missed it when it came out on the 11th, but ran across it today.
February 17, 2008 – 11:28 pm
You, alive: a most unusual state of affairs. As far as we know, it happens only once in the whole lifetime of the Universe. Make the most of it.
February 17, 2008 – 8:30 pm
Sorry to have been off the air yesterday; a busy afternoon led to an evening at the theater (we saw a spellbinding production of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music). By the time we got home a post was simply not in the cards. I shall have to make a similar […]
February 14, 2008 – 10:54 am
Our friend Charles, proprietor of the website Liminality, shares with us his reaction to the deliberate destruction by fire of South Korea’s “Number One Treasure”, the ancient wooden gate known as Namdaemun. I was reminded of our own shock and horror here in Gotham at the obliteration of the Twin Towers, although of course the […]
February 12, 2008 – 6:32 pm
No post this evening; the lovely Nina and I are off to see The Seafarer. Back in harness tomorrow, or as time permits.
February 5, 2008 – 12:33 am
My son Nick asked me yesterday if I had ever heard of something called Morgellons disease. I hadn’t, so I looked it up online. It is, as they say in England, a rum business indeed.
February 3, 2008 – 12:52 pm
I note that once again, thanks to the visual acuity of a unusually long-lived rodent from the Keystone State, we may now expect a prolonged interval of wintry weather. While this bothers me not at all — I am far better constituted for cold weather than hot, and I dread, each year, the arrival of […]
February 1, 2008 – 11:48 pm
Here, from India, is an engaging example of spontaneous self-organization:
January 29, 2008 – 9:42 pm
In today’s mail our old friend Jess Kaplan has sent along a link to some breaking news about happiness. Apparently, according to a recent study by an international team of researchers, we are least happy in middle age: The British and U.S. researchers found that happiness for people ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe follows a […]
January 28, 2008 – 9:51 pm
Are you one of those people who listen to the news all the time? Think you have your finger on the pulse of the nation? If you answered “yes” to these questions, and are also a compulsive gambler, here’s your website.
January 25, 2008 – 10:13 pm
From our old friend Peter Kranzler comes a link to a wildly creative Dutch merchandising website. Have a look here.
January 22, 2008 – 10:50 pm
That video clip I linked to yesterday has reminded me of a small triumph from my boyhood.
January 21, 2008 – 10:53 pm
As sometimes happens, I’ve come to the end of a long day, and the well is dry. But a friend sent me a link that’s worth a few minutes of your time: some awfully dramatic footage taken by a group of tornado-chasers. (Best line: “Oh no… the structures…”) Have a look here.
January 18, 2008 – 11:43 pm
Here’s something I ran across the other day: the wartime letters of one William Henry Bonser Lamin, an English soldier who fought in World War I. His letters, found by a descendant, are being published 90 years to the day from the time each was sent home. We don’t know yet how things will turn […]
January 16, 2008 – 10:39 pm
Here is a short and disturbing story: The Riddle of the Universe and its Solution, by Christopher Cherniak. I sometimes wish I hadn’t read it.
January 13, 2008 – 1:10 am
I’ve had no time for writing, so no post today. But if you’d like a little more insight into yesterday’s Surprise Quiz Paradox and related matters, have a look here, here, and here. The great Martin Gardner (if you don’t know about him, you should) wrote a book long ago called The Unexpected Hanging and […]
January 9, 2008 – 4:05 pm
A co-worker just sent me this little brainteaser:
January 8, 2008 – 12:04 am
After twenty-five years or so of making my living in recording studios, I decided, a few years back, with two kids to put through college and the recording industry in ruins, to take up software engineering. I taught myself the programming language C++, and managed to get a new career off the ground (though I […]
January 6, 2008 – 10:31 pm
A little while ago I ran across an interesting, if rather sad, item in the Physorg.com daily newsletter, having to do with the small stature of pygmies. Previous notions had been that having such wee bodies better adapted them to food shortages, or to moving about in dense forests, but neither of these explanations has […]
January 5, 2008 – 10:34 pm
As each new year begins I enjoy looking back at all the search keyphrases that have brought readers by for a visit in the previous twelve months. According to my server’s statistics-gathering software, there were 1379 of them in 2007 (although, annoyingly, it only explicitly displays the first thousand). As usual, it’s an odd assortment, […]
January 4, 2008 – 11:29 pm
Our reader and commenter Charles, proprietor of the excellent weblog Liminality, has pointed out that the little “Captcha” feature that I am forced to use in order to block comment spam is a time-wasting nuisance. So I’d like to remind all of you that you can register here for a login of your own, which […]
January 4, 2008 – 11:14 pm
I apologize for my tendency to bang away on certain topics without respite sometimes; I’ve done this in the past with things like mind-body dualism, and seem to be on a bit of tear about religious faith lately. These issues really nag at me: they seem important, and religion in particular is far more than […]
January 2, 2008 – 11:54 pm
One of the most interesting features of the website Edge.org has been the Edge Annual Question, which each year presents a stimulating question to an assortment of the world’s brightest minds. Past posers have included What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?, What Questions Have Disappeared?, What Is The Most […]
December 31, 2007 – 11:49 pm
… is something I won’t be doing here. I just want to thank all of you once again for reading and commenting, and to wish all of you a splendid 2008. Warmest regards to you all!
December 27, 2007 – 12:40 am
After a full day at work, and an evening at the kwoon, it appears another day has got away from me. We will be traveling tomorrow, so it appears that, as they say, “blogging will be light” for a little while. Things might not get back to normal until after the New Year, though there […]
December 25, 2007 – 1:40 am
To all of you. I am very fortunate indeed to have such intelligent, friendly and gracious visitors, and I wish you all a wonderful holiday.