A tour of the Svalbard seed vault.
Does tenure encourage risk-taking?
A social history of Australia through its swimming pools.
Jonathon Green's dictionary of slang is going online. Also: what's a chuggypig?
A miniature replica of 1950s Boston.
"He smelled amazing, he really smelled good."
So far I have held off actually buying anything here, but I can't quite bring myself to close this tab on my browser. I was especially partial as a child (still am) to the candies made out of pure sugar - the Now and Laters, the Fun Dip, the candy bracelets and the candy buttons that came on a paper band, the Jolly Ranchers, the Runts and Nerds and SweetTarts and Tart 'n Tinys - I am only surprised they don't have Bottle Caps (the cafe at Butler Library used to sell these, and I would buy a box occasionally when I really needed to fuel maniacal paper-grading - it is just as well that I haven't seen them there for a couple years, I think, as those soft tart powdery crunchable disks are irresistible to me).
I don't agree with Janet Malcolm's position on the Constance Garnett translations. I've seen this argued again and again (and it's akin to the Aciman defense of Moncrieff's Proust); I suspect the difference of opinion may be generational, in that when I first encountered the translations of this vintage as a teenager in the 1980s I just found them irremediably flowery and over-elaborate. I much prefer the newer style.
Finally, Katherine Dunn died in May. I was utterly arrested and captivated by Geek Love when I first encountered it. My college classmate Thomas Lauderdale knew Katherine very well, and when he hosted me on the low-budget book tour for my first novel in 2003 or so he not only made me feel like a literary lion, he took me over to Katherine's house for tea. I was incredibly flattered, at the end of our conversation, when she exclaimed, "Dashing!" Then she told me that I had a dashing mind, an adjective that has stayed with me as a high compliment.
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Increasing the waddle
Penguin locomotion: "According to Dr Willener, getting these ungainly creatures to walk on a treadmill was one of the biggest challenges of the study, which is published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology."
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Sunday, January 04, 2015
"Fringed with Ducks"
At the FT, Edward Posnett's prizewinning essay on the eiderdown in Iceland (site registration required).
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Closing tabs
I have that uneasy pre-travel feeling that I am forgetting something extremely important, and indeed I have a ton of stuff to do tomorrow morning (including packing), but I seem to have survived the frenzy of talk-writing and lecture-writing and so forth....
Have been spoiled with some very good light reading. When I read the good stuff it makes me wonder why I waste my time with second- and third-tier nonsense! On the other hand, the hours must be whiled away some way or another - but I do think I will have a year sometime when I will only read novels I really really want to read, and that the rest of my reading should be narrative nonfiction etc.
Anyway, Deon Meyer's Cobra is superb - hard to imagine a better book in this sort of vein. Then I read a delightful trio of books on the recommendation of Charlie Stross: Max Gladstone's Craft books. I was slightly skeptical at first - it's purely personal preference, but I really always like it best when urban fantasy follows a single character as either first-person narration or third-person limited, it's part of my affinity for character- and voice-driven fiction - but was utterly won over. These books are great! Interestingly Deon Meyer is using a very similar form of narration, in terms of pacing and following a set of characters, though the books are in most other respects about as different as you could imagine.
Just now halfway through a book I have been awaiting for a long time, Garth Nix's new Abhorsen installment Clariel. The original trilogy of Old Kingdom books, along with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, were the inspiration for The Explosionist and sequel: I kept haunting the shelves of the Bank Street Bookstore looking for something like and as good as those two sets of books, and when I couldn't find them, I thought I would just have to try and make something like that myself....
Closing tabs:
Nobody knows what running looks like.
Metadata scarf and cowl!
Medieval pet names (courtesy of Rivka).
Puggle production line? (Wishful thinking edition.)
