Archive for the ‘books’ Category
Socrates and Glaucon on the HSN
May 20th, 2010
GLAUCON: Then yes, I agree that one could add such technology to an ordinary mop. But would it still be an ordinary mop, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Very astute, Glaucon. It would not. For convenience’s sake, let’s call it the EZ-Klean Mop™. Now answer me this: would the EZ-Klean Mop ™, given that it has the Dirt-Fighting Technology™ I’ve just described, be able to more effectively rid spaces of dirt or plague?
GLAUCON: Yes.
SOCRATES: So you agree that it can clean better than an ordinary mop?
GLAUCON: I believe so.
Another fine article from McSweeney’s: Socrates and Glaucon on the Home Shopping Network
Werner Herzog Reads Where’s Waldo
May 16th, 2010
Why all this travel? We search for Waldo, but what is Waldo searching for? Perhaps he’s not searching at all, but running from something. Does this man even want to be found? Or, in searching for Waldo, did we really find ourselves? No, probably not.
See also: Werner Herzog Reads Madeline, Werner Herzog Reads Curious George, and Werner Herzog Reads Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel.
Wikipedia In Print
May 8th, 2010
A new feature of Wikipedia allows users to compile articles into books, arrange them, and have them printed, bound, and shipped. This video demonstrates.
books, video, web | No Comments »
The Turbo-encabulator
April 25th, 2010
Oh, man, I hope the turbo-encabulator can interface with my old DMC-12 flux capacitor.
On an extremely unrelated note:
Don Quixote: the first LARPer?
The Nietzsche Family Circus
April 7th, 2010
Move over Garfield Minus Garfield, I’ve got a new favorite surreal mash-up webcomic thing. The Nietzsche Family Circus matches random Family Circus panels with quotes from the German philosopher, often generating surprisingly appropriate juxtapositions. So by reading them, we’re applying the random quote to the random picture and still ascribing meaning to the result. Minds are awesome.
art+design, books, language, old dead white guys | No Comments »
Hamlet
March 28th, 2010
The Royal Shakespeare Company put their latest production of Hamlet online. Patrick Stewart plays Claudius & the Ghost.
It’s in modern-day dress, but if that’s enough to make you refuse to watch one of the greatest marvels of the English language then I don’t know what to tell you.
On Finishing Books
March 16th, 2010
I just finished W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, which all things considered is a pretty good book, despite my occasional furious claims to the contrary.1 I started it sometime around October, read most of it, and then put it aside. I just finished the last hundred-odd pages a few minutes ago. This seems to be a pattern — I start a book really enthusiastically, then get a little bored or distracted and put it down for awhile. Eventually I get so tired of seeing it sitting in my queue, shamefully reminding me of my miniscule attention span, that I just plant myself down on the couch and force myself to finish it. The satisfaction of finishing the book outweighs the grueling completion process.
This isn’t usually the case, of course. Only for certain books. I’m pretty sure I’d hate reading if this was the normal situation.
Note that the concept of book-graphing has been explored before, which reminds me: I want the book equivalent of a pedometer, so I can settle this graph thing once and for all. Then I want to correlate information about the structure, genre and subject matter of the book with the pace at which I read it.
If I worked at Amazon, I would be spying on customers’ Kindle usage and mining that data so hard.
1 No chapters? Really? Why would you do that, Sebald? I demand discrete chunks.
Logicomix
March 14th, 2010
I’m pretty sure that if you like this blog you’d like a graphic novel biography of Bertrand Russell, which is exactly what Logicomix is.
art+design, books, history, math, old dead white guys | 2 Comments »
d’Alembert’s Dream
February 25th, 2010
I would call Denis Diderot’s essay d’Alembert’s Dream a study in 18th-century cognitive science.
Also it’s my birthday! I’m older now.
books, neuroscience, old dead white guys, science | No Comments »