Though it seems that I've been writing more than I've been reading, I've been busy at reading, too. I've just been bad about tracking what I've been reading. For one thing, I've been feeding an interest in natural history and genetics by way of Mapping Human History, by Steve Olson, which was interesting; The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) and various other online resources. Nice to see that science is progressing, as usual, far faster than the society around us.
At Michael's urging, I read To Reign In Hell, by Steven Brust, which was a strange fantasy/sci-fi retelling of the Paradise Lost story, but entertaining. That led to a collection of Harlan Ellison's work, The Essential Ellison: a Fifty Year Perspective, which I have yet to dive into but which made me laugh on the first page, so it promises to be good.
Continuing the interest in middle eastern and european history, and finding Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations astoundingly depressing, I put it down and read Warriors of God, James Reston's tale of Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin in the Third Crusade, which shed some light on why the Arabs think of Europeans as uncultured thugs: they were. In the twelfth century, anyway. At the moment, I'm reading The Bible Unearthed, about the wide variance between the historical claims of the Bible, and the evidence provided by archaeology. Never mind the lies about the sun stopping in the sky, or the fallacies about who was living in Nod when Cain (human being number three, remember) went to live there, and so on. This is more an inquiry into whether any of the history was true once you strip away all the fantasy. And so far, it's not looking good for much of the stories before the seventh century BCE.
Because I hate it when I can't read a language well enough to use a dictionary, I also started learning how to read Arabic. It's an interesting script, very complex at first, but amazingly simple after just a few hours. I hope I keep up the study, but I hold little hope of ever being able to write it, at least not without the right pen. The whole right-to-left thing is very strange, and my left-to-right handwriting has gotten bad enough (the result of ten years of typing, five years of Palm Graffiti, and general atrophy). Oh, and I read Robert Bringhurst's excellent Elements of Typographical Style, which I really must put into practice. Fantastic book.
a jaundiced eye:
the weblog
what's on your mind?
What I'm Reading:
06/09/2002
posted 18:31 PM
03/31/2002
Finished Volume 3 of A History of Religious Ideas, by Mircea Eliade. Also blazed through Wittgenstein's Poker, which I didn't enjoy as much as I had hoped I would. Still reading The Metaphysical Club, which I am enjoying, and Among the Believers, which it would be hard to describe as fun, but which is a fantastic book. I can see why Islamic folks protested their protrayal by Naipaul, though. He's pretty harsh, essentially blaming Islam for the backwards nature of Islamic countries, though it's difficult to argue with his conclusions. Any time you turn away from a reality that displeases you in favor of one which you posit simply for the sake of hiding your own failures, whether it's based on a centuries-old book or science fiction, you're bound to have trouble making the factory work, or dealing with modern banking, or any of a number of other things that make wealth and help people grow. But to be fair, Naipaul does a good job of representing Islam as a most attractive (if vague) ideology to someone wishing for a return to the calm of the village before modernization. His most damning comments seem to come when he suggests that for the people of Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, civilization and wealth just somehow happen, and that they fail to grasp the causal nature of hard work, materialism, and wealth. I'm sure it's common for many people, not just in those countries, to assume that the TV just happens, that gasoline comes from gas stations, and bread from the supermarket. But it's far more frightening when people who believe such also want to destroy the mechanisms and infrastructure required in order that they might have those things, and damn the entire process on which that infrastructure was built. There's a fundamental disconnect and an ignorance that Naipaul suggests will never be righted precisely because Islam (as practiced in those countries, anyway) is so closed to the truth of science and logic and everything that has happened in the West since the Renaissance. Anyway, thought-provoking book.
posted 15:33 PM
09/25/2001
Okay, it's been a while. Since last entry, in no particular order, I read The Godfather, which was surprisingly like the movie, almost to a ridiculous degree. But the movie is better. On Ken's urging, I read Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, which is amazing. Pure lyric brilliance. I can't wait to read something by McCarthy that isn't about a serial killer, though. For background, I grabbed a copy of Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate, which was a bit dry but quite good; discussed a lot of stuff I hadn't seen elsewhere, such as the fact that ARPA had to convince BBN to open the source to the IMPs that formed the prototype of today's routing systems. BBN wanted to keep it closed, to make it easier to manage the network. Let's see. I'm still reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral but I'm finding it difficult to get into. Maybe just the time of year, or maybe the shocks of the past month, I dunno. I'll probably pick it up again. I've been reading about my ancestors (mostly just my ancestor's bosses and their creditors and the lawyers they pitted against one another, but still interesting) in Edward Hartley's Ironworks on the Saugus, which has been interesting to me but would likely bore the average reader to tears. Over the vacation in Maine, I read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which was just weird. But at least I know what it's about now, and can get all the oblique references. It seems strange to think of now, but I spent a great deal of time reading about Microsoft back in August, and with the exception of Adam Barr's Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters, every single book I read pretty much sucked. Breaking Windows was okay, but the rest of them just sucked and I wish I could have the time back.
