Month: September 2009

Monday various

  • Michael Chabon’s essay on the Wilderness of Childhood got a lot of attention when it was first posted, back in July. (It’s been sitting in my saved links since then.) I think Chabon made some interesting points, but I also think Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky’s response is worth repeating [via]:

    I’m not really arguing with Chabon here: he may be right that all children are instinctively adventurers, and he’s certainly right that limiting their exploration of the world in the name of safety threatens their creative imagination. But let’s be clear: the maps we draw for our children are not the maps that guide their lives. They draw their own maps, but it’s a mistake to confuse them with the nostalgic – or anguished — images produced by adult memory. Childhood is a foreign country to us. We once knew its landmarks, but they’ve grown wild in our imaginations, so that the “adventures” we remember are now just stories we tell. Adventure is what we call it when we show the slides. The natives just call it life.

  • Leaving aside the silliness of a religion based on Star Wars, or the questions that are maybe raised about established religions when you ask why this one is silly and they’re not — or even Tesco’s valid point that plenty of Jedi(s?) in the movies don’t walk around in public in their hoods — why can’t you wear a hood in their store? [via]

  • Well, at least he wasn’t wearing this flip-top zombie shirt… [via]

  • Permanent Bedtime, which plays a complete recording from BBC Radio’s late-night Shipping Forecast. Warren Ellis describes it as such:

    • The latenight edition of the Shipping Forecast has long been praised by the British as a gentle aid to restful sleep. And dream-filled sleep, too, because the Forecast is famous for listing “places” that are entirely notional, a virtual geography inhabited only by ships and the wondering minds of people drifting off into sleep. Sleep districts of the British imagination: Fastnet, Rockall, Dogger, Cromarty, Viking…

    It’s quite interesting to take an afternoon nap with that playing in the background.

  • And finally, I’ve only watched a couple of episodes, but I quite like NASA’s IRrelevant Astronomy video podcast, particularly the Robot Astronomy Talk Show. [via]

    • I quite liked the most recent episode with Linda Hamilton and Dean Stockwell, super genius:

Found in translation

Jeffrey Ford on undoing the will of God:

Today it struck me that, considering the curse that God places on mankind by fracturing language so that we can never conspire en mass, the work of translators is, in a mythic sort of way, an undoing of the will of God. I had this day dream where after the fall of the tower, even though most flee in fear, a group of architects and workers determines to stick together, overcome the obstacle of language and eventually see the project through to completion. In order to be successful, they will first have to learn to communicate with each other. They study the new languages they each are now stuck with and then work to understand one or more of the other new languages. This takes place over centuries — there’s a secret society of Architects of The Tower Of Babel. Eventually they come to see that the actual tower isn’t necessary, but that their efforts at translation are rebuilding it spiritually one invisible stone at a time. In the process of undoing the will of God, they have entered into what could be considered a religious pursuit.

My Friday night

Last night, I attended a live taping of a public radio show about things that are awesome, The Sound of Young America. Guests on the talk show included rock star Andrew WK, Scott Adsit from 30 Rock, singer Nellie McKay, comedian Kumail Nanjani and director Rik Cordero. McKay and WK were a little weird, but overall it was a great show.

It was downtown at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC. I had some time to kill between work and the show, so I went and visited the High Line, a new city park that opened back in June. While I was there, I took some pictures.

Friday various

  • Tonight, I’ll be attending a live taping of The Sound of Young America. It’s streaming live at 8 PM Eastern, if you’d like to watch too. I expect part, or all, of the show will eventually find its way into the radio show and/or podcast.
  • So how is the World, Dubai’s string of man-made paradise islands for the über-wealthy and famous, doing? Not too surprisingly, not too well. [via]
  • Are Twitter users “well on their way to becoming violent, idiotic vagabonds hell-bent on destroying the world”? We can only hope! Every time I read a story like this, or one bemoaning the rise of social networking sites in general, I really don’t know how to respond, since their fears almost never match up with how I (or, I think, most people) use these things. [via] As Noel Murray writes:

    This is a common critique of Twitter: “I don’t need to know what a bunch of strangers had for lunch.” And yet that’s so far removed from the way I use the service that I’m unsure where to begin refuting it. Personally, I only follow a small group of people on Twitter, and I have a limited circle of friends of Facebook. Most of these are people I know—or at least know of. We’re talking to each other about things we’re presumably all interested in; we’re sharing quick thoughts on movies, TV, kids, and the petty annoyances and subtle joys of a passing day. The other day one of my Twitter-followers—someone I don’t follow, I hasten to note—complained that he didn’t like me having a six-or-seven-Tweet exchange with a friend and thereby “cluttering up his feed.” And all I could think was, “Dude, following me is not compulsory.” I think that’s what critics of Twitter often fail to understand. Though some may use Twitter and Facebook as one big “look at me,” the majority are just trying to stay connected with friends, old and new.

  • A live-action Scooby-Doo prequel? And here I was, thinking nothing could make me nostalgic for the Matthew Lillard/Freddie Prinze, Jr. versions… I don’t have a problem with the movie in theory — it would be ridiculous to think Scooby-Doo has any kind of canon that needs protecting, and I remember genuinely liking A Pup Named Scooby-Doo — but in practice, this looks pretty dire.
  • And finally, there’s got to be an easier way to avoid ads in Gmail… [via]