Web Wandering

back to the journal
next

(Right click to open link in a new window/flat flip flies straight)

Saturday, December 30, 2000

According to the folks who put out the most recent census, the population of Kansas increased from 2,477,574 in 1990 to 2,688,418 this year. We shall refrain from subtracting Annie Wickham, our 89-year-old neighbor, who died unexpectedly Wednesday night. She would have felt crowded, but she would have volunteered to deliver meals to all the newcomers.
8:00 AM CST (GMT -6)

Friday, December 29, 2000

The transcript of the lecture by Jonathan Rauch that I mentioned on December 27th has been uploaded. "Courting Danger: The Rise of Antisocial Law" is linked here.
2:45 PM CST (GMT �6)

It was an easy day. The toughest questions I faced all day came from Trivial Pursuit cards. This evening I smoked Taylor's hiney at Trivial Pursuit (five wedges to two) before he wailed "Hey, I'm just a little kid! What do I know about Don Drysdale and Fess Parker?" and conceded. Tough nougies, buddy.
10:00 PM CST (GMT -6)

Thursday, December 28, 2000

�Tis the season for armchair travel so after finishing the Durrell (White Eagles Over Serbia), I returned to the public library Tuesday to pick up his book Provence, a book I�d postponed from earlier in the year. While there I also picked up two others by Durrell: Caesar�s Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence and A Smile in the Mind�s Eye. The first one turns out to be a coffee table version of Provence (slicker paper and great color pictures), so I�ll read it and return the copy of Provence. A Smile in the Mind�s Eye is a quick read that begins as a wink at the Tao before heading toward some transcendental Taoist erotica.

I also picked up the video of Searching for Bobby Fischer. I watched it Wednesday morning while Owen became better acquainted with his new computer games.
8:00 AM CST (GMT �6)

Taylor of the January birthday, quietly, as if to himself: "I have nothing to ask for for my birthday because I got everything I wanted for Christmas."

He�s due sainthood at the very least. Or he�s feverish.
1:50 PM CST (GMT �6)

Wednesday, December 27, 2000

I don�t often agree with George Will, but this column, which distinguishes "Hidden Law" and "Bureaucratic Legalism," might be useful in some of my classes if I temporarily overlook Will�s tendencies to argue on the side of privilege and to keep the straw man employed. The distinction comes from a December 11 lecture by Jonathan Rauch ("Courting Danger: The Rise of Antisocial Law"). A transcript of Rauch�s lecture might be worth tracking down, but it is not currently available at the web site of the sponsoring institution, the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
11:55 PM CST (GMT �6)

Tuesday, December 26, 2000

Another inch or two of snow fell overnight, smoothing the edges of the accumulations that have been on the ground here forever. I can't remember a time when the temperatures have stayed below freezing here for so long.

The boys spent yesterday involved with their new toys: another thousand pieces of Legos and a new Game Boy for Taylor, some new computer games for Owen, and a 12-string guitar for Josh.

The digital camera turned a year old a few days ago, so its warranty has expired (and I didn't purchase an extended warranty, which would have cost about a third of the selling price of the camera annually), so, naturally, on Christmas Eve the Mavica gave me a disk error message that worries me. At first, I thought the problem might have been caused by the new batch of floppies that I'd bought, but I've learned since then that the new disks are not the problem. The problem righted itself magically long enough for me to shoot a full disk of pictures Christmas morning, but subsequent disks failed.

I remain hopeful that the problem can be fixed by cleaning the disk drive in the camera. Later today, I'll venture out to buy a drive cleaner. If that remedy fails, all will be despair and darkness as I ship the sucker off for a costly repair.
9:15 AM CST (GMT -6)

I'm in charge of the bird feeder here, and during these winter holiday weeks, I get a chance to observe its visitors more closely than I might when I'm working. My sampling time is short so far, but I have observed that as usual the squirrels hog the feeder for most of the day (I've given up trying to devise ways to foil them), but so far, since last week, I've observed only an occasional titmouse, a lone female cardinal, one junco this morning, but no other birds. The quince bush near the feeder should be filled with sparrows waiting for the squirrels to waddle back to their treetop nest, belching all the way, but I cannot recall having seen a single sparrow so far, not at our feeder anyway.