posted 09:48 AM
07/07/2001
Got a slew of books from amazon (doing my part to fix the economy) but haven't had a chance to read any of them. Instead, I've been reading The Mists of Avalon, one of Heather's favorite books. It's strange, such a different story than The Once and Future King, one of my favorite books. Stuff waiting in the queue:
My Ears are Bent, by Joseph Mitchell;
Where Mathematics Comes From by George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez; some more Philip Roth, some Cormac McCarthy, and The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Also read Away Offshore, another Nat Philbrick book about Nantucket. As it turns out, my family only spent a few years on Nantucket, before moving to Martha's Vineyard, so I suppose I need to get a book on Martha's Vineyard instead.
posted 17:54 PM
06/19/2001
Boys, it's been a long time since I updated this part. Rest assured I'm still reading, usually three or four books at once. Since the last update, I've read Nat Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, which caught my eye because my mother's family is still hanging around Nantucket. It was a pretty interesting tale, and fairly well told. I've getting sick of these mass audience books, though; I really need something with a bit more meat and historical depth to it. Now I need to read Moby-Dick again. I'm reading (slowly) Eric Durschmeid's The Weather Factor, which my Mom got me after I made a comment about how I thought Jared Diamond could have touched on how the weather affected history. The book itself is pretty cheesy, but covers some interesting events, like the Kamikaze that sank the Chinese fleet off the coast of Japan in 1281. Another book I just finished was The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero, which, frankly, was really boring. I'd expected better. It's as though Robert Kaplan couldn't decide whether it was to be an accurate historical record, a playful philosophical treatise, an existentialist dirge, or a mathematical puzzle. The reader is left with the feeling that Kaplan doesn't really have a clue where zero came from, and didn't really want to tell us if he did. I finally got around to reading a Terry Pratchett book, The Color of Magic. I can see why people like him - he's nuts. Sort of like a Douglas Adams for the gaming/fantasy set. Lastly, I just finished Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which I thought was just amazing. Roth can really grab your attention and your sense of wonder. There were a few flaws in the book ("what happened to Delphine Roux?") but overall, highly recommended.
posted 15:42 PM
6/3/2000
Sleepy Hollow is a beautiful movie. It's a far cry from Vincent, though.
posted 1:49 AM link
6/2/2000
I wonder what would have come of the investigation into the John F. Kennedy assassination had the Web been around at the time. Imagine: streaming video of the Zapruder film on a thousand Web sites.
posted 11:39 AM link
There's nothing that inspires pathos quite like a bumper sticker that reads "truely blessed".
posted 1:55 AM link
The only DVD I own: Blade Runner: The Director's Cut. (What, you were expecting the Matrix? Come on now.)
posted 1:26 AM link
6/1/2000
You didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway:For more of my varied tastes, you should visit Media Nugget of the Day, and drop Harold a line asking him to keep his weblog going, lest an entire generation grow up not knowing the glory that was Offhand Remarks.
- anything by Drive Like Jehu
- anything by Fugazi
- Soundgarden
- U2, the Unforgettable Fire
- old Superchunk
- Radiohead
- John Prine (esp. Live)
- Tom Waits
- Smashing Pumpkins, except for Adore, which was weird
- The Allman Brothers
- old Husker Du
- Glenn Gould, wheezing and all
posted 2:22 AM link
In the fine tradition established by PeterMe, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you all to pronounce jeblog as "crepe paper dongle fuzz". I mean, hey – nobody pronounces these things "WEE-blogs", do they?
posted 1:38 AM link
I suppose I should start another log for all the movies I watch, seeing as how that's basically how I spend my downtime:Anyway, until I do that, you're just going to have to suffer through fishing the movie references out of the main jeblog.
- watch movies
- read books (technical, fiction, non-fiction, poetry on occasion)
- eat
- drink (small batch bourbons are a recent favorite)
- listen to music
Saw Man on the Moon last night. Jim Carrey does a decent job of playing Andy Kaufmann; he even made me forget that he'd played so many completely stupid roles. And that, my friends, is a triumph. But the thing that struck me about Andy was that here's a guy who was basically hacking the system. A culture jammer inspiration to us all. And what's not to like about that?
posted 1:36 AM link
5/30/2000
I promised myself that I wouldn't link to other weblogs from this weblog (unless it made sense, as it did when referring to Ms. Champ's mention of Basho) and I intend to keep that promise. I did not, however, take any sort of vow not to link to another site, despite my intentions of making this a catalogue of what runs through my cranium. At present, very little of value is actually running through my mind, and I blame David Sedaris. So you may as well forget about getting anything done for, oh, the rest of the day. And into tomorrow.
posted 8:05 PM link
Everyone should join ICANN as a Member at Large, if only to do your part to prevent the DNS from becoming even more broken and stupid than it already is. If nothing else, you can absolve yourself of responsibility for not doing anything to combat the continued arbitrary abuses by an unconstitutional body of the network that so many of us count on as part of our livelihoods. Learn more.
