KO!

Did indeed devour the new installment of Knausgaard this week. I am addicted to these books. This one is very funny and also cringe-inducingly awful, as indeed adolescence itself is cringe-inducingly awful. A good interview with Don Bartlett about translating Knausgaard.

"Transience and the extraordinary variety of breakfasts"

I want to read Sigrid Rausing's nonacademic book about Estonia!

$638,412.97

Buzz Bissinger's shopping addiction.

Mouth feel

The section on potato chips is a must-read! Here is a snippet I liked:

The food technicians stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry’s most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more: the line extension. The classic Lay’s potato chips were joined by Salt & Vinegar, Salt & Pepper and Cheddar & Sour Cream. They put out Chili-Cheese-flavored Fritos, and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.

Saturday update

I was grumpy this morning when my exercise plans were thwarted, but have just had a very productive hour and a half session of brainstorming (it is a ridiculous word, but descriptive) and writing bits of new draft at the library.  A lot of work to be done between now and Thursday, but I think it will work.

Miscellaneous light reading: Christa Faust's highly enjoyable Supernatural tie-in novel, Coyote's Kiss.  I wonder how much this sort of work pays?  Really I have no room for it in my life, but I would love to write a Fringe tie-in.  I guess that is why people write fanfic, for free...

In other television-related news, I continue to spend an inordinate number of hours watching House (currently near end of Season 7).  I am not sure why it's so addictive, but I'm reminded of how when I first read Master and Commander, I then couldn't rest until I had read all of Patrick O'Brian's novels about Aubrey and Maturin (I would walk in to Cross-Campus Library in New Haven and check out another four or five and race home to devour and return - I think I read all twenty over the course of about five days, which is slightly grotesque).  The Aubrey-Maturin friendship is built on the same sort of chassis as the House-Wilson relationship, even if the latter is more obviously Holmesian.

"Artichokes: The Choice for a Long Weekend Getaway"

Matthew Zuras on the Farmville ruse; Phil Michaelson on how Farmville retains users.

In other news, Ed Yong on the underlying similarities between human and brainless slime mould decision-making, including slime mould's ability to approximate the design of the Tokyo rail system.

(All links in this post courtesy of Brent.)