bottlerocketscience

Links for Later 1-27-12

2012-01-27T19:21:00.001-05:00

Shannon Larratt's recommendation for Spoonflower custom printed fabric
How To Build a TARDIS
Trying to fix Pakistan's schools
StatSilk World Bank lets you do geographic comparisons of global macroeconomic indicators
Typography in Illustrator by Smashing Mag
New, hi-rez images of the Earth from satellite
Freud in the Adirondacks
Great one-handed catch by a ballboy at the Australian Open
Elsevier's economic case is hollow
Blade Runner Blues cover
Morgellon's disease update
Effects of a media diet
How right-handed sugars emerged from left-handed amino acids in the early organic environment
Fans willen Edwin Bouwhuis terug
Chris Dodd and MPAA in trouble over SOPA/PIPA

Stop SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T08:15:00.000-05:00

If you can read this, the Internet isn't dead yet. It's under immediate threat from a pair of bills currently working their way through Congress. Both SOPA, the House version, and PIPA, the Senate version, were bills written by Big Entertainment under the cover of "anti-piracy" efforts. What they are instead is anti-competitive, anti-free speech and anti-public use. Take the time to find out more at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, read the bills, and contact your Senators and Congressman to tell them to take their hands off the Internet.

If you enjoy reading this blog, and thousands of other sites across the web, you owe it to yourself to take action today.

Thanks.

Links for Later 1-11-12

2012-01-13T16:29:00.001-05:00

Rev. Roger Williams, the foundation of Rhode Island, and the foundation of the separation of church and state in America
Creating guilloche patterns in Illustrator
Wes Anderson style stationery, movie festival marketing

The Future is Now, Vol. LXXXV: The Skin Cell Gun

2012-01-13T16:23:00.000-05:00

Jörg Gerlach's skin cell gun is supposed to be able to replace burned skin within four days. One of the most amazing cell culture applications I've ever seen:

Opportunities

2012-01-11T11:40:00.002-05:00

Every time you want to make any important decision, there are two possible courses of action. You can look at the array of choices that present themselves, pick the best available option and try to make it fit. Or, you can do what the true entrepreneur does: Figure out the best conceivable option and then make it available.

-Jon Burgstone and Bill Murphy

Breakthrough Entrepreneurship

as quoted by Eric Schurenberg in

"What's an Entrepreur? The Best Definition Ever"

The Anti-SOPA Ad

2012-01-11T10:37:00.001-05:00

Reddit is doing an anti-SOPA boycott on the 18th, and there are rumors that Google, Twitter and Facebook may do so as well.

Trouble is the Essence of Entrepreneurship

2012-01-10T20:48:00.001-05:00

Colbert’s co-conspirator in those days was the director and playwright Dexter Bullard, who would call him up and say, “Do you want to get in trouble?” Getting in trouble meant hiring a hall, inviting some critics and then picking a play — something by Havel, say, whom they had barely heard of — and learning it and putting it on in a week or so.

-Charles McGrath

"How Many Stephen Colberts are There?"

Michel Thomas, The Language Master

2012-01-09T17:14:00.000-05:00

Michel Thomas created a novel method of language instruction, in which students are instructed to relax and to make no effort to remember any of what they learn. The result is supposed to be effective learning of the language in hours or days rather than years.

In Nigel Levy's documentary for BBC2, Thomas teaches a group of London secondary school students to speak conversational French in five days.

This past week, I used Michel Thomas' recordings to learn Italian. After two hours, I certainly seemeed to learn something. I seem to have picked up a fine bit of Italian, and unexpectedly also found I was able to read in French with greater ease.

Oh, the Places You'll Go at Burning Man

2012-01-08T14:31:00.002-05:00

Dr. Seuss meets the Burners. Wheeeeeeee!
(via boingboing)

Links for Later 1-6-12

2012-01-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

How to make a model of your house from a photo and put it in a snowglobe (via boingboing)
Lamar Smith chooses the "Lie & Deny" strategy to defend SOPA

State of the World

2012-01-06T15:54:00.002-05:00

Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowski are back for the 2012 State of the World discussion, and they're spinning memes at a furious pace. A sample:

The "Caste." Since Italy has had a very low birthrate for a very long time, it's dawning on people that everybody in power is amazingly old and that young people can't get a job or a house. Since the guys at the top of the heap never really leave power or change their policies, they are increasingly decried as the "Caste." Unfortunately for theyoung, old people vote very regularly and aren't gonna vote against themselves. Japan suffers a similar political helplessness; there's just not enough fresh blood to renew the state. It's gerontocracy in action and it's getting worse. Italy now has a "technocratic" emergency government, but they're all old guys.

It's all good. Go now and join in over on the WELL.

Haut Nerd Home Design

2012-01-04T20:58:00.003-05:00

Author Christopher Paolini lives with his family, collects swords and makes chainmail in his spare time. In short, he's a champion fantasy author and he lives it. Good for him.

Here's his house, dragon sculptures and all.

Livraria Lello & Irmão

2012-01-03T20:46:00.002-05:00

Beautiful bookstore in Oporto. That staircase alone is worth a trip. (via @magsarty)

Links for Later 1-3-12

2012-01-03T20:15:00.002-05:00

Tim Ferriss Accelerated Learning at the Long Now
Leadership and solitude
Marvelous sentences: "Actor Peter Dinklage, who plays a dwarf on the show, has become the poster child for sodomy among the nation's youths."
Yes, that last link is satire, people.