posted 6:26 PM link
Also, I'd like to add that this site was using the deep yellow long before that Kottke punk even had a weblog. Just because it went for more than two years without an update doesn't mean I relinquished control over my brand. :)
posted 6:13 PM link
Just a note to all the bloggeurs who have noticed that this project constitutes one of the signs of a coming apocalypse:
"Heh."
posted 5:58 PM link
Thai spring rolls: fresh, not fried.
posted 2:18 AM link
5/29/2000
Something that makes me happy: the icons used by IE5/Mac and Transmit to represent files in the process of being downloaded. They have a status bar built right in, so you can be downloading in the background and glance at the file's icon on the desktop (or wherever) and get a sense of how far it has left to go.
posted 3:21 PM link
Saw Gladiator tonight. If you are pining for an epic, this is it. It got me thinking about the dearth of heroic figures in modern life. Russell Crowe does an amazing job as Maximus, but then, he always played a great bad-ass. Email me if you understand the joke. I'll just mention the delicious irony of a spectacular movie about the evil of the spectacle; the pleasure of the mob as political tool. Ridley Scott must have really enjoyed himself, on a number of levels. I left the theatre with an andrenaline rush; I lamented (and continue to lament) the general lack of catharsis in democratic theatre.
But seriously, it's long been a topic of concern for me that we seem to have lost, as a generation, or even as a series of generations, the sense of the hero as a role model, as one who illustrates through their life the themes and major struggles of an era. Our heroes all have huge endorsement contracts for athletic shoes. But what remains, outside of the Michael Jordans, is always torn into pieces, shown to the supermarket waiting line public as human, or worse. We need a few heroes who illustrate the virtues that greater generations than ours held dear. We need people who are greater than ourselves, that we may be greater as well. The Puritans used to name their children after virtues: Chastity, Faith, Charity, Hope, etc. We name ours after vacuous television stars. I named my cats after goddesses (Mara, Nokomis). I tried :)
Do you have any heroes?
posted 2:26 AM link
5/28/2000
Watched the late-night movie last night (we don't have cable, so when 1am rolls around, it's slim pickings). I was astonished to find that we live in such a screwed up world: during the climactic scene of Boyz n the Hood, when Doughboy is getting ready to plug the guy who killed his brother, he says "roll your ass over" or something. The wizards at news channel 11 censored this, turning it into "roll your butt over", but went ahead and showed Doughboy shooting him in the head. Whee. If there's one thing worse than censorship, it's censorship that's poorly implemented.
posted 2:29 PM link
05/12/2002
Been cracking up to the Beat Farmers lately. Loud and Plowed and Live! is a hoot. Takes me back to the days at the Inn when we used to sit around laughing at the liner notes.
posted 21:45 PM
03/14/2002
Heather and I got the Hank WIlliams, Jr. box set, Bocephus a few days before we went to SxSW. Fun stuff. Since SxSW, though, I've been listening to some mixes Pableaux gave me at the Gingerman Pub during the Adaptive Path anniversary party. And here I was, thinking maybe I was one of the only Web geeks who'd heard of Mike Cross. Hee. I haven't heard Elma Turl in a long damn time. And, of course, Scott's Walkingbirds mini-CD (which really ought to have been titled "don't put it into a slot-loader"; as a weird aside, CDDB seems to think it's a Celine Dion album!). I think things must be looking up. I'm listening to more music now than I have in the past eighteen months.
posted 19:03 PM
10/27/2001
Went out and got the O, Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and that inspired a binge that includes the first two by Gillian Welch. If there was ever a woman whose singing could make you weep, it's Gillian Welch. Go out and listen to Orphan Girl, the first song on Revival and I dare you not to sit with the tears welling up in your eyes.
posted 11:52 AM
07/07/2001
Finally got the power cord for my tape deck, only to find that one side (it's a dual) is stuck shut with a cassette inside. Oh, well. At least I got to listen to the Sex Pistols again. Other music in my life lately: Sigur Ros, Derek Trucks (thanks, Brant), a great mix from Jeremy (thanks, Jeremy, especially for that Shellac song) and some other old stuff I had on tape (Dinosaur, Jr.'s Bug, Screaming Trees, and so on).
posted 17:44 PM
06/19/2001
More Whiskeytown. Gram Parsons. Old Steely Dan. New Radiohead. Coldplay. Lousy collection of Go-Betweens stuff without their best songs on it. Nothing yet sticking in my head. Some days, I wish I had a good static or white noise generator. Saw various histories of punk (May must have been the "history of punk on cable" month or something) and wanted to break everything. Unfortunately, all of my punk is on tape and vinyl, and I accidentally threw away the power cord to my tape deck when I moved, so I've been sitting here humming "Holidays in the Sun" and wishing I had a really loud electric guitar.
posted 16:50 PM
04/15/2001
Godspeed, You Black Emperor!
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Subtle and dynamic, symphonic and sophisticated, so many adjectives to choose from. Just listen, preferably in a dark room with surround sound.
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Subtle and dynamic, symphonic and sophisticated, so many adjectives to choose from. Just listen, preferably in a dark room with surround sound.
posted 17:25 PM