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The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
4
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than the alternatives? Trope: The Chosen One What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost' Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the summer of 1988. Paul was a...
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
9 months ago
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive' A Jewish friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the world is making...
a year ago
23
a year ago
A Jewish friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the world is making concentration on other things difficult.  . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great for me to be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality' “We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me....
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
“We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”  That’s Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you. It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons and what's on my mind
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow' One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the...
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
4
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
7 months ago
19
7 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness “Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
6 months ago
71
6 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War Had Won' “The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined anguish’ - revealed itself gradually and became a presence in his poetry for the rest of his life.”  Margi Blunden, speaking in 2014, is remembering her father, the poet and Great...
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour... The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
50
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help book, one of the founding self-help books.  The Meditations of...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023 Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
Astral Codex Ten
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
4 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read You As I Listen to Rare Music' Rare is the writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our personal...
5 months ago
21
5 months ago
Rare is the writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative' Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project' Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:  “The two offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying' Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken, spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Constant Repair' “In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it was plain. They came forward with a...
3 months ago
18
3 months ago
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at each other’s hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good humour to see it.” Yet again I’ve heard the small-minded slur that...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles. Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night. You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep. You can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Book You Know You Don’t Understand' Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to write a feature story for my newspaper about him and the small-press book he had written. Frank had been lobbying me for weeks by telephone. He was middle-aged but carried himself...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?” The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
How to Make a World: A Poem Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel...
11 months ago
25
11 months ago
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something familiar in order to see more deeply into the nature of reality. One morning out on a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All' Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later. For some baked goods, breakfast...
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
25
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
The Marginalian
The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic "Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can...
a year ago
15
a year ago
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can nonetheless open up a new and radiant perspective, because through it a higher order of being is trying to express itself."
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 21, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The First to Climb a Mountain Because It Is There' On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his brother Gherardo and two servants climbed to the 6,263-foot summit of Mount Ventoux in Provence. Morris Bishop, Vladimir Nabokov’s closest friend at Cornell, writes in Petrarch and...
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
10 months ago
54
10 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer "I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
a month ago
12
a month ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy' A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
2 months ago
7
2 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Finally Written on Politics" The April 1970 issue of the now-defunct New American Review included one of those self-important...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The April 1970 issue of the now-defunct New American Review included one of those self-important symposia beloved by editors, this one titled “The Writer’s Situation.” A surprising participant was J.V. Cunningham, who seldom played the conventional literary game. A poet, critic,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!' I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”: “Oldfield, with more than Harpy throat endu’d, Cries, ‘send me, Gods! a...
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the... On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
8
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine' “I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”  By the time a persevering reader has reached Book...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soil Must Have Been Prepared' Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), eighty-one Spenserian stanzas by the Scottish poet James Thomson. The poem is a sort of mock-epical hymn to the Protestant work ethic, a virtue ably represented by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More' I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always...
2 weeks ago
16
2 weeks ago
I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns Charles Ives and the Civil War The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Settle Down' A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine...
3 weeks ago
21
3 weeks ago
A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453 (1971), one he finds “especially amusing”:  “Cosmas [Indicopleustes] tells us of monks who, ignoring their vows, live unchastely, engage in trade and...
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
a month ago
22
a month ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
sbensu
APIs as ladders APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
a month ago
19
a month ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Heart Reacts
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
26
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
11 months ago
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our... How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
9 months ago
38
9 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils' A favorite story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had written...
11 months ago
33
11 months ago
A favorite story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings and languages, including Croat,...
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light' Here is epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in English as...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
Here is epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in English as Martial:  “In private she mourns not the late-lamented; If someone’s by, her tears leap forth on call. Sorrow, my dear, is not so easily rented. They are true tears that without witness...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
3 weeks ago
26
3 weeks ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife' When Yvor Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty years, the...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
When Yvor Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fruit of My Studies' I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the readers who already belong, but by nature I’m not a joiner of anything. As soon as an arrangement among friendly individuals becomes formalized – by that I mean, organized, with...
Ben Borgers
Pictures as Memories
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
The Marginalian
Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith "The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a...
11 months ago
35
11 months ago
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a stage on which drama unfolds, it is the unfolding drama itself."
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic The German folklorists who helped build a nation The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers' “Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it...
10 months ago
50
10 months ago
“Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should equal Argus his Eyes . . .”  The first surgery on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
ben-mini
Modality Switching Online I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail,...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail, I roll my eyes. He tends to meander. My dad’s messages can range from 40 seconds to 2 minutes. He typically wants to inform me of something, like an upcoming family event or an...
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thus Massive Was the Vessel, Built in Vain' Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy...