Links for Later 1-2-12

2012-01-02T18:37:00.001-05:00

Henry Rollins shows vacation slides of Afghanistan, Iran, Burma and other unlikely places from his new book of photography
Who knew that fracking could cause earthquakes? WHO KNEW?
Hey, girl, Ryan Gosling talks about rhetoric
Ricardianomics Roundup
More Ricardianoid Throwdown with Noah Smith, who says 'tis not Say's Law, but dY/dG=0 at the heart of the matter
John Cochrane hath a blog, sure to make Paul Krugman dance for joy

Larry Lessig on the Lost Republic

2012-01-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

Thesis: The Republic after the meaning of the founders has been distorted by corruption. It is no longer brown bag corruption, as it was in earlier times; it is now a corrupt system with ostensibly honest people inside.

Here's his interview with On Point, in which he discusses this same corrupting system of money, politics and influence.As a sidenote, this talk is a good example of the fast-slide PowerPoint method Lessig uses, which requires careful synchronization of his talk with his slides.

Mike DeStefano - Uneasy Rider

2012-01-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

A story about living while dying.The NYT/This American Life version can be read here.

The Power of Ideas

2011-12-30T15:21:00.003-05:00

Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea.

-Grant Morrison

Supergods

Quote of the Day

2011-12-30T15:15:00.003-05:00

“Should we trust models or observations?” In reply we note that if we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, but unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.

-Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2005

from the lesswrong list of rationality quotes

List of Best of Lists 2011

2011-12-30T15:15:00.000-05:00

A non-exhaustive, highly idiosyncratic list that will be expanded as new lists are encountered:

Best of The Morning News
Top 10 Longreads
Marginal Revolution's most popular posts
Kirkus Review's best books
Tom Eisenmann's favorite posts on running startups
Mark Morford's favorite albums
lesswrong's rationality quotes
The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup of best blog posts
Everything is Miscellaneous' Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten Lists

The Year in Reading 2011

2011-12-30T15:02:00.002-05:00

Since 2006, I've been keeping a list of all the books I've read. I don't know whether I want to keep doing this, as it makes me feel like I'm reading less rather than more, trying to finish books that might just as well be left aside, and leaving aside critical books that really ought to be read immediately. The quality of reading takes a backseat to the quantity. Meh.

On the other hand, it's great to look back on the list itself for surprises and reminders. Can it really be that I hadn't read Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear or Helen DeWitt's amazing book The Last Samurai until this year? (If you haven't read these yet, go get them.) Other highly recommended fiction includes Lev Grossman's The Magician King, Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints, and Neal Stephenson's Reamde.

This was also the year when I read Tim Ferriss's two books, and tried a lot of the self-help methods described in The Four Hour Body. Most of his recommendations still sound like hucksterism but actually work, as opposed to most books on similar topics, which sound reasonable but turn out to be bushwah. Also, Ferriss makes you want to get up and do something about your life. Other excellent books that made me want to get up and move were The Chairs are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, a book about a man who teaches people how to play charades and how to get your neighbor's bar to be quiet, or something like that; and Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, on how to stop procrastinating (become a professional) and start writing.

Speaking of procrastination and other low-level personality issues, and also speaking of writing, check out Alice Flaherty (The Midnight Disease), Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched by Fire, Exuberance), and John Gartner (The Hypomanic Edge) on how hypomania, temporal lobe epilepsy, and other disorders made writers, scientists and entrepreneurs a bit more of what they are, and will make you wish you were a tiny bit mad. For the film version of this, go see Limitless. Grant Morrison's Supergods is a hypomanic book as well.

Other notable books on economics, psychology and entrepreneurship: James Gleick The Information, Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow, which may well be the most important book of the year, Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants, Steven Johnson's The Innovator's Cookbook.

Four tremendous books on people: Edmund DeWaal The Hare with Amber Eyes, Alexander Theroux The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, which I haven't seen in anyone else's Best Of list, but which quite frankly belongs on everyone's, and Derek Jarman's diaries from the end of his life: Smiling in Slow Motion. If you want to read someone's thoughts on living and loving while dying, all in lapidary prose and great good humor, this one is the book for you.

Kelly Link & Gavin Grant

2011-12-30T13:50:00.001-05:00

Two very good interviews with Small Beer Press's Kelly Link & Gavin Grant have surfaced lately: one from 2010 on some of Kelly's writing methods that she's adopted from other writers (ask your subconscious for ideas, put in things you like from other stories, write a lot of first sentences and select the best), and the other from author Alma Katsu (endpaper notes) with both Grant and Kelly about how to run a small press ("odd-shaped books" that others won't publish, but that match your taste are a good bet [if you've got good taste].)

I really like the list of things to put in stories: "fraught family dynamics", "people who make things", "electrical outages". The fifty first lines idea reminds me of the pottery class described by Malcolm Gladwell where the professor grades by the number of pots made, rather than the quality, and ends up with better results.

I also think that Small Beer is one of the most interesting publishers in America, both from the standpoint of the many great books they've brought onto the market, but also in their overall business model as an indie publisher. They produce quite a lot for their size, seem to be profitable, and have a good reputation with both customers and authors.

More: I don't remember whether I have already posted this interview with Link called "All Books are Weird"from Weird Fiction Review.

The Incense Game

2011-12-28T20:43:00.002-05:00

Now there is a perfume I’m working on that’s inspired by The Tale of Genji that will be made from extremely rare ingredients. It will be fabulously expensive because they’re incredibly hard to get. Much of it has to do with the Japanese ritual of burning incense. There are two words for it: one’s the ritual of burning incense and the other is a game where incense is burned and people are asked either to identify or they’ll burn various things and try to combine a smoke that’s really beautiful. Or people will talk about poetry or literature or what the smell the smoke inspires in them. That was very popular at the time that The Tale of Genji was written.

-Christopher Brosius

in an interview with Bookriot

about his perfume "In the Library"

Winter is Coming

2011-12-28T20:09:00.002-05:00

(via rcs)

Hello, Old Sexy!

2011-12-28T16:46:00.000-05:00

She's wearing a TARDIS.

