Friday, October 26. 2007
This came in over the transom: Dispute between neighbors - this is a true story. A city councilman in Utah, Mark Easton, had a beautiful view of the east mountains, until a new neighbor purchased the lot below his house and built a new home.
The new home was 18 inches higher than the ordinances would allow, so Mark Easton, mad about his lost view, went to the city to make sure they enforced the lower roof line ordinance. The new neighbor had to drop the roof line, at great expense.
Recently, Mark Easton called the city, and informed them that his new neighbor had installed some vents on the side of his home. Mark didn't like the look of these vents and asked the city to investigate. When they went to Mark's home to see the vent view, this is what they found... 
Editor: I think that's on the harsh side. I prefer this topiary effort to convey a gentle neighborly message: 
We missed this piece from Vanderleun, which begins: The Asheville, North Carolina restaurant was one of those common to our post-post-modern world. Open and airy with a wall of windows framing hanging plants. Casual to the point of paper napkins. Sporting a list of local beers and -- surprise -- local wines. Tarted up with the kind of overtly ironic art on the walls where the painter has one statement and one image in his repertoire and repeats it ad nauseam. This time it seemed that the sensibility being trotted out was one of Hieronymous Bosch meets Hello Kitty.
Read the whole amusing thing, then go to Dr. Bob who noted the above piece, for his links on medicine - and rock and roll.
Thursday, October 25. 2007
The New Criterion discusses the current (through January) Hopper show at the National Gallery of Art. 
That is Nighthawks. Here's a good Hopper site.
Wednesday, October 24. 2007
 The new bio of Dante by Barbara Reynolds is reviewed at Claremont: Between Riddle and Revelation.
Was Dante a mystic?
Image: Giotto's portrait of the immortal Dante.
Sometimes --a man appears.
Look, you want to rub up against the shiznit from time to time and stand your hair on end with the static electricity of a hundred galaxies. You want to stay clear out of Liberaceland and trod the stones along the cutting edge of the interstellar flapdoodle. Perhaps you wish to forestall the march of time and feed from the power of the In Crowd like some funky vampire. Here is your new leader. Follow the TechnoViking to your salvation. If you have any infirmities, deformities or deficiencies, he will cure them; or at least beat the holy hell out of anyone that makes fun of you over them. Or he will kill you. It's your choice. Not really. Techno-Viking will choose for you, for he does not just lead; he rules. (Slight warning: There's a curse word in print on the screen at the end. But the Techno Viking does not speak curses. There is no need.)
The largest lake in California (376 square miles) seems like a very strange place. It's in a desolate location, most of its water comes from agricultural runoff, and nobody swims in it. People are trying to restore it. Here's a brief National Geographic piece on it. 
Photo from this Salton Sea Photo Gallery.
Black and white is still the right thing for true photographs. 
Thanks to David Thompson for finding some Paul McDonough photo links. I can remember when he was a lowly NYC "street photographer."
Tuesday, October 23. 2007
Pin Ups for Vets is back. Very therapeutic. 
Re-posted: I still get a good giggle out of Weird Al's White and Nurdy. Nurds are who make everything in the world run - including blogs - while the rest just benefit from it all and take it for granted.
Monday, October 22. 2007
Quoted from a piece at Chronicle of Higher Education: Is a blog successful if it gets a lot of page views? And, using the same logic, is it a failure if only a handful of people actually read it? That’s what Another Damned Medievalist, who has been blogging for more than five years (an eternity in Internet time), asked recently. By all means add a few hits to ADM’s counter by clicking through. Judging the success of a blog by its page views is sort of like rating a movie by its box-office tallies, a TV show by its Neilsen ratings, or a book by its place on the best-seller list. By that standard, the best movie in the country is “30 Days of Night,” the best TV show is “Dancing With the Stars,” and the best novel is World Without End, by Ken Follett. (shudder)
So is Maggie's a successful blog?
 I'd rather have Eco read to me than to read him, and my lengthy weekend road trip was a good opportunity. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, about a 60 year-old antique book dealer with amnesia, is a bit bloated but has enough gold in it to make it worth it.
The reading by George Guidall, a Broadway actor who has recorded 850 books, is superb. He hams it up, just right.