A few weeks ago Josh observed a screech owl perched on the floodlight out on our garage, and yesterday David (a brother-in-law whose house is three blocks away) confirmed that he'd seen one at his house as well, probably the same owl. A screech owl is not above preying on smaller birds in times of scarcity, but I can't believe a single owl could have chased so many birds from the neighborhood.
12:38 PM CST (GMT -6)

Sunday, December 24, 2000

That Yen's journal Shinkansen deserves special attention goes without saying, but often what might go without saying at other times should be said, especially when an entry as well done as her December 24th entry appears.
10:45 AM CST (GMT -6)

Friday, December 22, 2000

Domestic crap stole most of the hours today. I put a turkey in early this morning so that we might minimize the cooking duties over the holiday weekend and allocate the kitchen time to the hors d'oeuvre and cookie preparation that must occur before our Christmas Eve gathering for family and friends.

Taylor breakfasted to the movie Gladiator and by the time that ended, I was carving the turkey while Empire of the Sun played its last engagement in our kitchen this season.

At noon, we had a follow-up visit with the optometrist, who wanted to check the prescription on Owen's new contacts. Between that outing and Taylor's violin lesson at 4 PM, I made good progress in my reading of Longitude, a sign, I think, that my cold has nearly run its course. Because my father tinkers with antique clocks, I think he might enjoy reading this book for the information about chronometers. And it's a compact book, suitable for someone like Dad who is more inclined to tinker than he is to read.

After Taylor's violin lesson, we stopped at the public library to return some books and videos. Taylor followed up his viewing of Gladiator by checking out some books on Rome and the Coliseum. I picked up Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. I haven't read it since I was a freshman, and I'm curious to see how I respond to it today. I remember the poetry of the line "No se puede vivir sin amar" standing as a counterpoint to the novel's last thudding line, "Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine," but not much else. I also chose Lawrence Durrell's White Eagles over Serbia, a cold war spy thriller, and a video, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
8:25 PM CST (GMT -6)

Thursday, December 21, 2000

I thought I'd paid my flu dues in full for the season, but Tuesday night the flu or a cold returned as a headache and congested sinuses, so I huddled in bed Wednesday night with the TV on, staying awake through most of Ed, parts of The West Wing, but almost none of Gideon's Crossing. For many years I have watched little on TV other than sports, but in the past year I've found a few shows that I enjoy regularly. I'm going to attribute that to an improvement in the programming and not to a decline in my tastes. That I watch so much sports programming on TV probably sends a message about my already low tastes.

Today all the boys are home from school for the holidays, so we now must ration computer time. The need for another connection will become urgent at times, but we'll postpone a decision until this summer when we learn Josh's plans.

I finished reading Robinson's Past Reason Hated yesterday, and am taking another stab at Dava Sobel's Longitude. Under normal circumstances, with the free time I have this week, this book would be a one-day read, but this doggone head cold is crossing my eyes every few pages.
7:00 PM

Wednesday, December 20, 2000

A few weeks ago Taylor finished at the top of the fourth grade in qualifying for his school's geography bee, answering 29 of 30 written questions correctly. The actual bee occurred this morning. He was the last fourth grader left standing, but he was smoked by four more worldly sixth graders. His mother, oldest brother, and I all attended the geography bee.

Soon after returning from Taylor's school, I turned on the radio and heard an NPR report of the death Tuesday night of former New York mayor John Lindsey. I remember Murray Kempton's remark that "He is fresh and everyone else is tired" (repeated in the linked NY Times/AP obituary) as if it had been written just yesterday.
12:30 PM

Tuesday, December 19, 2000

Secra has a new ring. (No, not a web ring.) Congratulations!
7:40 AM

Sunday, December 17, 2000

Marbles has a new URL (don't ask how I know this), and Dawn has a mother-in-law who is subject to Uno-induced fits.
9:00 AM

Saturday, December 16, 2000

During my hour outdoors ringing the bell for the Salvation Army in front of Wal-Mart this morning, the temperature was 14� F (-14� with the wind chill), but donations arrived in sufficient quantity to warm a heart's cockle, and they increased as my lips grew bluer.
12:45 PM

---

I've finished reading my first Peter Robinson mystery (In a Dry Season) and I'll begin another (Past Reason Hated) today. The Inspector Banks series is unchallenging and unthreatening, but it is diverting and right now I want a read that I can course through thoughtlessly.