(via f-yeah Grant Morrison)

Links for Later 12-27-11

2011-12-27T18:51:00.001-05:00

China Mieville on hauntology
Freeman Dyson is no psychologist
Twinless twins
Giordano Bruno On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas
"Two Lectures on the Size, Shape and Location of Dante's Inferno By Galileo"

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom)

2011-12-26T09:44:00.001-05:00

Mashup king DJ Earworm presents the year of pop music, compressed, remixed and summarized.

Terry Gilliam's Christmas Card

2011-12-22T19:26:00.003-05:00

(via Dangerous Minds)

Links for Later 12-21-11

2011-12-21T15:34:00.001-05:00

The Power of Living in Truth: a Vaclav Havel appreciation
Mark Thoma: The Economic Divide Makes Everyone Poorer
Adam Savage on SOPA/PIPA
Al Jazeera on Bradley Manning
How hard does James Franco work at Yale?
Neal Pollack knew Christopher Hitchens better than you
More on the Egyptian library fire
Yet more

1% Feeling Put-Upon

2011-12-21T14:49:00.001-05:00

Max Abelson reports some solipsistic quotes from members of the 1% who are quite unhappy with their lot in life. Income inequality will do that to a person, especially at the top. The more you make, the more insecure you are that you're going to be able to keep making it--your income volatility goes through the roof, and small changes in your relative ranking have big impacts on how well you do.

Nassim Taleb's fragility of the power law hits hard no matter where you sit. Joshua Brown (Reformed Broker) sees this other side of inequality. Being smart about investing (or anything) is no longer any guarantee of success. The market will eat your lunch.

This common problem of the rich and poor under conditions of high inequality is an idea I'll be working with over the coming year.

Egyptian Scientific Institute Burns Down

2011-12-21T14:38:00.004-05:00

In a bizarre modern reinactment of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the Egyptian Army and police fired on protestors who attempted to rescue some of the 198,000 volumes contained at Egypt's largest library as the library building burned down. Other protestors had previously thorwn Molotov cocktails onto the neighboring Shura Council building.

Photo: unknown, citation wanted.

A Very Calvin & Hobbes Christmas

2011-12-19T21:57:00.004-05:00

"We miss you, Bill."Jim Frohmmeyer and Teague Chrystie discuss the snowman recreation process here.

Looking Toward 2012

2011-12-16T15:51:00.001-05:00

I really don't like that my choices in the upcoming election will be between one candidate who will betray the things I believe in, civil liberties, progressive taxation, etc., etc., etc., and a crazy person from the other side (take your pick) who will be even worse.

-Mark Thoma

on the Caver in Chief

also: This.

Links for Later 12-16-11

2011-12-16T15:36:00.001-05:00

A sampling of Japanese kamon (family crests)
A selection of Christopher Hitchens articles and talks from The Browser
Slate's collection of Hitchens articles
Hitchens' Mark Daily memorial article
A short Kelly Link interview
SOPA markup delayed indefinitely
SOPA only supported by astroturfers and industry flacks?
Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing begins
Gingrich proposes abolishing Article III of Constitution to save America from having judges

RIP Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T10:32:00.001-05:00

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Year in Film

2011-12-14T21:27:00.001-05:00

Links for Later 12-11-11

2011-12-11T19:48:00.001-05:00

Kay Nielsen's fairy tale illustrations are beautiful
Basquiat's hair
Charlie Hoehn on working for free to work the way you need to
Growing frankincense
Update on the Bradley Manning trial: military objects to 38 of 48 proposed witnesses, tries to select "embedded" journalists. Who's running the prosecution of this thing, Vladimir Putin?
"Full Unconcealed Panic"
SOPA and Protect IP Act explained again
LAPD acts illegally against Occupy LA

Quote of the Day

2011-12-11T19:31:00.001-05:00

The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, isunsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, andclearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibipermissus, the understanding which has made up all its bundles ofassociations under the guidance of popular phraseology. Theclose, searching elenchus by which the man of vague generalitiesis constrained either to express his meaning to himself indefinite terms, or to confess that he does not know what he istalking about; the perpetual testing of all general statements byparticular instances; the siege in from which is laid to themeaning of large abstract terms, by fixing upon some still largerclass-name which includes that and more, and dividing down to thething sought -- marking out its limits and definition by a seriesof accurately drawn distinctions between it and each of thecognate objects which are successively parted off from it -- allthis, as an education for precise thinking, is inestimable, andall this, even at that age, took such hold of me that it becamepart of my own mind. I have felt ever since that the title ofPlatonist belongs by far better right to those who have beennourished in, and have endeavoured to practise Plato's mode ofinvestigation, than to those who are distinguished only by theadoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from theleast intelligible of his works, and which the character of hismind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regardedas anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures.

-JS Mill

Autobiography

Your Christmas Shopping List

2011-12-07T19:34:00.000-05:00

"Eye removal kit, daddy butter, caramel yak, Fancy Boy lip glitter"
Wonderfully silly--I laughed until I cried. Still, I think the pre-made toast could be a big seller.
(via boingboing)

Chairman Bruce

2011-12-05T19:32:00.001-05:00

Two talks from Bruce Sterling. STRP 2011:
Bruce Sterling - Symposium Playful Post Digital Culture (STRP 2011) from STRP Festival on Vimeo.
2011 Arts & Entertainment Conference

Foster the People - Helena Beat

2011-12-02T18:41:00.001-05:00

Oooweeowooo.

2011-12-02T18:39:00.001-05:00

Just passed the 2000th post on this blog since moving to the new platform. I know you're as thrilled about this as I am.

A Modest Proposal

2011-12-02T18:21:00.001-05:00

Any member of Congress who votes to lock up American citizens without charges or trial should themselves be locked up without charges or trial under the terms of the law, as they are clearly terrorists intending to subvert the American way of life.