Four years later, a lost African gray parrot is reunited with its former owner:
Have been spoiled with some very good light reading. When I read the good stuff it makes me wonder why I waste my time with second- and third-tier nonsense! On the other hand, the hours must be whiled away some way or another - but I do think I will have a year sometime when I will only read novels I really really want to read, and that the rest of my reading should be narrative nonfiction etc.
Anyway, Deon Meyer's Cobra is superb - hard to imagine a better book in this sort of vein. Then I read a delightful trio of books on the recommendation of Charlie Stross: Max Gladstone's Craft books. I was slightly skeptical at first - it's purely personal preference, but I really always like it best when urban fantasy follows a single character as either first-person narration or third-person limited, it's part of my affinity for character- and voice-driven fiction - but was utterly won over. These books are great! Interestingly Deon Meyer is using a very similar form of narration, in terms of pacing and following a set of characters, though the books are in most other respects about as different as you could imagine.
Just now halfway through a book I have been awaiting for a long time, Garth Nix's new Abhorsen installment Clariel. The original trilogy of Old Kingdom books, along with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, were the inspiration for The Explosionist and sequel: I kept haunting the shelves of the Bank Street Bookstore looking for something like and as good as those two sets of books, and when I couldn't find them, I thought I would just have to try and make something like that myself....
Closing tabs:
Nobody knows what running looks like.
Metadata scarf and cowl!
Medieval pet names (courtesy of Rivka).
Puggle production line? (Wishful thinking edition.)
Four years later, a lost African gray parrot is reunited with its former owner:
When Nigel vanished four years ago, he spoke with a cultivated British accent.
Little is known about where the African grey parrot went, what he did — or who he was with — in those missing years. But when he was reunited with his owner, Darren Chick, in Torrance last week, the British accent was gone and the bird was chattering in Spanish, often mentioning the name “Larry.”
Thursday, August 14, 2014
The 'switch-on'
An amazing essay by poet and musician Josephine Dickinson about hearing with a cochlear implant (via Shanna C.):
The extent to which the brain compensates for indistinction I discovered by listening to birdsong. The first time I heard a blackbird with my new high-frequency bias, I was stunned by its clarity and beauty, and by the fact that it was so loud. In a healthy ear the arrays of thousands of hair cells operate according to a ‘volleying’ mechanism, taking it in turns to transmit the very fast-moving energy impulses of high-frequency sound. The electrodes of the implant cannot do this. Yet by looking at spectrograms of birdsong, I can see that a large proportion of the sound is within the frequency limits of what I can distinguish, albeit crudely, and that is enough for me to take in and interpret these songs, many of which I have no memory of hearing before.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
The rhythm of the semester
Slightly grumpy about the fact that train delays meant that I didn't get to 10am hot yoga - I waited on the platform for a few minutes to see if predicted train time (15min - usually it takes me 15min door to door!) would be reduced, but it didn't seem the odds were good that I'd get there in time for class, so I went and got cooked breakfast instead at the Deluxe Diner. Morning task is checking the PDF of my style index - if I can get a chunk of work done on that, maybe I can go to 12:30 yoga instead....
I am finding this semester's work genuinely stimulating and fresh, but it is also kicking my ass! Again slept for 4 hours yesterday afternoon due to cumulative fatigue of the week. Busy week ahead, including evening work things on Wednesday and Thursday - but then I am flying to see B. very early Friday morning. I have to take quite a lot of work with me, but there will be spinning and a 3hr outdoor ride and yoga for sure as well.
Very small amounts of light reading around the edges of slightly insane piles of work reading: Ian Rankin, Saints of the Shadow Bible; Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes (latest installment in the Rivers of London series). I still want someone to make a massive chart of how the fantasy police-procedural mode snowballed into a dominant subgenre - I suspect that there are strong television antecedents that are largely outside my ken (Doctor Who?).
Closing tabs:
At the Guardian, Andy Beckett on the lasting impact of Raymond Williams' Keywords.
Leslie Jamison on the syndrome called Morgellons (her forthcoming collection is The Empathy Exams).