Sunday, October 21. 2007
I am fairly certain we are back up and running properly. Thanks to Chris for taking care of the problems - I know it was a major hassle. Here's a snap from the Berkshires today. That's a Sugar Maple: 
Reposted from August, 2005  The Search for Alec Guiness
What are your favorite roles? The Horse's Mouth, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and of course, George Smiley (Tinker, Tailor is the best made for TV movie ever made, bar none - a masterpiece), are mine. Oh, also, Bridge Over the River Kwai. But who was he? Piers Paul Reid's authorized biography is out, and it doesn't seem to answer the question. From the Boston Globe's review: Piers Paul Read, a friend of Guinness's, was asked by the actor's widow to write this book, which is, in part, an assiduous record of the signal events and experiences in Guinness's life and career. There is the drunken, mendacious, cadging mother -- the great scourge of his life; the putative, though not positive, father paying for his support and education; the cruel stepfather; acting lessons with a stage legend who believed him to be one of the real Guinnesses; his debt to John Gielgud as a patron; courtship and marriage; wartime in the Royal Navy; and a recounting of his subsequent stage, movie, and TV career. All this is embedded in a stifling quantity of routine business on the lines of guest lists and restaurant expenses. Here we feel the authorized biographer's weary duty to comprehensiveness and his reluctance or inability to apply a shaping hand.
Read entire.
 Reposted from 2005
A dog's view: It's seared - seared in my cultural-bio-psycho-social memory, just like Jung meant. Remember the George Papoon campaign? As I lie here on the kitchen floor, hoping some cherrries will fall off the plate, I am remembering that glorious "One Organism - One Vote" campaign. "Papoon for President - Not Insane" We animals and other organisms lost that election, but it was a wonderful time back in 1970. The voting machines were designed to exclude and to discourage one-celled animals from voting. Gosh, Uncle Steve Post and those guys on WBAI....great stuff. A Revolution that failed. You human gods would be lying on the kitchen floor, being fed dry cardboard kibbles for supper, and we dogs would be going to work all dressed-up like dandies - wow - I mean bow-wow - and running the country. We figured that Papoon would get the massive bacteria and amoeba votes and that would turn the whole country into Greenish-Brown-Pond-Scum-colored states. Plus, if we were short a few votes, they could all just divide, and double their vote. It's all from The Firesign Theater. (By the way, can you name that breed in the photo?)
A re-post from 2005 We have enjoyed him since the 60s - some memories there - but just stumbled into this perfect, but too short, CD - oh yeah, it has John Coltrane too, plus Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Tommy Flanagan. Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. Look at Round Midnight, too. Can I compare Burrell with Wes Montgomery? No, too ignorant to do so.
Friday, October 19. 2007
 I enjoyed The Barrister's intro to Signalling Theory, especially the lengthy biology link. It's really all just about non-verbal communication, isn't it?
To what extent is my public presentation (hair, clothes, deportment, jewelry, etc.) designed to signal things about myself which I might want known, or to signal things about myself which might not be true? And how much of conventionality and conformity is an effort to not signal anything personal? After all, there are many occasions in life when one's personal "stuff" is not welcome, wanted, or appreciated. And signaling one's conventionality is, in fact, signaling that one is clued in enough to know how to do that, when necessary. At work in the office or at my Boston hospital, I tend towards Ann Taylor and Brooks Brothers business wear, with either simple jewelry, or none. If everything is "text," as the dopey lit profs say these days, what's my message? I suspect that people get into the most trouble when they signal messages unwittingly. Our Editor wonders what this young Theo lady in the photo might be signaling, above and beyond "Check me out, dude."
Tractor with the Maggie's Farm staff. But can you find the tractor? NSFW or for older fellows, on continuation page below.
Continue reading "A nice old John Deere"
On a recent flight while readying to depart for New Orleans, Jack was seated on the plane when a guy took the seat beside him. The guy was an emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in fear. "What's the matter?" Jack asked. "I've been transferred to New Orleans, there are crazy people there. They've got lots of shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs, poor public schools, and the highest crime rate in the country." Jack replied, "I've lived in New Orleans all my life. It's not as bad as the media says. Find a nice home, go to work, mind your own business, enroll your kids in a nice private school. It's as safe a place as anywhere in the world." The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said, "Oh, thank you. I've been worried to death. But if you live there and say it's OK, I'll take your word for it. What do you do for a living?" "Me?" said Jack. "I'm a tail gunner on a Budweiser truck." 