By extension: any member of Congress who votes for any prima facie unconstitutional measure should be immediately subjected to the penalties for such a measure.

Links for Later

2011-12-02T18:07:00.001-05:00

What Tim Tebow can't do
Cutbacks demolishing the New York Public Library
Lunch with Stewart Lee
Any member of Congress who votes to lock up American citizens without charges or trial should themselves be locked up without charges or trial
Time for me to fly
SOPA compromise in the wings?
Matt Damon talks about water.org
Lululemon lives to regret those stupid John Galt bags
Automating your startup with Wicked Start
Your smartphone is tracking your every move. Lawsuits pending
Military spending multiplier < Domestic spending multiplier
Mohawk Movember with Kellan Lutz

Asset Diversification Fail

2011-12-02T17:52:00.001-05:00

Since 2000, according to a Morgan Stanley review, excess return of hedge funds (alpha) has dropped from 16% to -1%, while correlation of hedge funds with stock indices has gone from ~0.5 to ~0.9 (from moderately to highly correlated). In other words, except for global macro funds, hedge funds are no longer beating index funds, and in fact are no longer really hedging much of anything.

We always used to joke that "hedge fund" wasn't really a separate class of assets, but just a marketing strategy that allowed managers to extract 2 and 20 from their customers. With numbers like these, those extracting days are numbered.

Utilitarianism Revisited

2011-12-01T12:24:00.001-05:00

This new Sam Harris interview of Daniel Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow has a high density of good material for such a short sample. All of it is worth reading. Of particular interest is the impact of "the experiencing self and the remembering self" on conceptions of utility and the good life.

Some conceptions of the good life take the Aristotelian view to the extreme of denying altogether the relevance of subjective well-being. For those who do not want to go that far, the distinction between experienced happiness and life satisfaction raises serious problems. In particular, there appears to be little hope for any unitary concept of subjective well-being. I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness. I eventually concluded that this view is not tenable, for one simple reason: people seem to be much more concerned with the satisfaction of their goals than with the achievement of experienced happiness. A definition of subjective well-being that ignores people’s goals is not tenable. On the other hand, an exclusive focus on satisfaction is not tenable either. If two people are equally satisfied (or unsatisfied) with their lives but one of them is almost always smiling happily and the other is mostly miserable, will we ignore that in assessing their well-being?

I love this. It gets at the root of a very long argument in a new way by looking at the texture of thought and consciousness. The Thinking book (and Kahneman's body of research) is full of exactly this sort of insight, and is one of the few books I've read on the subject that treats with decision-making and strategy while avoiding beginners mistakes in understanding general psychology. One of the best books of the year.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil DeGrasse Tyson

2011-11-30T12:46:00.001-05:00

(via kottke)

The Archaic Revival Revived

2011-11-28T15:06:00.001-05:00

The psychedelic brew ayahuasca, developed by the indigenous people of South America and used as a sacrament by the syncretic Santo Daime religion, is gaining in popularity in the US. Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) has a memoir on the subject coming out next year, spiritual searchers are holding shamanic sessions with the drug in New York yoga studios. The McKenna brothers would be proud.Alistair Appleton, TV presenter, meditation teacher and ayahuasca enthusiast, did a 30 minute documentary, "The Man Who Drank the Universe", and condicts regular retreats in Brazil to experience the drug. He's uploaded a "shiny, new" digital print to Vimeo:
The Man Who Drank the Universe from alistair Appleton on Vimeo.

Links for Later 11-28-11: Polyglots

2011-11-28T14:24:00.001-05:00

Vladimir Skulkety speaks 11 languages. Here's his blog
Mike Campbell ("Glossika" on YouTube) is learning 18 indigenous Taiwanese languages in 4 months, and speaks a number of others
"Charley Cheer" speaks 6 languages
A forum for polyglots & language students
Alexander Arguelles reads/speaks a phenomenal number of languages present and past within the Germanic and Romance language groups, as well as a smattering of others

For my Brother Esau is an Hairy Man

2011-11-25T20:45:00.001-05:00

Alan Bennett - "Take a Pew"In which an Anglican priest delivers a most remarkable sermon.

Saved by an Idea

2011-11-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Grant Morrison, in Supergods and elsewhere, says that the idea of The Bomb nearly drove him to despair, but that the idea of Superman saved him by being a better idea. Helen DeWitt, in today's interview with the LA Review of Books, says that she was saved by the idea of Oxford in a similar way:

When I started college I thought I would now lead the life of the mind, rather than making good grades. It wasn’t like that. I hated the intellectual mediocrity, I did not know how to find something better; I attempted suicide for the first time at 19. Afterwards I asked myself: Is there anything, anything at all, that would make it a good thing that I did not die? And I thought: If I could go to Oxford, where the life of the mind is taken seriously, that would make it a good thing. Years later a psychologist told me it was not necessary to commit suicide when alienated by intellectual mediocrity: He had gone to Cornell, with its frat culture, but he had found one friend and it had been all right. He asked me why dealing with my publishers had led to a suicide attempt, and I said, well, if a book is technically challenging it is hard to get it through the machine, but if you want to write a work of genius it is necessary to take risks. He said: Your sanity is more important than writing a work of genius. I thought: Nobody who thinks that will ever write a work of genius. I thought: We all die sooner or later.

What I mean is. The Oxford of my imagination was not the Oxford of the actual world. But going to Oxford did transform me intellectually; it was the absolute impossibility of staying where I was, the ability to imagine something better, and the ability to work very hard for it, that took me there. In that sense the Oxford of my imagination was more powerful than the real university: I was trying to live by the standards of something that I had made up in my head, a place where everyone had read Proust in French, every classicist read the whole of Greek tragedy in the original….

Go and read the whole thing. Perhaps you will be saved by it. Who can tell? We are fortified in this life by the strangest and most happenstance of things.

