Who You Calling Savage?
Hilarious rant by anthropologist Roger Sandall over Lynn Truss' Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life. I have to confess I haven't read TTTH, not least because I didn't enjoy her hectoring Eats Shoots and Leaves. Geeze, if you're going to write a book about the failure of everybody to observe proper grammar, wouldn't you want it to be copyedited to a fair thee well? Ms. Truss didn't proof her proofer—and all I could think as she wagged her finger was that she should have washed it first.
Who's Browsing Who?
Just a reminder that you're never alone on the Internet.
Who's In Front of You In Your Queue?
Are Post Office employees stealing your Netflix requests? Mine are too busy reading my April Stereophile. That is why it's late, right?
Whoa, That's Rough!
Read Matt Taibbi's obituary of Boris Yeltsin.
Whoa!
Physicist Matt Sellars and his research team at the Australian National University's Laser Physics Center have "frozen" laser light—slowing it from 670 million miles an hour to 670 miles an hour, and then stopping it altogether.
Whose Memories Are These?
On the eve of the release of a new DVD edition of Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard muses on how strange it can be when Hollywood options your life—or something like it.
Why Are Movies So Bad?
This 25-year-old rant by Pauline Kael is even truer today.
Why Are Some Animals So Smart?
Carl van Schaik says it's the culture. They learn from one another. I sure learn from the people who read stuff I write.
Why Aren't You Working?
As a work-at-home guy, I wonder about this all the time—especially when I visit Park Slope during the daytime. Doesn't anybody there have a job?
Why British Cellists May No Longer Fly to the US
I want to be secure when I fly, but many of the new restrictions strike me as absurd. I was forced to check my rolling carry-on yesterday because it "was larger than a computer bag." Great. I had visions of arriving at CEDIA sans computer or camera.