Last but not least, an astonishing demonstration of the behaviour-warping allure of fried potatoes!
I am finding this semester's work genuinely stimulating and fresh, but it is also kicking my ass! Again slept for 4 hours yesterday afternoon due to cumulative fatigue of the week. Busy week ahead, including evening work things on Wednesday and Thursday - but then I am flying to see B. very early Friday morning. I have to take quite a lot of work with me, but there will be spinning and a 3hr outdoor ride and yoga for sure as well.
Very small amounts of light reading around the edges of slightly insane piles of work reading: Ian Rankin, Saints of the Shadow Bible; Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes (latest installment in the Rivers of London series). I still want someone to make a massive chart of how the fantasy police-procedural mode snowballed into a dominant subgenre - I suspect that there are strong television antecedents that are largely outside my ken (Doctor Who?).
Closing tabs:
At the Guardian, Andy Beckett on the lasting impact of Raymond Williams' Keywords.
Leslie Jamison on the syndrome called Morgellons (her forthcoming collection is The Empathy Exams).
Last but not least, an astonishing demonstration of the behaviour-warping allure of fried potatoes!
Saturday, January 18, 2014
"this dot, here, this one"
Closing tabs:
Kathryn Schulz on five of the best punctuation marks in literature.
More on indexing. (Courtesy of Dave Lull.)
Mr. Chicken! (I have ordered the book.)
NB many fewer chickens hereabouts than when I was in Cayman in August. B.'s theory: inverse relationship to invasive green iguana population; iguanas like to eat eggs! Fewer of certain other birds, too; I like how the populations are always shifting (much higher proportion of various anoles to northern curly-tailed lizards, also, compared to five years ago, but this sort of thing really concerns micro-environments - geckos are abundant at Regal Beach half a mile down the road, but we don't see many here at the Grandview, though one occasionally makes its way indoors, leading to presence of a plastic cup and piece of paper in the kitchen cupboards with pertinent label "gecko trapper" - that particular discrepancy probably has to do with how well the gecko can camouflage itself against a sand-colored wall versus a light blue one).
Kathryn Schulz on five of the best punctuation marks in literature.
More on indexing. (Courtesy of Dave Lull.)
Mr. Chicken! (I have ordered the book.)
NB many fewer chickens hereabouts than when I was in Cayman in August. B.'s theory: inverse relationship to invasive green iguana population; iguanas like to eat eggs! Fewer of certain other birds, too; I like how the populations are always shifting (much higher proportion of various anoles to northern curly-tailed lizards, also, compared to five years ago, but this sort of thing really concerns micro-environments - geckos are abundant at Regal Beach half a mile down the road, but we don't see many here at the Grandview, though one occasionally makes its way indoors, leading to presence of a plastic cup and piece of paper in the kitchen cupboards with pertinent label "gecko trapper" - that particular discrepancy probably has to do with how well the gecko can camouflage itself against a sand-colored wall versus a light blue one).
Friday, December 06, 2013
IT to falconry
At the FT (site registration required), Emma Jacobs on the work of an urban falconer. (Link courtesy of I.H.D.)
Monday, December 02, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Closing tabs
Brent Cox on William Gibson. (Via Alice.)
"We know when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sleeps." (Via James Bridle.)
The shape of careers?
Eggs will pop soon!
At the intersection of my two blogs, but I found this post by Gordo Byrn thought-provoking. He lays out a minimal base fitness schedule that will let you do something crazy in triathlon after twelve weeks of training without wrecking yourself (2 x 20min strength, 3 runs at shorter of 5mi or 1hr, 3 bikes at 2 x 45 and 1 x 75, 3 swims at shorter of 1350 yards or 25min, for a total of a little over seven hours per week); I think there are close analogies in literary matters, which is to say that you need to do a certain amount of reading and writing every day and every week if you want to be able to call upon all your powers of composition intensely over a more sustained period of time - but huge output over the whole of life is not sustainable, and comes at the cost of too many other things. Worthwhile to think of maintaining base writing fitness even through times when a big writing project can't be a priority.
