February 2011
42 posts
“For the City, even more than the nation, lived on Change: rapid, ruthless,...”
– From Little, Big by John Crowley.
Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel are both talking about stagnation, so this passage from Crowley’s great novel came to mind. There may be some comfort to be had in the cyclical nature of these things, though: Crowley was writing (one one level) about the malaise...
January 2011
69 posts
“Backlit screens are something we’ve grown very used to without realizing what...”
– JDueck.Net : Calm Eyes Again One Day
You might also be interested in Joel’s other writing.
“After Sadat’s death, Egypt’s foreign policy reverted to something of a nullity....”
– Noah Millman in fine form.
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“Five Years’ Time” by Noah &...
“The coal boom has spurred a sackful of deals. The industry produced a record...”
– I’ve now lived through two coal booms. I must be old.
Watch
Parisian artist Etienne Lécroart designs comics that can be read upside down, backwards and inside out. He belongs to a group called OuBaPo, the Experimental Comics Workshop. [links added by me]
This guy’s monologue is an eloquent testimony to the place of formal constraints in art. “This really opens up our spirit.”
The True Deceiver
I will totally read The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson someday.
(via hilobrow.com )
From the Guardian:
After the enduring international success of her Moomintroll fantasies, the Finnish author-artist Tove Jansson, in her 60s, began to write adult fiction. It has taken a while for these books to get much attention outside Scandinavia. On the patronising assumption that books for children are...
“More than anything, I was struck last night by the generational aspect of the...”
– Our Stalingrad Moment - Ricochet.com
This generational angle is spot-on. Winning the Future plus Nostalgianomics isn’t pretty.
“Strikingly, liberal education is not only effective at enhancing student...”
– The Winner: A Liberal Education - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
If this jumble of bureaucratic bromides is representative of how the liberal arts defend their own relevance today, then it’s all over. “Essential learning outcomes are aligned with the skills most desired in...
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“…the great technological advances of our time are better at generating...”
– Apropos of the previous post, Reihan Salam brings the killing of the buzz.
City Probes for Time Capsule
(thinly-veiled excuse for using “probe” in a headline.)
My city buried a time capsule in 1962, and has since lost track of its location.
The news story describes the capsule as being buried on the grounds of the Charlottesville Circuit Court, then under construction, “outside the east wall of the building, just back of its front face.”
A combination of the photo that ran in...
WatchThe Mae Shi, Run to Your Grave
“PHP/FI was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, initially as a simple set of Perl...”
– PHP: History of PHP - Manual
As a technological artifact, PHP seems insanely boring. But it’s boring in part because of its ubiquity, which it earned by hitting a sweet spot between simplicity and power. When historians of technology look back at the internet’s early years, I hope...
“We Already Have the Technology to Turn Lead into Gold. Why Aren’t We Doing...”
– McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: TED Talks Throughout History.
“And doesn’t the parable possess greater integrity, greater righteousness...”
– From Europe Central, by William T. Vollmann. I started it, but happened to look up at the shelf and see Lonesome Dove, which I’ve never read and which has a better first paragraph. Europe Central thus resumes its shift on the nightstand.
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“Through such a deep and long portrait of one flawed yet devout Christian mother,...”
– My wife wrote this, and it’s good!
Under Her Heart: Motherhood in Kristin Lavransdatter | First Things
The Swing by Timothy Steele
She shrieks as she sweeps past the earth
And, rising, pumps for all she’s worth;
The chains she grips almost go slack;
Then, seated skyward, she drops back.
When swept high to the rear, she sees
Below the park the harbor’s quays,
Cranes, rail tracks, transit sheds, and ranks
Of broad, round, silver storage tanks.
Her father lacks such speed and sight
Though, with a push, he...
“This confusion is not the consequence of the secularization of marriage but of...”
– Tradition in the Age of Equality | James Poulos | Cato Unbound
A great thesis. It’s not secularization, but democratization that matters.
“The truth is that as remarkable as Steve Jobs has been in many ways—as a...”
– A World Without Jobs | Culture Making (via ayjay)
I think this is accurate. So, what time will the Bonfire of the Macs begin? And stand back, because the fumes from all that “secular form of hope” will be quite toxic.
“If you’re a thoughtful and unhappy young man, in other words, why...”
– Jared Lee Loughner’s Nietzsche: Why the philosopher is misunderstood by angry young men. - By Matt Feeney - Slate Magazine
“Here are three criteria which make sense to me when judging a tradition: Is it...”
– Beyond Liberalism | Eve Tushnet | Cato Unbound
“When ever I read some advocacy for distributism I’m invariably reminded of this...”
– Catholic Culture and Society: When ever I read some advocacy for distributism
“Very different from all this, the sympathy that Turgenev expressed for the...”
– How—and How Not—to Love Mankind by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Summer 2001
“Neither his fans nor his foes saw him clearly. The central fact of...”
– Nicholas Carr Reviews Douglas Coupland’s “Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing Of My Work!” | The New Republic