I love this rollicking review of Tom Wolfe’s new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons. As background, he talks about Wolfe’s earlier exhortations to American novelists: “‘A battalion, a brigade of Zolas’ is what we need, Wolfe evangelized, then put on his dress-white uniform, screwed on his bayonet, and went screaming into the hills.… Read the rest
Month: November 2004 (Page 2 of 2)
Just realized that I’ve been writing this blog for 5 years — my first post was November 4, 1999, using Blogger — quite the novelty at the time. I blogged pretty regularly up until April 2000, then sporadically for the rest of that year (and, sadly, much of the archives from mid-late 2000 got lost at some point).… Read the rest
Is it just me, or is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) seeming more and more like one of those unstoppable monster-movie zombies that just keeps coming at you no matter how many times you knock him down?
Wired News: Senate May Ram Copyright Bill… Read the rest
By popular demand: Clara’s “bad face” costume for Halloween. Here she is with Mara, the purple princess.… Read the rest
Michelle Goldberg’s longish piece in Salon is the most thoughtful reaction to the whole Red State-Blue State divide that I’ve seen yet: If at first you don’t secede. Honestly, I’m a bit irritated by the recent flood of gratuitous fuck-yous and pathetic disavowals; both seem divisive and unproductive to me, and on top of that, they make progressives look like a bunch of mean-spirited, foul-mouthed poor losers.… Read the rest
The onslaught of comment spam on my Movable Type blog finally made me scream uncle: I switched to WordPress this weekend. MT is an amazingly flexible tool, but it is slow, slow, slow, and it’s not set up well to deal with comment spam.… Read the rest
State-by-state election returns make the U.S. look like a deeply divided country–red Republicans in the South and middle; blue Democrats on the coasts. (The division is eerily reminiscent of the division between free and slave states before the Civil War–how long the shadows of that ugly history are.)… Read the rest
Indian farmers have discovered that spraying their fields with Coca-Cola may be as effective as–and lots cheaper than–spraying with pesticides. An Indian agronomist says: “I think Coke has found its right use. Farmers have traditionally used sugary solutions to attract red ants to feed on insect larvae.… Read the rest
Get ready to meet the next big innovation in mobile communications technology: the hinge.
The Sierra Wireless Voq Professional phone is a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat bulky handset with a traditional 12-button keypad. Flip back the keypad and you reveal a miniscule QWERTY keyboard concealed inside, making the phone into a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat bulky handset with a keyboard sticking out to one side.… Read the rest
Research in Motion turned the corporate world on its ear with the first BlackBerry pagers, which gave middle managers the power to hound subordinates 24/7, no matter where in the world the expense account took them. Later, RIM grafted mobile phone capabilities onto its pagers, producing functional — if unlovely — smart phones that were able to plow through calls, e-mails, contacts, and calendars like Frankenstein knocking down a row of angry peasants.… Read the rest