Stanford Open Classes

2011-11-22T15:55:00.001-05:00

What a great lineup of classes from Stanford, all available for free. I'm taking the Lean Startups one with Steve Blank, and maybe the Graphical Models one.

Links for Later 11-22-11

2011-11-22T14:34:00.001-05:00

Jeremy Renner's weird career
Unemployment by college major (don't worry about it)
Rep. Joe Walsh is clueless about vets, OWS, child support, etc.
Best review of Breaking Dawn to date
New info on cancer causing airport scanners
Fred Wilson on the difference between copyright infringement and theft

Umberto Eco on Conspiracies

2011-11-22T14:31:00.001-05:00

Umberto Eco's latest novel, the Prague Cemetary, deals with the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion and related conspiracy theories. The phantom, or non-conspiracy is an ongoing theme in his work. Here, he's interviewed by Tablet magazine:

Karl Popper, the philosopher, has written a beautiful essay on the plot-paranoia syndrome. He said it starts with Homer. Everything that happens at Troy is decided the day before on Olympus with the gods. So, he says, every society in a way elaborates the paranoia of somebody on their shoulders, deciding their fates. First, it’s a way to escape responsibility. It’s not me, it’s not my fault. Second, it’s very useful, especially for dictatorships. All my youth, until the age of 10, I was educated under the fascist dictatorship. And they said there was the demo-pluto-judo-cratic plot—democracies, plutocracies, and the Jews. It was a general plot in the world to humiliate Italy. And until yesterday Berlusconi continued his campaign about the communist plot against Italy. We have no more communists! Not even with a candle can you find them.

Touching the Owl

2011-11-22T14:16:00.001-05:00

This owl looks adorable when you pet it, but it's really thinking that you look like a giant mouse.

Chancellor Katehi Walks to her Car

2011-11-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

Following the UC Davis pepper spray incident, Chancellor Katehi held a press conference this weekend. The students surrounded the building, waited for her to come out, and greeted her with eerie silence.

Links for Later 11-21-11

2011-11-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Texas drought reveals ghost towns beneath man-made lakes
Svante Paabo finds out about your Neanderthal ancestors, and what Fox2p does for you

UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident

2011-11-19T21:36:00.001-05:00

Casual cruelty on display.

These examples of police brutality are beginning to have an iconic quality not seen since the 60's. A lot of people are getting pepper sprayed, truncheoned, and dragged off to jail, and each incident just feeds energy into the protests. A lot of people need to be fired over this.

Links for Later

2011-11-16T15:08:00.001-05:00

"If the human brain — with 100 billion neurons forging trillions of connections — were not complicated enough, research now suggests that every neuron may have its very own genome." (via marginal revolution)
How, why and when cold calling beats AdWords
Are heroin-addicted rats just unhappy with their lives? (via eli)
Supercongress won't succeed
Return of a 30's haircut
James O'Keefe accused of doing political dirty work
Against SOPA / Protect IP

Simpsons Made Real

2011-11-16T14:08:00.001-05:00

From Reddit:

My grandma died, and a good friend asked: "Is there anything you need?" As a joke, I said, "A single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat."

This person's friend is a national treasure.

Eleventy-eleven

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

It's 11:11 on 11/11/11.

Huzzah.

What I'm Reading

2011-11-09T17:00:00.000-05:00

Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology.Ficino kicked off the Renaissance with his translation of Plato and the neo-Platonists from Greek into Latin, and was Lorenzo di Medici's go-to intellectual: physician, astrologer, and head of the Florentine reincarnation of the classical Academy. He was later charged with heresy, sodomy and what-have-you, but seems to have successfully defended himself. The Theology is what you end up with when a fearsomely intelligent and erudite man pulls out all the rhetorical stops and attempts to prove the immortality of the soul and the underlying unity of all religions using logic and the best science of the day. Like Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life, you may find the whole effort unconvincing, but you've got to admit that the man gave his best effort.

Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. A deeply satisfying book, despite the occasional irruption of Luttwak's views on modern geopolitics into narratives about the first millennium CE, which mar an otherwise excellent, erudite and enjoyable book. Basic premises: unlike the Roman Empire and many contemporary powers, the Byzantines believed that prevarication, bribery and gradual attrition of the enemy is the least risky course; behind each defeated enemy is another enemy ready to take their place; and there is always someone who can be induced to attack your enemies, thus sparing your own resources. Fascinating view of the near 1000 year history of a civilization that I'd only read one set of books about previously (the John Julius Norwich triple decker).

North Morgan, Exit Through the Wound. I laughed out loud over the SAD therapy light sequence and the line about the typing fetish. Just a tremendously fun read, though I kept imagining a movie where main character Maine, played perhaps by Ryan Gosling, spends scene after scene staring listlessly at computer screens, family members, romantic partners, and hospital rooms. Make an iPod list of all the songs you listened to when you had a soul, consume 10mg Valium (if you have any. All I could find was a linty Midol tablet) and read this on the way to the gym.

The Lonely Forest

2011-11-09T14:21:00.000-05:00

"Turn Off This Song And Go Outside"

Thinking about the Great Stagnation

2011-11-09T14:20:00.001-05:00

fig 1: Technology adoption rates 1900-present, from this New York Times story, graphed by Nicholas Felton.

How Howard Sapolsky Writes

2011-11-09T14:20:00.000-05:00

For someone who claims not to be a writer, he writes very well and with surprisingly little effort.