"We know when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sleeps." (Via James Bridle.)
The shape of careers?
Eggs will pop soon!
At the intersection of my two blogs, but I found this post by Gordo Byrn thought-provoking. He lays out a minimal base fitness schedule that will let you do something crazy in triathlon after twelve weeks of training without wrecking yourself (2 x 20min strength, 3 runs at shorter of 5mi or 1hr, 3 bikes at 2 x 45 and 1 x 75, 3 swims at shorter of 1350 yards or 25min, for a total of a little over seven hours per week); I think there are close analogies in literary matters, which is to say that you need to do a certain amount of reading and writing every day and every week if you want to be able to call upon all your powers of composition intensely over a more sustained period of time - but huge output over the whole of life is not sustainable, and comes at the cost of too many other things. Worthwhile to think of maintaining base writing fitness even through times when a big writing project can't be a priority.
Friday, April 05, 2013
Conferences
are the most tiring single thing I do: much more tiring than endurance events, as those do not involve nearly so much human contact! I am claiming a human-free evening, and am going to go and skulk somewhere with something along lines of book/burger/beer in a bar far enough away from the conference hotel that I won't get sucked in to joining a table of fellow eighteenth-centuryists! Who are delightful, but I have not read a book since Wednesday, that's not good for my mental health. Conference is going very well, it's highly worthwhile, only it always puts me into state of collapse...
Also: my blog post about The Magic Circle is up at the Kindle Daily Blog; before the Book Culture event the other day, Ron Hogan interviewed me for an installment of The Handsell.
In other news: more rabbit show-jumping! (Via Brent.) If you only click on one link in this post, it should definitely be this one.
Or this, on a rather different note: very good hawkcam at Cornell this year (they would make short work of those bunnies).
Light reading around the edges: two quite good mysteries by M. J. McGrath, White Heat and The Boy in the Snow; two books for the Handsell recommendation process, David Bell's Cemetery Girl and Will Lavender's Dominance; Amanda Davis, Wonder When You'll Miss Me.
Also: my blog post about The Magic Circle is up at the Kindle Daily Blog; before the Book Culture event the other day, Ron Hogan interviewed me for an installment of The Handsell.
In other news: more rabbit show-jumping! (Via Brent.) If you only click on one link in this post, it should definitely be this one.
Or this, on a rather different note: very good hawkcam at Cornell this year (they would make short work of those bunnies).
Light reading around the edges: two quite good mysteries by M. J. McGrath, White Heat and The Boy in the Snow; two books for the Handsell recommendation process, David Bell's Cemetery Girl and Will Lavender's Dominance; Amanda Davis, Wonder When You'll Miss Me.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Closing tabs
The next three weeks are daunting; however, I trust I will get through....
Superb review at the Guardian for Jane Yeh's The Ninjas! (Courtesy of Ed Park.)
Tim Parks on the artist he grew up with.
Finally, courtesy of B., definitely the week's best job description (scroll down)! More related material here and here.
Superb review at the Guardian for Jane Yeh's The Ninjas! (Courtesy of Ed Park.)
Tim Parks on the artist he grew up with.
Finally, courtesy of B., definitely the week's best job description (scroll down)! More related material here and here.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The legendary immolation scene
I have spent the week in a strange variety of activities conducted through a haze of mild to moderate fatigue:
The activity that should loom larger on that list but that I'm very behind on: grading! Must make some more headway today as grades for graduating seniors are due by the end of the day.
Read two very good novels around the edges, Heath Lowrance's demented and captivating The Bastard Hand and Lavie Tidhar's haunting Osama. I can't recommend these two highly enough: really unusual and high-quality neo-noir in two quite different inflections, very good stuff.
Miscellaneous linkage:
"Glass Gem" corn. (Via Elatia Harris.)
