Me and J. McD. are sitting in period 1980s lawn chairs, smack in the middle of center field of some Little League game. (H.’s Little League game?) We’re drinking whiskey on the rocks from these crystal tumblers and talking about how such-and-such NBA player on such and such a team is going to help take […]
Bryan Curtis on the cult of Jurassic Park Bryan Curtis, writing at Grantland. (Timely, what with my current re-read of the novel.) (tagged: jurassicpark specialeffects essay film culture ) Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating Matt Taibbi (who else?) writing for Rolling Stone (where else?): And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the […]
Irony: barely being able to recall the details of a dream entirely centered around waking up from a dream with barely-remembered fragments of a poignant story idea. Something that would work well in (say…) 2,500 words. Something that should be a snap to jot down. Something involving a Luciferian figure. But the details itself dry […]
Racing to get onto that plane. I got held up twice–first to wake up, and then to scrape gobs of green crap out from under my eyelid. The airport is down in the basement of MG’s house; and MG is having a party. The house is full of familiar faces, and everyone wants to chat […]
So you want to write JavaScript for a living? by Hans Brough, re-posted at NCZOnline (tagged: javascript webdev recruiting hiring ) What feature would improve the web? Great round-up by Paul Irish. (tagged: Paul_Irish webdev web_standards ) Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right Ladies and gentlemen, once again: Matt Taibbi: What […]
Occupying Wall Street Tim Bray on #OWS: Street protesters’ demands work best when they’re simple enough to fit in a short declarative sentence, for example “Mubarak must go”. In this case the appropriate courses of corrective action aren’t like that, involving things like a financial-transaction tax, separation-of-concerns regulation, and eliminating institutions which are “too big […]
Challenges of Writing Alternate History Set in Other Cultures Interesting piece on alternate history and other misc. steampunkery, over at Tor.com: And unlike a novel set in a secondary (imaginary) world, there is no useful way of working this information into the book: alternate history explicitly relies on readers’ pre-existing knowledge. There’s simply no place […]
Making Laws About Making Babies at NYTimes.com (tagged: research politics fertility ) One-Third of Sun-Like Stars Have Earth-Like Planets In Habitable Zone And (as usual?) the comment thread from pedantic astrophysics nerds is awesome. (tagged: Astronomy Science research ) Innovation Starvation Neal Stephenson (writing at World Policy Institute) on the demise of innovation. Mandatory reading. […]
Today, The Boy saw Return of the Jedi for the first time at an otherwise rained-out birthday party. 1 Now it has probably been… 10+ years? Since I’ve seen RotJ, but a few things jumped out at me today: You could tell that most kids in the room had seen the films in episodic order. […]