Links for Later 11-9-11

2011-11-09T14:05:00.001-05:00

Bacon's Four Sources of Error and Two Sources of Knowledge from Opus Majus
Grand takedown of Anonymous (via Greer Gilman)
Call Me Hope
The 300 look in Lightroom
Why there are so many loons in the Republican nominating race: pandering, not running
Union busting bill in Ohio repealed. There was much rejoicing.
The six faces people make when being photographed
Bill Daley being eased aside as WH Chief of Staff
Agent-publishers

Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

2011-11-07T08:30:00.001-05:00

Neverending Math Equation

2011-11-07T08:29:00.001-05:00

Spencer Partridge does a cracking good cover of Mark Kozelek's cover of Modest Mouse's "Neverending Math Equation".

2011-11-05T17:09:00.001-04:00

Today's events include a swim meet, a football game, a book reading, a gallery tour and a funeral. Somehow, this seems like a good inventory of life.

Amanda Palmer - Science Fiction/Double Feature

2011-11-02T10:53:00.001-04:00

with Moby, Stephin Merritt and Neil Gaiman on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Links for Later 11-1-11

2011-11-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

David Wojnarowicz selections from the archives
Magic Viking sunstone=calcite+polarized sunlight
Michael Gazzaniga
The Occupy Wall Street lending library
Slate's minicourse on negotiation

Quote of the Day

2011-10-30T18:36:00.003-04:00

Oh, Wow. Oh, Wow. Oh, Wow.

-Steve Jobs' last words

"A Sister's Eulogy"

Links for Later 10-30-2011

2011-10-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

How Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic airline
Lev Grossman reviews John Jeremiah Sullivan
John McPhee on how to structure stories from notes
Interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan in which he references John McPhee's method

Dennis Calvert's Light Paintings

2011-10-29T14:45:00.000-04:00

Dennis Calvert does some wild, fantasy/horror/scifi inspired light paintings, as shown in this Slate slideshow or on Calvert's own page and flickrstream.

Quote of the Day

2011-10-29T14:33:00.004-04:00

Mark your calendars: The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences. While the mainstream media expresses puzzlement and fear at these incomprehensible “protesters” with their oddly well-worded “signs,” the rest of us see our own concerns reflected back at us and understand perfectly.

-Dahlia Lithwick

William Black's Big Idea: "Use RICO on the banks."

2011-10-27T20:43:00.001-04:00

The One Day Republic

2011-10-27T15:10:00.001-04:00

Norman Davies has a fascinating book list and interview up, dealing with lost nations, past, present and most likely future. In among Poland-Lithuania and the fate of the Eurozone, there's a nice tidbit about a country with a tiny lifespan:

The past is full of everything. Great powers, obscure powers – which may have other achievements to their name. There are powers which last for centuries, but I found a republic which lasted for one day.
Goodness me. Which day?

March 15, 1939. The republic of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was the day that Hitler marched into Prague. The Germans swallowed Bohemia and Moravia, formed a protectorate and Slovakia became a client statelet of the Reich. And the third part of Czechoslovakia, this Subcarpathian Ruthenia, was left with nobody to tell it what to do. So it declared its independence at around 10 o’clock in the morning. And by the evening the Hungarian army arrived and swallowed it up. Fortunately there was a British travel writer – or someone posing as such – there at the time who described all this.

Read the whole thing, and then buy all of the books on the list.

(via bookslut)

Marine Veteran Shot in the Head by Police at Occupy Oakland Protest

2011-10-26T23:47:00.000-04:00

Militarized police action against peaceful protestors. People should lose their jobs over this.

Links for Later

2011-10-24T19:49:00.001-04:00

Hexayurts
John Crowley on how to predict the real future: reverse your assumptions
Publishing: "there are really only two major players, Amazon and Google. Everyone else is trying to figure out the best way to go bankrupt or to become something else"
Kaliber10K closes

Links for Later 10-21-11

2011-10-21T16:55:00.000-04:00

Edward Luttwak on geopolitical strategy and the implications of scotch prices in Tehran
Henry Rollins interview
Cantillation
Cantellation
Steve Yegge talks about how to present to Jim Bezos or other "hyperintelligent aliens"

Coverup

2011-10-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

Rick "Zombieboy" Genest becomes the spokesmodel for a very special makeup product. Weird to see what he looks like without the tattoos.

Michael Winslow

2011-10-20T15:40:00.002-04:00

Mouthsounds legend Michael Winslow does Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" complete with Jimmy Page-style electric guitar noises.

(via kottke)

Monster Feet

2011-10-20T15:37:00.001-04:00

And here is a man sitting in a size 1,450 slipper he ordered, which was supposed to be size 14.5. I wonder how much it would cost to get one of these?

Links for Later

2011-10-20T15:24:00.001-04:00

The death of ROE
Sculptures made from bicycle chains
The 147 interconnected companies that run the economy
Nenets, a pair of rare Uralic languages with ten or more grammatical moods, the only word of which (other than "Nenets") to be adopted in English is the word "parka"

Quantum Levitation

2011-10-18T13:23:00.001-04:00

Links for Later

2011-10-17T13:41:00.000-04:00

Amazon trying to disintermediate publishers now
"In ten or twenty years, we will be able to completely regenerate the face"
UK anti-smut filters are ineffective and wasteful. No, really
Animoog, a pro-quality synth for the iPad
Michael Greer, bookbinder
Bindery in a box
Book reviews on the market by "the Carouser" show remarkably good sense
Yes, William Shakespeare wrote his own plays
Traveling like a Victorian
Helen DeWitt interviewed at Bookforum
Bookplates by Yuri Yakovlenko

Max Udargo's Response to the 53% Guy

2011-10-14T11:14:00.000-04:00

From Max Udargo at the DailyKos, reprinted in here in full because it's worth keeping, and should probably be reprinted in high school civics textbooks and such:

Hello,

I briefly visited the “We are the 53%” website, but I first saw your face on a liberal blog. Your picture is quite popular on liberal blogs. I think it’s because of the expression on your face. I don’t know if you meant to look pugnacious or if we’re just projecting that on you, but I think that’s what gets our attention.

