Geek Chic

Man steals laptop. Woman takes his picture remotely with installed web cam. Man is arrested.

I really like stories like this. Technology, smart people, bad guys getting their comeuppance.

Now, if they had a really cool, flexible, washable, glow-in-the-dark keyboard, it would be complete.

An Alien Walks into a Bar

No, really. You can get college credit for this now. And it's NASA-funded, meaning, your tax dollars hard at work.

Why didn't we have classes like this when I was in college?

An alien walks into a bar. Bartender says, "What can I get you?" The alien says, "A primitive civilization on the rocks." Bartender says, "You've come to the right place!"

The comments are not to be missed.

And remember, "All writing is writing for extraterrestrials." That's a quote from the teacher. Now, professors who declaimed the unfathomable, that's something we did have when I was in college.

Another Highly Prized Letter

Albert Einstein's 1954 letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, which just sold for $404,000 (yes, four hundred and four thousand dollars), is critical of religion:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them. Read more.

Story at the NY Times.

The variety of opinions about religion is always interesting to me, from deep, unquestioning, even fanatical belief, to absolute certitude that it is nonsense, and everything in between. I agree that science, physics particularly, gives us a closer view of reality than most traditional religions. I find it disappointing that just one world religious leader, the Dalai Lama, recognizes that religion only makes sense when it agrees with what actually is, rather than being an illogical set of beliefs that people defend out of some sense of threat to their tribal identity. But I am glad that at least he realizes it. That's one.

The Stupidest Person in New York

At least in Jonathan Franzen's opinion.

Why? Because she called his memoir "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass: petulant, pompous, obsessive, selfish and overwhelmingly self-absorbed"?

More hatchet jobs at the Guardian blog.

My Favorite Comfy Chair

The bibliochaise from nobody & co.
Although it would look comfier if the books on the top row were all the same height.

From the Abebooks blog.

Top Ten Books That Screwed Up The World

I can think of many books I didn't like, but screwing up the world, well, that takes special talent. Quite a list, from the NY Times. Go to the link. The comments are worth it.

“The Communist Manifesto”
“Utilitarianism”
“The Descent of Man”
“Beyond Good and Evil”
“The State and Revolution”
“The Pivot of Civilization” (by Margaret Sanger)
“Mein Kampf”
“The Future of an Illusion” (Freud)
“Coming of Age in Samoa”
“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” (aka The Kinsey Report)

A Bloody Disaster

says Doris Lessing, of winning the Nobel Prize.

"It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more. This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me – don't imagine you'll have it for ever. Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole."

Lessing's age and the media demands attached to winning the prize have conspired to make Alfred and Emily her last book, she says. A sad note, but a long and illustrious career.

The Depressed Guy in the Basement

Who also does standup comedy, and writes novels like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Sherman Alexie interview at the Guardian.

I've always liked Sherman Alexie. Maybe it's identifying with the outsider perspective -- I also grew up in a house where there weren't that many books. It gave them that subversive cachet that was probably enough to get me hooked. Not that my house was anti-book, just indifferent, although trips to the library were a big treat in my childhood.

Say What You Will

The governor of New York has signed legislation protecting New York authors against foreign libel judgments.

The results of libel laws in the UK, for instance, can be shocking to Americans. We're used to writing whatever we want, especially in the last fifty years. I wonder, though, if the greater penalties indicate that people elsewhere take books more seriously, whereas Americans figure that nobody cares much, anyway?

Does Anyone Actually Pay Attention

to a 60-year-old man complaining about his mother? Even in France? Maybe if she complains back?

It always surprises me when people's dirty laundry gets elevated to public discourse, and one man's resentment of his mother into fodder for some imbecilic perfect mommy paradigm. What did he expect from his mother anyway? And why do people who expect perfect parenting have no qualms about being indifferent parents themselves? He doesn't like his mother. Okay, we get that.

Not so green

Read about celebrity "hippy-crites."

Although it's a cute coinage, the land of actual hippies is a bit more green than that, with composting toilets, thermostats set to 60 (15C) (and it was a cold winter, people) and people driving twenty-year-old Hondas that get 45-50 mpg (19-21.5 kpl). My old station wagon gets 27 mpg (that's 11.5 kilometers per liter, here's the conversion link) -- check your gas economy and boast to your international friends. I work at home, however, so I don't have to cover too many miles in a given week.

"Where's the Literary?

I thought I put something literary in my suitcase?" Denis Johnson at the New School.

It Was a Highly Prized Letter

I'm sure. This is the letter Kurt Vonnegut wrote from P.O.W. repatriation camp, informing his family that he was still alive.

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, un-heated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood.

We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve, the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

It's also a very moving letter, written in Pvt. Vonnegut's unmistakable style.

Ah, We Knew It

Dmitri Nabokov will publish Vladimir Nabokov's Laura, instead of destroying it, as his father's will specified.

Well, I'm relieved.