A Song Contest!
Anyone and everyone with an ounce of musical talent: head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for the First Annual G:TB Song Contest, sponsored by Almighty Yojo Productions . . . you just might win The Grand Prize.
Mine Shaft
I highly recommend a visit to The Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ . . . it is the self-proclaimed "Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World" and you will not be disappointed in this regard . . . the museum (Zobel Exhibit Hall) contains a startling array of valuable minerals, fossils, and mining equipment-- in fact, it was recently burgled-- and the pièce de résistance is a giant wooden periodic table with cubbyholes containing samples, ore and examples of every element (there should be one of these in every science class . . . but the guy who built it said it contains 25,000 dollars worth of stuff) and when you do journey down into the historical Sterling Hill Zinc Mine, perhaps you'll be lucky enough to have an older gentleman named Bob as your guide . . . he calls the men "Ace" and the women "Sweets" and speaks in staccato sentences that begin with information about the mine but end with anecdotal non sequiturs about twenty dollar bills and driver's licenses, motel rooms and electrical outlets, and the importance of a good dentist . . . he's also not afraid to tell a joke or two (e.g. what side of a cow has the most hair? the outside) and every time someone sneezed he high-fived their snot coated hand and said, "God bless you and God bless me," and, if you are still not understanding the value of having a guide with dementia, remember that it's a two hour tour deep into the bowels of the earth, so having Bob as a guide only adds to the excitement, as you're not sure if you will ever return to the surface again.
A Geography Question
Is it better to live in Hoboken and have a view of the Manhattan skyline . . . or spend the extra cash and live in Manhattan, and have a view of the Hoboken skyline?
The Peeing Tree
I assume you are familiar with Shel Silverstein's tale of sacrifice called The Giving Tree, but that's nothing compared with what "The Peeing Tree" had to endure on our camping trip . . . the tree was named this for obvious reasons, as four boys under ten years old need to urinate a lot when they are in the woods, and the tree absorbed their micturates without complaint or offense . . . but (also for obvious reasons) the stories do not end in the same manner . . . you wouldn't want to sit on or anywhere near "The Peeing Tree."
Two Strikes on China Mieville (But A Home Run for Rex Stout)
For the second time, I have given up on a China Mieville novel . . . I tried to read Perdido Street Station and loved the wild imagery, the inter-species love affair, and the detailed bestiary of New Corubuzon, but got bored with the repetitive plot, and now I have given up on his new novel, Kraken, which happens in an bizarrely imagined version of London and recounts a "squidnapping" and-- among other things-- a Giant Squid Cult, a strike among magical familiars, people who can be folded up like origami, and other cool Philip K. Dick-esque (Dick-ian?) conceits, and although there is plenty of action, once again, the plot is rather lame and repetitive and so three hundred pages was enough for me . . . but the book I switched to-- a Nero Wolfe mystery called Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout-- is worth reading: a plot worthy of a Raymond Chandler novel, hard-boiled wisecracks worthy of Dashiell Hammett, and the near idolatry of a prize-winning bull named Hickory Caesar Brindon . . . a bovine protagonist always referred to by his full moniker: ten prize orchids out of ten.
A Fantastic Ratio
I finally polished off George R.R. Martin's second novel in his epic The Song of Fire and Ice . . . A Clash of Kings is long, bleak, and complex-- it's definitely got the "Empire Strikes Back" groove-- and I have figured out the secret of how Martin retains his magical lack of whimsy: his proper name to adjective ratio is ten to one.
Setting the Bar at the Bar
This is often the case: you consider anyone who drinks less than you a teetotaller, and you consider anyone who drinks more than you a dipsomaniac.
The Ascent of Money: Same Taste But More Filling
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Scotsmen Niall Ferguson, is yet another book about economics that teaches this lesson, summarized neatly by Frank Knight in 1921: "Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated," which is the idea that risk can be computed and monetized, while uncertainty (or as Donald Rumsfeld aptly put it, "unknown unknowns") cannot even be fathomed-- especially because, as Ferguson cleverly points out, your average investment banker has a career of twenty five years and bases his formulas and strategies on relatively recent data, but every forty or fifty years something happens beyond the pale, beyond our imagination-- but despite these occasional bouts of creative economic destruction, Ferguson believes-- like Matt Ridley-- that the ascent of money has done mankind great good, but he doesn't prove this with abstractions and theories, and that is the fun of the book; he uses messy examples from throughout history . . . each chapter tackles a different financial institution, from its origins until now (banking, the bond market, the stock market, insurance, real estate, globalization) and he often points out that finance was just as complex and chaotic in the past as it is now, and whether he's describing fellow Scotsmen John Law's gambles with the French Economy or the Medici's first attempts at banking or the Opium Wars, his writing is vivid, informative, challenging, and always cycles back to economics: ten Scottish Ministers' Widows' Funds out of ten.
Two Boys + One Ball = WTF?
