Dipterocarp forest

Armand Marie Leroi has a good diary piece at the FT (I am excited to read his new book) - here's a nice bit about visiting Borneo, FT site registration required:

There was a canopy walk, a series of metal towers that led to the arboreal world where most of the forest lives. We set out in the dark, climbed at first light, and watched morning mist dissolve to reveal a sea of green. You could also pick up a mobile signal there. As we got to the top, the chimes of iPhones springing to life competed with the bird song and the distant whoops of macaques.

Stormy romance

Taking sex to the gutters. (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Ringtone bonanza

This is an amazing project.

Taming the everyday

At the Guardian, A. L. Kennedy on writing in chaos versus writing in peace:

Some writers I know thrive on emotional cataclysms and can barely wait for their next divorce, plummet into infatuation, flirtation with ridiculously violent criminals or encounter with rabid shrews. Some authors can only work when surrounded by inspiring volumes, delicate prints and a selection of antique spinets. Their perfect house with kind prospects must be miles from the irritating coughs of barrow boys, or the dreadful possibility that someone socially unsuitable might drive past playing something urban on a chip-scented stereo or simply loiter while looking dowdy. Most of us bounce along in the fatter section of the bell curve.

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Fiendishly busy through the end of next week, and a little worried about snowballing March commitments also - but it's only two and a half weeks from now until spring break, at which point I will dig my head down hard into novel revisions...

A great profile of Vanessa Veselka.

A feast of sounds at the British Library.

Dave Lull kindly forwarded Tom Shippey's amusing 1982 review of Martin Amis and others on videogames.

On Friday night (I'm giving a talk in Boston on Thursday) I am going to stay with a dear old friend and see this production of one of my favorite plays!

Have hardly even had any time to read a novel, too much other work and other reading, though I did reread Diana Wynne Jones's Enchanted Glass on Friday night as most soothing available option and also, on the subway, Charlie Williams's appealing latest installment of bouncer noir, Graven Image.

Piezoelectric headbanging

This site is amazing.  I have always particularly loved the word stridulation....