You know George Plimpton, right? Founder of The Paris Review, deputy ambassador to the UN, noted sportswriter, all-around polymath. He was a pretty cool cat.

Anyway, one of John Hodgman’s offhand quips has come to life in the form of George Plimpton’s Video Falconry, an self-explanatory imitation ColecoVision game rendered in Flash.

He pulled another cold french fry from the greasestained Happy Meal box. He ate it slowly. The sun rising behind him over the limestone bluffs. The barren valley and the road winding through it still in morning’s blue shadow. He wiped his hand on his jacket and checked the breech of the big Weatherby. Bullet as long as man’s finger sitting there. He lay down on the blanket, the rifle’s barrel resting on the saddlebag, and glassed downcountry with the telescopic sight. The dusty road was empty. He waited.

The Decemberists have made a music video of “Calamity Song” based on a key scene in my Favorite Book Ever, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Not too bad, though we don’t get to see Otis P. Lord’s head go through the monitor. Also Colin Meloy’s a bit old to be Pemulis, but whatevs.

via Open Culture.

This morning I awoke suddenly aware that I hadn’t yet linked to Shady Characters, a lovely blog that records the history of some of the more interesting typographical glyphs: ¶, ‽, #, &

I chose the AC. If I want to be able to see at night, I have to walk all the way across the room and actually turn on a lamp, like a Neanderthal.

…

On the other hand, there’s a colony of prairie dogs living like a mile down the bike path. So, big picture, everything’s actually awesome.

A few decades ago, the Yugoslav government commissioned a series of huge sculpture/monuments to be built at a few historic locations. They’ve since been abandoned, so the Balkans are now scattered with what look like the relics of an ancient and completely alien civilization.

Also, on a personal note, I’m spending the summer in Boulder, CO, interning with the lovely people at Foraker Labs! So, you know, FYI. You should probably visit — Boulder is just incredibly awesome and I have a remarkably comfortable floor moderately comfortable futon.

The video above depicts an insertion sort implemented through Romanian folk dance.

See also: bubble sort, selection sort, and Shell sort.

Happy almost-weekend, everyone. In recognition of this event, I give you Stoic Sulu.

Sometimes too the author embellished the story. St. Denis is the patron saint of France. He is supposed to have been the first bishop of Paris and to have suffered martyrdom through being beheaded. According to legend, he immediately stood up and walked a good distance, carrying his head in his hands, to the place where the church which bears his name is now situated, a little to the north of Paris. This was miraculous enough, you would have thought, but there are ways to improve on it. In later lives there are saints who do exactly the same thing, but walk even further or are accompanied by other beheaded martyrs also carrying their own heads. In fact this motif became so common that the experts have invented a special name for this kind of saint: cephalophores. This is from Greek, and of course means “headbearers.”

Janson’s “Natural History of Latin”