While at the public library last night, I checked out a video of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, one of my favorite films. We'll play that in the kitchen over the next week.

I came across a journal yesterday from a young writer going to college in the Midwest. The journal flightless is worth another look, I think. I liked the nonchalance of this line from her "reason" page: "I do it to write. It's not therapeutic, it's not everything."

I'm off in a bit to ring the bell for the Salvation Army for an hour. It's 20� F outside and the wind is gusting, but I always have a good time panhandling.
8:40 AM

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

I drove Taylor to his school this morning and headed to work a bit early to allow time for slower travel in the snow. When I arrived at work, the parking lot (a huge one with no traffic barriers) was nearly empty and hadn't been plowed, so I checked for police, accelerated, cut the steering wheel sharply, and braked, putting the mighty Metro into a Jim Rockford turn.

A few members of the support staff were in the office when I arrived. They told me that classes had been canceled today and that the announcement had come late, probably while I was on the road. The moment wasn't as poignant as that moment in the movie The Paper Chase when Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) reminisces about the words "no school today," but my heart did do a little dance at the thought of a snow day with no kidlings around.

I returned to the parking lot, did a few more donuts, and headed home. I now sit here, bread baking in the machine, a pot of coffee brewing, my squirrels and birds having been fed, the public radio station playing the usual Smetana (Moldau) in between the usual Christmas fare, and except that Gore will concede tonight and the real games will begin, life feels good.
2:00 PM

If there is a sound sweeter or more terrifying than the snow-muffled scraping of a snow shovel as my wife removes three inches of snow from our sidewalks while I listen from a toasty bed in the darkness at 6 AM, well, I haven't heard it lately.
9:45 AM

Monday, December 11, 2000

My new high game in Marbles is 705. I take no pride in this.
12/11/2000 10:55 AM

The six to eight inches of snow that had been predicted to fall here overnight didn't, but we did wake in a gray dawn to a dusting of snow and temperatures of 0� F., a temperature cold enough to reinforce my aversion to winter.

The meeting yesterday at the fellowship lasted until nearly 3 PM. After an abbreviated Sunday morning program, we broke for a lunch of sloppy joes, stone soups, and multiple doses of gooey desserts (Well, you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, do you), after which Kathleen convened the business meeting. The measures amending our bylaws (items related to quorums and voting majorities) and the measure supporting a fund-raising drive for the building fund passed by wide margins. The measure that would have changed the percentage of the endowment we may use to fund the building expansion was tabled (with my second).

When I returned home, we picked up Rad (a brother-in-law) and scurried off to the the Optimist tree lot to buy Christmas trees, one for us and another for the mother-in-law. Ours is a good one, I think, unlike the Christmas stick (pictured in this entry) we bought last year. I think this was the first year that Josh did not join us in this trip.

Then the family (just the household, including Josh) celebrated my birthday early with a dinner of a meaty and spicey gumbo, my favorite. The gumbo was probably the reason we weren't joined by the in-laws, whose tastes in dinner fare range from bland to blander. I had lost three pounds effortlessly in the preceding week, but I found them today.
12/11/2000 10:15 AM

Sunday, December 10, 2000

I am guilty of procrastination (as are others, by the way), but I can also pin the fault for my minimal production in the journal on my need to prepare for a fellowship meeting. Today the Unitarians will decide whether to expand the building and whether to accept the proposed architectural plans. We are a people of many words and few actions, and we will indulge our own form of glossolalia this afternoon. This will turn into one of those days when a leap of faith would be much more expedient. O, to be a Presbyterian today!