Wednesday, October 17. 2007
Ingrid Fliter plays Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2. (h/t, Classical Virtuoso)
Buddy made me think about David Gelernter's book, Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. A stunning, serious, soulful book by the Yale computer science prof, which made a big impression on me when it came out. On the lighter side, I am reading Greenspan's best-selling memoir, Age of Turbulence. A fine read without a dull moment. I didn't know he had gone to Julliard, and wanted to be a jazz sax player. The guy was always the smartest guy in the room. You realize that being a central banker means learning as you go.
Tuesday, October 16. 2007
 The link to Assistant Village Idiot's piece on signaling and politics, in which he proposes, just for the sake of discussion:
Let’s pretend for purpose of discussion that all our religious, political, and social beliefs are entirely hollow. They have no intellectual content to speak of, and are mere social signals. We use them as birds use song, marking territory, calling attention to ourselves, attracting mates. We use a particular vocabulary of values to keep some people away and draw others in, to attempt to assign ourselves a certain status in the world.
Bumper stickers, what is displayed in your office, and choice of avatars are essentially just social signaling.
I decided to try to learn just a little about Signaling Theory, but first I had to make sure the word didn't have two "l"s, so as to avoid signaling that I am a dunce. (It's one of those many words that the Brits spell wrong.) Moving ahead, I learned that the sociological/economic/game theory notion of signaling comes out of biology and animal behavior. I found a good introductory piece on the subject, Honest Signalling Theory (I noted that this American Bio prof likes to use two "l"s.) It's an interesting multi-page piece which begins: The gazelle's leaping behavior, the nestlings' begging, the expensive suit - all of these things are signals. All are intended to convey information about a signaller, to a signal receiver. For humans, the fancy suit - like a fast car, an expensive bottle of wine, or a precious gemstone - indicates some property or quality of the signaller. In this case, that property might be the relative wealth of an individual.
I realized that maybe I do more signalling than I would like to think. Then I stumbled into a piece by Econlog's Caplan after reading some brief essays about education and signaling (Would you rather have a Berkley Diploma and No Education, or Education and No Diploma? and Jane Galt's Who are we signalling? and Tyler Cowen's Why Education is Productive - a parable of men and beasts) about the signaling value of education. Is education purely about social signalling? Of course not, but partially, yes. Caplan, in Mixed Signals asks: Which would do more for your career: A Princeton education, but no diploma, or a Princeton diploma, but no education? All my personal experience (30 years in school!) tells me that there is a lot of truth in the signaling model. I don't use most of my schooling in my job, and I'm a professor, for God's sake! But would I have my current position if I had failed high school Spanish? No way.
Well, this was all fun, but one is quickly reminded of how often people who have cool ideas tend to get reductionistic about them: Man is all about economics, man is all about gender, man is all about libido, man is all about adapting to his environment, man is all about signaling, etc, etc. So if you look at the world through a "signaling" lens, all you will see is signaling. And now I am out of time and getting too long anyway.
Now you know how WalMart gets all its stuff from China: 15,000 containers and a 207' beam. Look at the crew size for a ship longer than a US aircraft carrier, which has a complement of 5,000 men and officers.
Think it's big enough? Notice that 207' beam means it was NOT designed for the Panama or Suez canal. It is strictly transpacific. Check out the "cruise speed". 31 knots means the goods arrive 4 days before the typical Container ship (18-20 knots) on a China-to-California run. So this behemoth is hugely competitive carrying perishable goods.
This ship was built in three sections, floated together and then welded. The command bridge is higher than a 10 story building. There are 11 crane rigs that can operate simultaneously.
Additional info:
Country of origin - Denmark
Length - 1,302 ft
Width - 207 ft
Net cargo - 123,200 tons. Cruise Speed - 31. Knots Cargo capacity - 15,000 TEU
Crew - 13 people First Trip - Sept. 08, 2006; Construction cost - US $145,000,000+. Silicone paint applied to the ship bottom reduces water resistance and saves 317,000 gallons of diesel per year.
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