Charles Peterson has a long and dispiriting two-part piece at n+1 on the devastation of the research mission at the New York Public Library.
Hawkcam! (Courtesy of Brent.)
Widely linked to already, but orangutans like iPads too...
- A miscellany of doctor and dentist appointments, each minor/inconsequential in its own right but cumulatively onerous (and I would say that the pharmacy at the Rite Aid on 110th and Broadway is the worst, except that I switched there a few years ago from the Duane Reade across the street because that one really and truly was the worst!);
- a large amount of opera (about which more, perhaps, anon - final installment tomorrow);
- and a lot of whacking of the zombie book review that would not die, though I think I have sent its final incarnation to my editor just now. The issue closes today, so that is pretty much going to have to be it!
The activity that should loom larger on that list but that I'm very behind on: grading! Must make some more headway today as grades for graduating seniors are due by the end of the day.
Read two very good novels around the edges, Heath Lowrance's demented and captivating The Bastard Hand and Lavie Tidhar's haunting Osama. I can't recommend these two highly enough: really unusual and high-quality neo-noir in two quite different inflections, very good stuff.
Miscellaneous linkage:
"Glass Gem" corn. (Via Elatia Harris.)
Charles Peterson has a long and dispiriting two-part piece at n+1 on the devastation of the research mission at the New York Public Library.
Hawkcam! (Courtesy of Brent.)
Widely linked to already, but orangutans like iPads too...
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Home again
Feel much more settled now that I am back at home with my little cat, who was flatteringly happy to see me last night. I do not know why feline company should be so soothing, but there is no doubt that I am on a more even keel when there is a cat around.
Read two good books on my travels: Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room (this guy is an awe-inspiringly good popular storyteller - the book gave me a yen to watch Hitchcock movies obsessively and see whether I couldn't craft such a formally perfect and atmospherically chilling narrative of suspense); and Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The amount and quality of reporting that went into this book is staggering: it is really a feat of human achievement like few other things! It is not a criticism, but I am struck by the oddity of the fact that the style of narration really recognizably is still like what the cluster of mid-19th-century novelists that include Hugo and Dickens and Eliot and Balzac developed - ditto for The Wire - it is a powerful form of narration that, once discovered, has had considerable longevity.
Closing tabs:
Brent's friend Larry Thompson has printed a beautiful edition of "Tintern Abbey."
The National Eagle Repository.
This is the kind of writing I should really be doing.
Read two good books on my travels: Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room (this guy is an awe-inspiringly good popular storyteller - the book gave me a yen to watch Hitchcock movies obsessively and see whether I couldn't craft such a formally perfect and atmospherically chilling narrative of suspense); and Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The amount and quality of reporting that went into this book is staggering: it is really a feat of human achievement like few other things! It is not a criticism, but I am struck by the oddity of the fact that the style of narration really recognizably is still like what the cluster of mid-19th-century novelists that include Hugo and Dickens and Eliot and Balzac developed - ditto for The Wire - it is a powerful form of narration that, once discovered, has had considerable longevity.
Closing tabs:
Brent's friend Larry Thompson has printed a beautiful edition of "Tintern Abbey."
The National Eagle Repository.
This is the kind of writing I should really be doing.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Perambulations
From the base of the Samuel Tilden memorial on Riverside Drive:
In the Biblical Garden at St. John the Divine:
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, December 04, 2011
"That rain-forest experience"
I enjoyed this profile of a choirmaster who lives in the Cathedral Close at St. John the Divine. I need to go and prowl around the cathedral sometime in the next couple weeks; I have a list of local spots of interest (Grant's Tomb, Sakura Park, Morningside Park) that I need to do some more footwork on so that I can make more of them in the revision of BOMH that I'll be working on over the winter break. I am most anxious for the semester to be really and truly over so that I can clear the mental space for experiencing places and thinking those revisions through! Two more very busy weeks, but if I am diligent and not overly dilatory about paper-marking I am mentally and logistically free from the 19th...
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