On other matters, I'll add a year to my age this week and a dinner of corned beef or gumbo is promised, and classes will end this week, returning my coveted morning writing time to me. Huzzah!
12/10/2000 8:15 AM

From Garrison Keillor's spot on NPR this morning, I gleaned the URL for 21 North Main, a shop that lists, locates and sells used and out-of-print books.
12/08/2000 11:15 AM

A click to see what Steve has put on his fridge is always rewarded. After seeing his photos or Yen's lovely pictures at Shinkansen, a reasonable person might ask what happened to wonders like theirs before we could share them here.
12/06/2000 12:33 PM

Monday, December 4, 2000

Science articles like this one remind me that my mind is better suited to estimating the number of Oreo cookies I can stuff into a milk-filled coffee mug than it is to considering the size and nature of the universe. If the universe is already everything, then what is it expanding into? And how can it have an edge?
12/04/2000 10:40:00 AM

Wednesday, November 29, 2000

For reasons unbeknownst to me Blogger encounters an error when I try to ftp an update to my Geocities pages, so I've taken to entering this directly, which, when I think about it, is just about as easy.

Writing time has been tough to come by lately as I try to catch up on all the grading that I avoided while the flu held me in its thrall, but last night while looking for an online copy of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," I came across a site that I hadn't visited in quite a while. Page by Page Books provides online versions of works whose copyrights have fallen into the public domain.
11/29/2000 6:55:31 PM

Thursday, November 23, 2000

An evil flu virus tried to suck the life out of my unvaccinated body this week but got only the wit. I have since prevailed and I am grateful to report that I shall return! Happy Thanksgiving!
11/23/2000 8:19:31 AM

Sunday, November 12, 2000

When I said that I hoped to return with an entry this weekend, I was obviously using the the word "weekend" in its broadest sense. Besides, this weekend is a long one for me, Monday being a federal holiday in the US (Veterans' Day), so I haven't really lied yet.
11/12/2000 8:19:31 AM

Friday, November 10, 2000

I've solved the computer problem for now, and I should post an entry, but dealing with computer problems, although initially energizing, ultimately drains me. Instead, let me offer a hasty thanks to those who nominated an entry of mine for a Diarist award in the outstanding entry category. I hope to return this weekend with a new entry.
11/10/2000 8:15:03 PM

Wednesday, November 8, 2000

Computer problems persist in our household. I'll be back when I'm back, with luck by the time we know the outcome of this presidential election.
11/8/2000 8:43:49 AM

Sunday, October 29, 2000

About software piracy? What Dawn said.
10/29/2000 8:56:33 AM

"We strolled up Liberty towards the Borders. We didnt stop at one single dont walk sign. I wish Neen could have been inside the original Borders before they got all cosmic corporate and expanded. The floors squeeked really nicely at the old store. We strolled through the music department and touched books." One could do worse than become a toucher of books, and simple observations like the ones she makes daily keep Erks on my must-visit list.
10/29/2000 8:51:47 AM

While everyone else was excited about the release of a pricey, new game machine, I allowed myself to become obsessed with this insidiously addictive game, a game designed to suck all my reading and writing time away. Friends don't do this to friends (eh eh eh).
10/29/2000 8:41:55 AM

Sunday, October 22, 2000

It is entirely appropriate that someone named Dawn (of American Graffiti) should notice that skies come in different sizes.
10/22/2000 1:20:49 AM

The debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools, a subject which has been hotly debated in Kansas, has begun again in Canada, as related in this entry by Paulineee, the force of nature behind the journal Inertia.
10/22/2000 1:05:07 AM

Sunday, October 15, 2000

Gertrude Stein once described her hometown of Oakland by saying of it (writing of it?) that "there's no there there." She might just as easily have been describing the region behind my eyes these last few days. Fatigue, anomie, doldrums, whatever. I'll be back in a day or two. Self-indulgent? Ayep. What better place is there for self-indulgence?
10/15/2000 10:36:46 AM

Thursday, October 5, 2000

A link at Yahoo pointed me to an essay posted a few years ago in Salon. I haven't read any stories by Andre Dubus, but after having read his short baseball memoir "Brothers," I will. This essay is longer than a typical online journal read, but it's worth the few additional minutes. Somewhere George Plimpton said "The smaller the ball, the better the writing," referring, I think, to the supremacy of golf writing in sports journalism. Centered on baseball, this memoir challenges that supremacy.
10/5/2000 2:08:13 PM