In the picture, you’re holding up a sheet of paper that says:

I am a former Marine.
I work two jobs.
I don’t have health insurance.
I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college.
I haven’t had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years.
But I don’t blame Wall Street.
Suck it up you whiners.
I am the 53%.
God bless the USA!

I wanted to respond to you as a liberal. Because, although I think you’ve made yourself clear and I think I understand you, you don’t seem to understand me at all. I hope you will read this and understand me better, and maybe understand the Occupy Wall Street movement better.

First, let me say that I think it’s great that you have such a strong work ethic and I agree with you that you have much to be proud of. You seem like a good, hard-working, strong kid. I admire your dedication and determination. I worked my way through college too, mostly working graveyard shifts at hotels as a “night auditor.” For a time I worked at two hotels at once, but I don’t think I ever worked 60 hours in a week, and certainly not 70. I think I maxed out at 56. And that wasn’t something I could sustain for long, not while going to school. The problem was that I never got much sleep, and sleep deprivation would take its toll. I can’t imagine putting in 70 hours in a week while going to college at the same time. That’s impressive.

I have a nephew in the Marine Corps, so I have some idea of how tough that can be. He almost didn’t make it through basic training, but he stuck it out and insisted on staying even when questions were raised about his medical fitness. He eventually served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has decided to pursue a career in the Marines. We’re all very proud of him. Your picture reminds me of him.

So, if you think being a liberal means that I don’t value hard work or a strong work ethic, you’re wrong. I think everyone appreciates the industry and dedication a person like you displays. I’m sure you’re a great employee, and if you have entrepreneurial ambitions, I’m sure these qualities will serve you there too. I’ll wish you the best of luck, even though a guy like you will probably need luck less than most.

I understand your pride in what you’ve accomplished, but I want to ask you something.

Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.

And what happens if you get sick? You say you don’t have health insurance, but since you’re a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system. I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don’t know what your situation is. But even if you have access to health care, it doesn’t mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks.

Do you plan to get married, have kids? Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation? Is it going to be fair to her? Is it going to be fair to your kids? Is it going to be fair to you?

Look, you’re a tough kid. And you have a right to be proud of that. But not everybody is as tough as you, or as strong, or as young. Does pride in what you’ve accomplish mean that you have contempt for anybody who can’t keep up with you? Does it mean that the single mother who can’t work on her feet longer than 50 hours a week doesn’t deserve a good life? Does it mean the older man who struggles with modern technology and can’t seem to keep up with the pace set by younger workers should just go throw himself off a cliff?

And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you. Why don’t we let them set the bar, instead of you? Are you ready to work 80 hours a week? 100 hours? Can you hold down four jobs? Can you do it when you’re 40? When you’re 50? When you’re 60? Can you do it with arthritis? Can you do it with one arm? Can you do it when you’re being treated for prostate cancer?

And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?

Here’s how a liberal looks at it: a long time ago workers in this country realized that industrialization wasn’t making their lives better, but worse. The captains of industry were making a ton of money and living a merry life far away from the dirty, dangerous factories they owned, and far away from the even dirtier and more dangerous mines that fed raw materials to those factories.

The workers quickly decided that this arrangement didn’t work for them. If they were going to work as cogs in machines designed to build wealth for the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies, they wanted a cut. They wanted a share of the wealth that they were helping create. And that didn’t mean just more money; it meant a better quality of life. It meant reasonable hours and better working conditions.

Eventually, somebody came up with the slogan, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep” to divide the 24-hour day into what was considered a fair allocation of a human’s time. It wasn’t a slogan that was immediately accepted. People had to fight to put this standard in place. People demonstrated, and fought with police, and were killed. They were called communists (in fairness, some of them were), and traitors, and many of them got a lot worse than pepper spray at the hands of police and private security.

But by the time we got through the Great Depression and WWII, we’d all learned some valuable lessons about working together and sharing the prosperity, and the 8-hour workday became the norm.

The 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek became a standard by which we judged our economic success, and a reality check against which we could verify the American Dream.

If a family could live a good life with one wage-earner working a 40-hour job, then the American Dream was realized. If the income from that job could pay the bills, buy a car, pay for the kids’ braces, allow the family to save enough money for a down payment on a house and still leave some money for retirement and maybe for a college fund for the kids, then we were living the American Dream. The workers were sharing in the prosperity they helped create, and they still had time to take their kids to a ball game, take their spouses to a movie, and play a little golf on the weekends.

Ah, the halcyon days of the 1950s! Yeah, ok, it wasn’t quite that perfect. The prosperity wasn’t spread as evenly and ubiquitously as we might want to pretend, but if you were a middle-class white man, things were probably pretty good from an economic perspective. The American middle class was reaching its zenith.

And the top marginal federal income tax rate was more than 90%. Throughout the whole of the 1950s and into the early 60s.

Just thought I’d throw that in there.

Anyway, do you understand what I’m trying to say? We can have a reasonable standard for what level of work qualifies you for the American Dream, and work to build a society that realizes that dream, or we can chew each other to the bone in a nightmare of merciless competition and mutual contempt.

I’m a liberal, so I probably dream bigger than you. For instance, I want everybody to have healthcare. I want lazy people to have healthcare. I want stupid people to have healthcare. I want drug addicts to have healthcare. I want bums who refuse to work even when given the opportunity to have healthcare. I’m willing to pay for that with my taxes, because I want to live in a society where it doesn’t matter how much of a loser you are, if you need medical care you can get it. And not just by crowding up an emergency room that should be dedicated exclusively to helping people in emergencies.

You probably don’t agree with that, and that’s fine. That’s an expansion of the American Dream, and would involve new commitments we haven’t made before. But the commitment we’ve made to the working class since the 1940s is something that we should both support and be willing to fight for, whether we are liberal or conservative. We should both be willing to fight for the American Dream. And we should agree that anybody trying to steal that dream from us is to be resisted, not defended.