My two sons play a game at the pool that appears simple from a distance-- you see two children bopping a ball back and forth on the concrete-- but if you get within earshot, you'll realize that playing "boxball" is slightly more complicated than running the Indianapolis offense . . . the game begins with the winner of the previous match reciting the rules that will be in effect for the next game, and he may say any combination of the following: old school . . . including singles, doubles, triples, quadruples, and quintuples, sushi (using any part of your body), sushi cut (a slicing shot that can only bounce once), black and white magic (various spins that return the ball to the server), time bomb (you can throw the ball away and count to ten . . . the opponent has to get the ball back to the court before you finish counting), cherry bomb (throw it really hard at the ground and the opponent has to catch it), ocean (a square between you and the other person), negative and positive (more spinning shots), knives (bouncing it on the corner of the box), and moose crossing (allows a timeout for outsiders to cross the court) . . . and the kids don't find it funny when I satirize this preponderance of absurdly named rules . . . I like to ask if they're playing "sucker punch" and "necromancy" and "werewolves" and "octagons" but they don't laugh at my humor, because "boxball" isn't something to make light of.
Is This The Best Allocation of Valuable Resources?
Sometimes when I wake up there is a white hair jutting from one of my sideburns, directly perpendicular to my head, and obviously my body labored extremely hard to grow this gravity defying strand of hair in the span of a night, but meanwhile, my knee hurts and my back is sore from swimming and I still have some poison ivy . . . so my question is this: doesn't my body have better projects on which to work, rather than to grow these hairs?
Remind Me To Do This
In his new book The Social Animal, David Brooks cites a psychology experiment I'd like to replicate: in a college psychology class, the students decided to do an experiment on the professor (I'm surprised my students haven't done something like this to me, Lord knows I deserve it as I'm always doing stupid experiments on them) and it was simple yet effective; every time the professor moved to the left side of the room, the students appeared distracted and looked away from him, but every time he moved to the right side of the room, they became attentive and engaged . . . by the end of the period he was nearly out the door (on the right side of the room, of course) and if I read this during the school year, I'd have students doing it to teachers immediately, but since it's summer, I'm going to have to rely on my memory, and-- as this post proves-- this blog is more powerful than my memory.
Novels That The World May Be Better Off Without
Just about everyone has the plot of a novel brewing in their head, and a few weeks ago a friend told me his idea: it involved a Jurassic Park-like resurrection of Jesus Christ, using DNA from the Shroud of Turin, and then there was a Godzilla type monster (I can't remember if that was The Second Coming or the devil or what) and while I can't say that it's any worse than this idea, perhaps it's okay if some novels remain pipe dreams . . .
Remember Plato's Cave?
David Brooks' new best-selling overview of cognitive science, The Social Animal: The Hidden Source of Love, Character, and Achievement, is cleverly written through the perspective of a composite couple (Erica and Harold) and though the book is a review of many books that have already been mentioned on this blog (such as this book, this book, this book, and this book) and many books that I read about cognitive science before I began this blog (which annoys me to no end . . . I really wish I had a record of all the books I read before I started this project) the book was still an excellent read, mainly because of Brooks' effortless novelistic style, and I highly recommend it, although it should be called The Emotional Animal, because the main theme is that people, despite all our conscious powers of logical deduction, are stuck inside flawed but powerful minds, that are biased, opinionated, intuitive, fragmented, difficult to sway, in search of details that match already formed hypotheses, and generally illogical economically and syllogistically as far as our motivations and character.
A Very Cheeky Groundhog
It's been a long time since I've seen a groundhog do anything cheeky (and it still wasn't nearly as cheeky as this) but the drought must be severely depleting whatever groundhogs normally eat, because as we walked down the steps to the pool, my wife looked to her left and said, "There is a large animal on one of the picnic tables eating someone's food," and she was right-- and this was the kind of behavior you expected from a raccoon or cat-- but on closer inspection it was a groundhog, munching away at a ham and salami sub from Park Deli, and I had to swing our pool bag at the groundhog to get it to scamper back into the woods and the sub was ruined, gnawed open and dismantled, and so our friends had to order food from Loui Pizza City.
Are These Absolutely Necessary?
Does an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of giant rocks really need to be any more intimidating than it already is? . . . I guess the particular cab owner I saw on Route 18 thought so, and added some giant spike lug nuts to his tires to ensure than every car near his truck was scared shitless-- of either being hit by falling boulders or impaled by his tires.
New Music: Sometimes There's A Man
Sometimes There's A Man by The Density
The Almighty Yojo has whipped up another collage of sound for your listening enjoyment-- Sometimes There's A Man celebrates everything that is wrong with men . . . for lyrics and more head over here.
The Almighty Yojo has whipped up another collage of sound for your listening enjoyment-- Sometimes There's A Man celebrates everything that is wrong with men . . . for lyrics and more head over here.
No Ghost In This Machine
The Machinist is visual and visceral-- Christian Bale loses so much weight that he literally looks like one of the machines in the shop where he works-- and his body is functioning like a machine in the context of the movie's plot . . . his weight loss and delusions are the result of some very simple cause and effect, and though the movie has stimulating and horrific tableaux throughout and Christian Bale and his delusional doppelganger Ivan (John Sharian) do a fine job acting, the plot is extremely repetitive and it takes along time to get to the pay-off: seven lathes out of ten.
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