Last night's edition of our local paper published a letter to the editor signed by a staffer (Maggie Fleming) at the D.C. office of Public Interest Research Group, an umbrella organization for state PIRGs. Kansas has no such organization, but PIRG provides information for states without affiliates at a page named U.S.PIRGonline. Many of the pages could stand some updating, but the organization might be one for me to keep in mind. Ms. Fleming's letter urged readers to contact their representatives about anti-environmental riders hidden in unrelated budget bills. The web pages offered an easy method to contact congressional representatives, complete with a form letter. Although a form letter isn't always as effective as a unique letter, it's certainly better than nothing when time is a factor, as it always is.
10/5/2000 1:51:55 PM

Wednesday, October 4, 2000

I was unable to watch the first debate between Bush and Gore last night, but a transcript is available from C-SPAN. PBS has excellent sidebar coverage linked to their presentation of the transcript. In their presentation of the transcripts (which is linked on this page), MSNBC provides third-party annotations of some details of the issues.
10/4/2000 10:36:58 AM

Tuesday, October 3, 2000

"In the popular mind, hard-bodied Greeks exercised; fat Romans lay on couches nibbling grapes between orgies. The lesson of Roman history seemed clear: if you have too much fun, you will be wiped out by invading barbarians and exploding volcanoes. In Protestant America, Rome symbolized not only pagan immorality but tyrannical big government." From "The Second Fall of Rome" by Michael Lind in the winter 2000 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.
10/3/2000 6:18:51 PM

Friday, September 29, 2000

At American Graffiti, Dario fills in for Dawn with his entry "Dario's Turn." He marks a birthday, too. Felice compleanno, Dario! (And if I got that right, grazie, Babelfish!)
9/29/2000 12:13:20 PM

Thursday, September 28, 2000

The Center for Responsive Politics collates the candidates' Federal Election Commission filings at opensecrets.org in a format that is easier to use than that of the FEC site. They also provide some reports that the FEC does not, such as the worst filing and the best filing (as measured by the percentage of contributed dollars that are not attributed to a particular donor). Opensecrets.org is a nice adjunct to Project Vote Smart.
9/28/2000 6:24:55 PM

Wednesday, September 27, 2000

A student doing research on censorship and institutional racism brought this article by Jack White in Time (May 15, 2000) to my attention. Lerone Bennett's Forced into Glory : Abraham Lincoln's White Dream continues the discussion of the view that Lincoln was a racist. It was published in February 2000 yet received little attention from the mainstream media until the appearance of White's article, which takes the media to task for apparently ignoring Bennett's work. The New York Times did eventually review it on August 27, 2000.
9/27/2000 12:38:57 PM

The September 12 entry in this log linked to a book about the decline of civic involvement in the U.S. (Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone:The Collapse and Revival of American Community). On September 21, Atlantic Unbound featured an interview with the author entitled "Lonely in America."

The interview links to the online version of the essay from which the book originated. The essay first appeared in The Journal of Democracy, which appears online at a pricey subscription site, Project Muse, run by Johns Hopkins University. The site offers some free samples to non-subscribers, but the freebies are few, far between, and difficult to locate. Or, my belly full of turnips and my head aching from the fall off the truck, I couldn't find them easily.
9/27/2000 12:09:07 AM

Monday, September 25, 2000

I should overcome my inertia to link to Paulineee's Inertia more often. In this entry, her 'linque du jour' (which is always worth following, by the way) leads to Josh Freed's column in the Montreal Gazette about the differences between NBC and CBC coverage of the Olympic games.
9/25/2000 7:54:58 AM

I would link to American Graffiti every time I visit if I could remember which consonant to double in spelling graffiti. In this entry, Dawn celebrates twelve years of marriage by briefly recounting the wedding day. Congrats!
9/25/2000 7:37:20 AM

Sunday, September 24, 2000

Lighter stuff:

From the statistics page at Uselessfacts.net: "0.3% of all road accidents in Canada involve a moose."

And there's always the Harper's Index, updated a month in arrears.

According to The Frugal Life, all household problems can be handled with Alka-Seltzer, a steel wool pad cut into quarter sections, and used fabric softener sheets.

Warning: refdesk.com may be hazardous to your schedule. If you already knew that, you wouldn't be here.

