Rumors, Hope and Hype
Nope, not politics—physics.
Wes Phillips
Farewell to Newspapers
Russell Baker's essay in the NYRB is ostensibly a review of two new books bemoaning the current state of journalism. The real pleasure, of course, is reading Russell Baker's take on the subject. Gosh, I miss him.
Spider Chastity Belts
Didn't they back up Ziggy Stardust?
Editions of Contemporary Me
That's ECM, in case you didn't know. Geoff Dyer tells us how a label changed the way he listened to music.
Jukin'
Junior (John L. Doughty, Jr.) is a Mississippi Delta cultural anthropologist who documents juke joint culture. That means he gets to hang out in jukes and talk to people (and photograph it all). What a great job.
Digital Lysenkoism
Cory Doctorow has a new column in The Guardian Unlimited, which in itself is great news. Even better, he hits one out of the park first time out, with a comparison of DRM and ideologically comforting junk science.
Alpha-Ylangene
It's the compound that makes wine smell peppery. One scientist said, "If you can measure something, you can understand its behaviour and how to control it." Hmmm, that sounds oddly familiar.
Tiny Tomes
The Grolier Club has mounted an exhibition that takes miniature books bigtime.
Gustavo Dudamel
Born in poverty on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior, Gustavo Dudamel has become what Simon Rattle calls "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across."
Good News—Maybe
Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems, 1956-1998 is good news for those of us who have long admired his poetry. Or so I thought, until I read David Orr's NYT article about the Alissa Valles translations used in the new book.