My favorite part of the Oscars is watching the Cavalcade of Death, the tribute to the artists who died the previous year. The New York Times has their own cavalcade (but pictures for only 27 of them, including a very upsetting one of Marcel Marceau out of makeup). So far, my favorite is: “Joseph E. […]
I’m a big fan of the BBC News website (and go to some trouble to get to the Domestic version—and not just because it doesn’t have ads), though every so often they run a piece that makes me (usually not literally) tilt my head and say “Huh?” With few exceptions, these stories are in the […]
Here’s a niche that hadn’t occurred to me: mail-order catalogs for prisoners. (via The Straight Dope)
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, Kahn. Non-fiction. This is one of the standards of the field, and it touches on a surprising array of subjects, including the Rosetta Stone (which was, after all, a code-breaking challenge). Even if you’re not of the class of geek that must read this, it does have plenty […]
I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter. Non-fiction. I am (it turns out, several months later) not going to be able to say in this review everything that I want to. IAaSL is at a first approximation a deeper exploration of some of the recurring themes in Hofstadter’s work: most notably, consciousness (which he asserts is […]
Menlo Park NJ, July 13 1885 (added a new tag for Edisonblog! so you can find the other entries) Woke (is there such a word) at 6 oclock– slipped down the declivity of unconciousness again until 7. arose and tried to shave with a razor so dull that everytime I scraped my face it looked […]
Kinda reminiscent of Chindogu, but I never wanted to make Chindogu as bad as I want to make some of these things. Especially the fork teeth.
The materials selectors (aka those who buy the books and whatnot) have released an early best-of-07 list. I’m not ready to discuss my best-ofs until the last seconds of ’07, but I’m betting my list won’t be the same. Except for Sherman Alexie, of course.
Looks like somebody‘s finally (though I think it’s not the first such service) doing the obvious thing: putting grocery circulars on line. There are some cool-sounding auxiliary features, too. I don’t know how good its knowledge of where you are is; it was pretty close to correct from work.