9/24/2000 10:56:32 AM

Saturday, September 23, 2000

"Ovid's love nest found by banks of the Tiber," says Richard Owen of The Sunday Times. There's probably a very good pun about banks and change in that headline, but I'm not going for it. Thank me when you see me.
9/23/2000 7:43:44 AM

Friday, September 22, 2000

Jamaica Kincaid writes about books and reading in "Islander Once, Now Voyager" in the September 22 New York Times.
9/22/2000 5:17:35 PM

Wednesday, September 20, 2000

The British journal Prospect is a recent online find for me. Like many publications that appear both on paper and online, Prospect publishes only a few of the entries from the current issue in its online version, but is more generous with articles from the back issues of the print version.

I came upon it some months ago in pursuit of Ronald Dworkin's essay "Playing God" from May 1999 about the ethical concerns surrounding genetic research. His conclusion: "Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done ever since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discovery. We play with fire and accept the consequences, because the alternative is an irresponsible cowardice in the face of the unknown."

The August/September 2000 issue features a debate between Robert Kuttner and E.J. Dionne in which they address the question "Was the Clinton Presidency a Failure?"
9/20/2000 7:32:31 PM

Tuesday, September 19, 2000

Remember Winky-Dink and You? (No, it's not a film from your sex-ed class. Get your mind outta the gutter.) Julian Dibbel takes a look back at the fifties TV show in his column "Winky Dink in the Wasteland," which appeared in Feed on September 5th. Along the way, he also looks at media interactivity.
9/19/2000 3:56:50 PM

Monday, September 18, 2000

Culled from Arts & Letters Daily during my daily cruise: Modern Humorist. Check out their new on-line personalization system. I also hooted through their legal documents, particularly their general policies and their submission policies. Sure, it's sophomoric. What's your point?
9/18/2000 2:31:29 PM

In "Looking for Lefty" from the September 13-19 Village Voice, Richard Goldstein examines the strategy of the Green party as Ralph Nader and the Greens try to elbow their way onto the dance floor.
9/18/2000 1:51:57 PM

Saturday, September 16, 2000

Paulineee's web log at Inertia provides a link to Survivor Journals, a new sort of collaboration that will work like Survivor, eliminating a participant every two weeks.
9/16/2000 1:49:29 PM

"Publishing Without a Net" (September 16) in Wired doesn't shed much light on why magazines like the New Yorker or Vanity Fair don't offer versions of their magazines on the internet. It does, however, provide a handy link to the site of New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell. At his site, Gladwell archives both his shorter and longer essays from The New Yorker and he also provides excerpts from his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
9/16/2000 1:13:19 PM

Friday, September 15, 2000

Yen of the journal A Perfect Circle has been on hiatus while she moved from the U.S. to Japan. The redesigned journal covering her days in Japan is a another gem. Visit Shinkansen.
9/15/2000 6:54:54 AM

Thursday, September 14, 2000

Unless a big wind comes to town to blow away the papers piled on my desk, I probably won't be writing or surfing today. I'll be back Friday.
9/14/2000 12:45:32 PM

Wednesday, September 13, 2000

I'm lifting this link to Linkdup2000 from the September 13th entry on the web log at Dawn's American Grafitti because it leads to many lovely sites that use Flash technology, including this dazzler, Art and Culture.
9/13/2000 6:03:33 AM

Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life debuts this month. In this issue, historian and novelist Richard Slotkin addresses the differences between writing historical fiction and writing history. This issue also includes several book reviews as well as a sizable excerpt from Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, a new book mentioned in this log on September 10.
9/13/2000 5:02:57 AM

Tuesday, September 12, 2000

On this day in history, September 12, 1993, I broke my ankle while trimming some limbs from the elm that overhangs our garage. I can still hear the moist pop! of my bones as they fractured and separated. Can't get stuff like that in the New York Times, can ya?
9/12/2000 11:15:57 AM

After reaching 102� yesterday, the temperature this morning at 7 AM had fallen to just under 70�. Oh, I know nobody asked, but humor me, please.
9/12/2000 11:06:21 AM

Another one for the somedaymaybe reading list: Bowling Alone:The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam (Simon & Schuster, 544 pages, $26), reviewed by Amitai Etzioni on July 20 in Intellectual Capital. The wit of the title alone might justify the time spent reading the book.
9/12/2000 8:14:05 AM

