December 2011
“One of the two Republican senators to vote for the Udall Amendment yesterday was...”
– Citizen detainment: Why is the Senate so determined to allow the U.S. military to arrest and detain Americans? - Slate Magazine. Don’t remember the last time I agreed wholly with Dahlia Lithwick, but I do here. Yes, one could also blame the Democrats who have gone along, but let’s be...
why I returned my Kindle Fire
Biggest reason: I couldn’t find a comfortable way to hold the darn thing. The narrow bezel requires you to hold the device at its edges, or else you’ll turn pages or do something else on the touchscreen you don’t want to do. Also, the on-off switch is on the bottom, so if you use part of your hand to support it from below you’re always in danger of turning it off. So I...
November 2011
“Legislation is helpless against the wild prayer of longing that rises, day in,...”
– King Herod, in Auden’s For the Time Being
“Penn State lost a university president, a legendary head football coach, an...”
– Allen Barra
“At bottom, he says, the Germans were blind to the possibility that the Americans...”
– Michael Lewis
“What is notable about these would-be writers is how crest-fallen they are when...”
– What Editors Think of Writers. Some big ouches here. Though my own students have experienced far too much praise and far too little challenge, I’ve never found them as resistant to learning as these interns seem to be (assuming that this editor isn’t exaggerating for effect, which I...
“Nevertheless, Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said the agency would rather...”
– Fliers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but It’s Not Clear Why - NYTimes.com. So if you want to “err on the side of caution,” and you know what we all know — as Bilton mentions, there are millions of passengers each year who simply ignore the command — why not ban all electronic...
“Hollywood uses copyright law to shut down pirate movie theaters. Apple uses...”
– Timothy B. Lee
kids on a plane
So I (and several others) had a debate on Twitter today with Megan McArdle about children on airplanes. Megan’s basic argument, as expressed in this tweet and elsewhere is that, out of courtesy for others, parents of small children should avoid bringing them onto airplanes except when absolutely necessary. Here’s why Megan is wrong:
1) The vast majority of small children on airplanes make no...
“While I think one has to be careful about giving the poor a pass for immoral...”
– Rod Dreher » Greed: A tale of two classes
“Kahneman never grapples philosophically with the nature of rationality. He does,...”
– Jim Holt
“This last example suggests why the J.F.K. cult matters — because its myths still...”
– Ross Douthat
“We shall see where this goes, but in the meantime the Via Meadia advice to...”
– Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia (via wwnorton)
“It was said of Socrates, that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit...”
– Joseph Addison
“As a writer of science fiction — a label he tried strenuously to shed, not...”
– Christopher Buckley. So on what grounds does one assume that a writer of science fiction is supposed to support the U.S. space program? Do writers sign some sort of pledge when they produce SF novels to cheerlead for moon shots, and I’ve just been unaware of this?
This song does my soul good. The great Martin...
“Bodhidharma’s alleged interview with the Emperor Wu of Liang is typical of his...”
– Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
“It is likely that one day we will know much more about how economies work (or...”
– How neuroscience is transforming our understanding of economics. - Slate Magazine
“Today, however, a new breed of young intellectual historian is aiming to...”
– Embattled Intellectual Historians Make a Stand - NYTimes.com. I hope this is a real movement, because basically the history of ideas is the only thing I’ve ever done. Well, you know, professionally.
“Now the pathos involved in the triumph of the therapeutic is this: One reason to...”
– Another major provocation from A Secular Age.
“If we think of the three levels of human linguistic-communicative activity in...”
– An incredibly important, endlessly provocative passage from Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.
“At the moment of their earliest adulthood, Gen Xers were entering an economy...”
– Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus
CERN Gets Closer to Proving It Broke the Light... →
New tests at the European science facility CERN yet again confirm the results of their prior experiment which showed faster-than-light particles, reports the BBC and The Washington Post. Back in September, CERN scientists clocked neutrinos — funky, ghostly particles that pass through every square inch of Earth billions of times a second — at 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Sixty...
“Remember too that the battle for full equality will be won in the political...”
– Jonathan Rauch: The Emerging Gay Majority. See Rod Dreher’s comments here.
“So to celebrate the Bible of 1611 is not to genuflect before a timeless...”
– Celebrating the 1611 King James Bible | Rowan Williams
“The college sports myth machine definitely needs a new gear. Because even...”
– Leading Off: Krzyzewski Milestone Can’t Lift College Sports - NYTimes.com
I see no reason to think that the sinkhole is giving way. I see no evidence that “the demise of the whole system” is imminent or even on the far horizon. I have said it before and will say it one more time:...
“When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth:...”
– Martin Amis
“This is what happened with Assassin of Secrets, or Spy Safari. It started out as...”
– Quentin Rowan, explaining to Jeremy Duns his reasons for plagiarizing. The really amazing thing here: Rowan just owns up to it. He says, Yep, I stole other people’s work. I mean, nobody does that these days. Everybody strives for plausible deniability, from Jerry Sandusky on down, and when...
“At about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, a police officer told me and about eight other...”
– “The Grass Is Closed”: What I Have Learned About Power from the Police, Chancellor Birgeneau, and Occupy Cal « zunguzungu
“I firmly believe that one of the pressing unsolved technological problems of the...”
– Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka » Blog Archive » RSS died for your sins
“So, does neuroscience mean the death of free will? Well, it could if it somehow...”
– Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will? - NYTimes.com
“Note that there is a group of people with a vested interest in pushing the...”
– The Volokh Conspiracy (via wwnorton)
“High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched...”
– Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search | Magazine
“[Erik Brynjolfsson] and his co-author Andrew McAfee took their analysis to its...”
– Virginia Postrel
“Indeed, Bezos doesn’t consider the Fire a mere device, preferring to call it a...”
– Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think | Magazine
“Last week, some mediocre California mayoress announced that she wasn’t going to...”
– Rudyard Kipling’s war poetry, the obligations of Veterans Day, and Gayle McLaughlin. - Slate Magazine. This is why Christopher Hitchens, for all his arrogance and error, is irreplaceable.
“Nashville might seem like an archetype of the death-of-the-bookstore-everywhere...”
– The End of Borders and the Future of Books - Businessweek
I fixed college sports. You're welcome. →
“In the 1950s I was an athlete. Those were the days before joggers clogged the...”
– Alan Garner | Books | The Guardian
“When cars entered the fray, the fact that their owners were usually rich added...”
– Streetscapes — The Pedestrian Loses the Way - NYTimes.com
“Before the crisis years of the AIDS epidemic I had that sense that one does of a...”
– Mark Doty
“I’ve got a good bit of student-loan debt myself, acquired studying philosophy in...”
– Will Wilkinson
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, “What a Friend...