And while we’re defending that dream, you know what else we’ll be defending, kid? We’ll be defending you and your awesome work ethic. Because when we defend the American Dream we’re not just defending the idea of modest prosperity for people who put in an honest day’s work, we’re also defending the idea that those who go the extra mile should be rewarded accordingly.

Look kid, I don’t want you to “get by” working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week. If you’re willing to put in that kind of effort, I want you to get rich. I want you to have a comprehensive healthcare plan. I want you vacationing in the Bahamas every couple of years, with your beautiful wife and healthy, happy kids. I want you rewarded for your hard work, and I want your exceptional effort to reap exceptional rewards. I want you to accumulate wealth and invest it in Wall Street. And I want you to make more money from those investments.

I understand that a prosperous America needs people with money to invest, and I’ve got no problem with that. All other things being equal, I want all the rich people to keep being rich. And clever financiers who find ways to get more money into the hands of promising entrepreneurs should be rewarded for their contributions as well.

I think Wall Street has an important job to do, I just don’t think they’ve been doing it. And I resent their sense of entitlement – their sense that they are special and deserve to be rewarded extravagantly even when they screw everything up.Come on, it was only three years ago, kid. Remember? Those assholes almost destroyed our economy. Do you remember the feeling of panic? John McCain wanted to suspend the presidential campaign so that everybody could focus on the crisis. Hallowed financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch went belly up. The government started intervening with bailouts, not because anybody thought “private profits and socialized losses” was fair, but because we were afraid not to intervene - we were afraid our whole economy might come crashing down around us if we didn’t prop up companies that were “too big to fail.”

So, even though you and I had nothing to do with the bad decisions, blind greed and incompetence of those guys on Wall Street, we were sure as hell along for the ride, weren’t we? And we’ve all paid a price.

All the” 99%” wants is for you to remember the role that Wall Street played in creating this mess, and for you to join us in demanding that Wall Street share the pain. They don’t want to share the pain, and they’re spending a lot of money and twisting a lot of arms to foist their share of the pain on the rest of us instead. And they’ve been given unprecedented powers to spend and twist, and they’re not even trying to hide what they’re doing.

All we want is for everybody to remember what happened, and to see what is happening still. And we want you to see that the only way they can get away without paying their share is to undermine the American Dream for the rest of us.

And I want you and I to understand each other, and to stand together to prevent them from doing that. You seem like the kind of guy who would be a strong ally, and I’d be proud to stand with you.

The Vaccines - If You Wanna

2011-10-13T20:53:00.001-04:00

Walk the Moon - Anna Sun

2011-10-13T16:29:00.000-04:00

Introduced to me by the good people at Kenyon.

Brakebills Alumni Portraits

2011-10-11T21:08:00.001-04:00

Cecelia B did some great portraits of Alice and Quentin from Lev Grossman's The Magicians.

Jesse LaGreca, Hero of the Week

2011-10-11T18:12:00.000-04:00

Occupy Wall Street participant and DailyKos contributor Jesse LaGreca continues to speak with greater clarity and moral authority than anyone on the Sunday morning talk shows. Stop that, Jesse LaGreca, or you will make George Will cry!

Links for Later

2011-10-10T07:19:00.000-04:00

Jacob Soll, one of this year's crop of MacArthur Fellows, talks about the history of accounting, how Machiavelli helped found political science, and what a library's good for.
Three from Krugman: the eurovenn, Was Failure Inevitable? & the basics of the IS-LM
Love for a wounded soldier
Kiana Davenport's struggles with her publisher, and her publisher's struggle with self-publishing on Amazon
Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

99% Explained to the 1%, Take Two

2011-10-09T17:22:00.004-04:00

Joshua Brown puts it succinctly: "this is why they hate you and want you to die."

99% explained to the 1%

2011-10-09T17:19:00.001-04:00

Alan Grayson teaches PJ O'Rourke, who was funny sometime around 25 years ago, why the protestors are occupying wall street.

Peak Piano 1900

2011-10-05T20:52:00.002-04:00

Nexcerpt cites piano manufacturing as an area where there's been technological regression since 1900:

The finest pianos in the world were built about a hundred years ago. Due to evolution in engineering, exhaustion of raw materials, and flagging business standards, we will never see their like again. Some people may build very good pianos; new forms of the instrument may exceed (in narrow ways) the magnificent machines built a few decades either side of the year 1900. But, from a musical perspective, there will never be a “better” piano than the typical concert grand of a century ago.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T20:20:00.004-04:00

Steve Jobs passed away today.

Neal Stephenson Talks about Reamde

2011-09-28T20:14:00.003-04:00

Two good interviews.

MyNorthwest:

More audio at MyNorthwest.com

Goodreads:

Watch live streaming video from goodreads at livestream.com

What Centrism Really Means

2011-09-26T21:06:00.001-04:00

There is a third party already, and it is the Democrats.

Paul Krugman:

Greg Sargent touches on a point I’ve been meaning to make; he does it in the context of third-party fantasies, but it’s true more broadly of calls for “centrism”. Namely, the hypothetical position self-proclaimed centrists want somebody to take — Michael Bloomberg, a chastened Obama, whatever — is almost always the position actually held by the Democratic party. But to seem “balanced”, the pundits involved have to ignore that inconvenient fact.

Links for Later

2011-09-26T21:01:00.002-04:00

Brad DeLong on Suskind & good economic policy

The search for the orang pendek

Topological Isomorphisms of the Human Brain and Financial Markets (via marginal revolution)

Firefly's Sean Maher comes out

Kloaks

2011-09-26T16:03:00.000-04:00

"Dreams are Gone" (demo)