Monday, September 11, 2000

Based on this review in Scientific American, I've added Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times by Steve Fuller to my ever-expanding, somedaymaybe reading list. Fuller's examination of Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions might be intended merely to provoke discussion of flaws in Kuhn's work, but Chet Raymo, the reviewer, says Fuller might "find himself in the teeming company of those who believe in creationism, alien abductions, parapsychology and other nonparadigmatic citizen sciences."
9/11/2000 7:35:29 AM

Sunday, September 10, 2000

Today our local paper ran an August 27th column by Laurence D. Cohen of the Hartford Courant about the Boy Scouts and homosexuals. I enjoyed browsing the achives of Cohen's recent columns where he addresses serious issues with a soft-edged humor. I remain amazed that all this stuff is available at the click of a mouse.
9/10/2000 10:47:30 AM

"The gun culture has been read from the present into the past." So writes Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles in the introduction to his new book, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, reviewed by Garry Wills and excerpted today in the New York Times.
9/10/2000 8:58:16 AM

Friday, September 8, 2000

A hit on my counter this morning led me to Google and thence to the website of the National Resources Defense Council, where I found the online edition of their quarterly, The Amicus Journal. The current issue includes a poetic essay by Homero Aridjis about a destination in Mexico for migrating monarchs.

The editors included links to Monarch Watch [not working when posted here], the University of Minnesota's Monarch Lab, and to the Science Museum of Minnesota's "Monarchs and Migration" pages.
9/8/2000 12:38:44 PM

Thursday, September 7, 2000

"If you have plenty of money, the best consequence (so they say) is that you no longer need to think about money. In the future we will have plenty of technology � and the best consequence will be that we will no longer have to think about technology. We will return with gratitude and relief to the topics that actually count."

From "The Second Coming � A Manifesto" by David Gelernter in The Edge.
9/7/2000 1:03:51 PM

As soon as I develop more self-control, I can probably start visiting The Edge again. Lacking restraint, I have lost days there. In the words of its editors, The Edge "promote[s] inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, ...[and] work[s] for the intellectual and social achievement of society." The current issue includes an open letter from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to Bonnie Prince Chuck touching on genetic modifications to crops and on hostility to science.
9/7/2000 10:42:56 AM

Monday, September 4, 2000

Although I have temporarily removed all JavaScript from my own journal pages, I think that I'll find the JavaScript Source an invaluable source of free scripts when I decide to use scripts again. I discovered the link on Catherine Jamieson's beautifully redesigned pages. Where does she find the energy?
9/4/2000 10:09:36 AM

Sunday, September 3, 2000

A link on Arts & Letters Daily led me to a Scientific American article ("How Green Are Green Plastics?") about the biological production of biodegradable plastic by corn and other food crops -- not production from but production by. The world grows curioser and curiouser.

The same issue of Scientific American also includes a brief, unrelated census report on population stagnation and poverty in the Mississippi Delta. The more things change...
9/3/2000 12:35:31 PM

Saturday, September 2, 2000

Eric Harshbarger is the person to see for special items made from Legos. Wired News ran a profile on him ("The Michelangelo of Lego") on September 2. Find something you love to do; figure out a way to get paid for doing it. I think he has.
9/2/2000 3:00:42 PM

Sunday, August 27, 2000

Writing in The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy looks at the mysteries that experimental archaeologists are trying to unfold at Stonehenge and then considers some of the curiosities future investigators might discover when they try to examine our own age. The idea behind "It's a Jumble Out There" is itself ancient, but the details about the Stonehenge problem and other mysteries that Murphy brings up interested me.
8/27/2000 9:53:00 AM

Sunday, August 13, 2000

Dawn of American Graffiti continues her wonderful parody of Bridget Jones's Diary here.
8/13/2000 3:50:12 PM

Saturday, August 12, 2000

Jade of My Jaded Journey has a new camera and has used it most capably already. This photo from her August 10th entry ("Lucid Blue") is a stunner.
8/12/2000 1:23:06 PM

Thursday, August 10, 2000

"Fatherhood, succinctly defined: not batting an eye when someone you�ve known for three days takes a dump in your hand." From the August 10th Bleat of new father James Lileks.
8/10/2000 12:34:16 PM

Wednesday, August 9, 2000

I check every few months to see whether Harper's Magazine has followed the lead of The Atlantic Monthly and put the magazine on line. They haven't but they do make the "Harper's Index" available on line a month in arrears.
8/9/2000 6:32:24 PM

Are there two people on the planet named Arianna Huffington? This column in The Nation leads me to believe that something is amiss. The Huffington I remember and disdain might say that "as less than 1 percent of the population, the very wealthiest among us, now provide nearly all campaign contributions, our mainstream politicians continue to deny that a leveraged buyout of our political system is under way," but I would expect her to say it with a smile that reveals pride in her purchase.

The Nation's "Death Row Roll Call" can be found here.
8/9/2000 5:45:02 PM

Tuesday, August 8, 2000

While roaming through the NY Times book reviews, I stumbled across a review of Wes Jackson's Becoming Native to This Place, a book that has been on my somedaymaybe list forever, at least since he spoke to the fellowship during the same week that the Times reviewed his book, a first for the fellowship, I think. We are are so easily impressed out here.

Jackson began his presentation to the fellowship with an old joke. He told us that when his Unitarian colleagues in California first learned that he was returning to Kansas to head the Land Institute in Salina, they were appalled. When he arrived in Salina, he wrote back and assured them that he would be fine here because some night riders had burned a question mark in his yard.
8/8/2000 6:55:34 PM

The New York Times reviews Ben, In the World again in the August 8th books section. In this review, Michiko Kakutani provides a less favorable opinion, calling Lessing's work a "flimsy, crudely written story."
8/8/2000 6:31:20 PM

Monday, August 7, 2000

Since reading her short story "The Tunnel" decades ago, I have been a fan of Doris Lessing's writing, but I have stayed safely in the shallows of her short stories, never venturing far from the fathomable shore of her short fiction into the depths of her longer works. In the New York Times (registration required), Michael Pye reviews her latest novel, Ben, In the World. I am sure it belongs on my list. I'm not askeered of her.
8/7/2000 2:38:36 PM

"Most of the marks left by history are scars." From Maggie Turner's August 5th entry. I leave for a few days and the writing from the folks on my journal list grows ever better.
8/7/2000 7:50:31 AM

Wednesday, August 2, 2000

Dawn of American Graffiti tells the tale of the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station in her August 2 entry, "Twenty Years Ago Today."
8/2/2000 6:46:46 AM

Sunday, July 30, 2000

The Sole Proprietor addresses the teapot tempest over donate buttons on journal sites and other personal pages in his July 23rd entry. When I first saw the graphic on the page, I laughed so hard that I scared the cat out of the room.
7/30/2000 8:00:05 AM

Thursday, July 27, 2000

A friend directed me to the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division homepage, a great spoof of scientific research, the EPA, and environmental advocacy groups. Dihydrogen monoxide is as common as, well, water. The pages look authentic enough that I suspect one day I'll find that one of my more naive (and less attentive) students has cited it in a research paper.

That last cynical comment probably indicates that I've read too many of my students' papers today.
7/27/2000 11:01:38 PM

Someone somewhere, here or there (who knows?) recommended Peter Robinson's In a Dry Season. With production from P.D. James and Colin Dexter likely to slow down, the time might have arrived to consider Robinson.
7/27/2000 7:02:57 AM

Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Taylor and I have spent many hours surfing through How Stuff Works. Need to know what WD-40 stands for? Check here first.
7/25/2000 4:57:19 PM

Sunday, July 23, 2000

A link on the July 22 entry at Perforated Lines brought me to the journal anyone's any. When you find a journal with a title drawn from one of e.e.'s finest, well you just have to take some time to look around, don't you?
7/23/2000 8:29:56 AM

Saturday, July 22, 2000

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." --Paulo Freire
I've taken Friere's assertion from Ephemera #0048 at Catherine Jamieson's site.
7/22/2000 8:44:57 PM

The Color Center at hIdaho Design is a handy tool for previewing color combinations and for translating color codes from hex to decimal to percent.
7/22/2000 7:03:55 PM

A reference in a student's paper led me to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
7/22/2000 11:27:42 AM

Mr. Geib expresses his opinions very firmly at Rich Geib's Universe. I wasn't attracted by his opinions (in fact, some are a little off-putting to me) so much as I was drawn by the very good collection of notable writings he has assembled on the site, Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech, for instance.
7/22/2000 9:20:27 AM