5 months ago
29
5 months ago
Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship – blimp, dirigible, Zeppelin – successfully tracked the heavy cruiser USS Houston as it carried President Franklin Roosevelt on a secret voyage from Annapolis, Md., to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still' “I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of these...
The American Scholar
Celebrating an American Icon The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
4 months ago
24
4 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
The last novel "(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep' Even the most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion is...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Even the most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
The Marginalian
bell hooks on Love "We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
11
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Josh Thompson
Fixing Ford and Washington Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable: Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights Please see about...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing) Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel...
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful... On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
12 months ago
48
12 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
10 months ago
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government Ok but what can we do about it?
3 weeks ago
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
a year ago
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Thumbs up for Six Flags
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble' “As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper,...
a year ago
29
a year ago
“As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead, allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser, some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of these sermons quite a few times. They’re worth your time. Ethan Magness is the rector at Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA. Sermon Series on Joseph Grace Anglican Church podcast...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room' I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a way around the roadblock, so I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner' I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s...
a year ago
9
a year ago
I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public intellectual,” bristling...
The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected generosity is potency
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Center of Our Mediterranean Civilization' My youngest son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a university...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
My youngest son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a university study program. He’ll be a senior in the fall. I first visited Paris (and Europe) in 1973, age twenty, and stayed in a hotel on the Rue de Maubeuge, 10th arrondissement. Headlines in...
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics: Credentialism Signaling Opportunity cost If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Deliquescence of Our Quartz-like Loves!' A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word entered English in the eighteenth century and its original context was strictly scientific: deliquescence occurs when a substance absorbs moisture from the air and becomes a...
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and... Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse. Hey there, I’m...
This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
3 months ago
47
3 months ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others. A question came up recently: My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life "We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Empty Heart is Full at Length' Two-hundred-fifty years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made their...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Two-hundred-fifty years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made their grand tour of Scotland, including the Hebrides, and both would publish accounts of their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland appeared in...
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements. Here’s what would happen: I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original... La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I have seen outside of Latin American literature.  Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
Wuthering...
Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends? Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the base of Western literary criticism, not a source of insight but rather a set of rules.  The Unities, the Tragic Flaw, catharsis, the ranking of...
Ben Borgers
Dark Sky
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens. Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months. Needless to say, we’ve...
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
a year ago
60
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom' “The library is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors of...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“The library is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library is the domain of the...
Ben Borgers
Thinking in Silence
over a year ago
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous... Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it. So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven' In 1963, our street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
In 1963, our street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles in the water-proof street....
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By' “[S]ome of the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
“[S]ome of the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant – some of them stand out...
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Tailwind CSS
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Formulaic Classes
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth about the world, there exist groups that encourage divergence and healthy individuation.
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work "There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves' Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning things but there was a time when...
Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of...
a year ago
51
a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost.  Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
36
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark' Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair, juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard. He will never be hip except...
Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting... The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death' Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the Marine Corps a year...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things' “Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
28
a month ago
“Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every possible situation. Montaigne.”  I could have signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience' “Strange as this may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I had...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“Strange as this may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of mass atrocities?”  That...
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
7 months ago
69
7 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge' Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our... "Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post. ...
The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
7 months ago
22
7 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments... "The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
33
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
Steven Scrawls
Doomr Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
10 months ago
4
10 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Josh Thompson
Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult to answer for two reasons. The first reason is I am not yet strongly pulled into a specific position. My ideal answer would be “I want to do X role at company Y.” Short. Concise....
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glory Seemingly Reserved For Poems' “He was born in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894. Irreparably...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
“He was born in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894. Irreparably Semitic, Isaac was the son of a rag merchant from Kiev and a Moldavian Jewess. Catastrophe has been the normal climate of his life.”  Though born within five years of each other,...
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
7
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922 A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means "True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
12
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More' “[H]e gave us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man for what he...
a year ago
53
a year ago
“[H]e gave us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”  A timely, guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece each time he goes to work. Good...
Ben Borgers
Draft Now, Publish Later
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
4 months ago
24
4 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into' Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a...
2 days ago
1
2 days ago
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a chronological state. I can slough it off any time I wish. Such is the power of delusion. I retire today. On Thursday I went to the police department on campus to get my retiree’s ID...
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knows to Get a Dollar' The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s the title of a story he collected in his first...
10 months ago
31
10 months ago
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s the title of a story he collected in his first book, Back Where I Came From (1938). “Tummler” was published in the February 26, 1938 issue of The New Yorker and begins:  “To the boys of the I.&Y., Hymie Katz is a hero. He is a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine' The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination' “Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis...
a year ago
16
a year ago
“Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside world, then we should fill them with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay' For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
15
a year ago
For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (1979):   “One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature' Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern English language...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Change The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference. Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Ben Borgers
Charles’ Sandwiches
over a year ago
This Space
Favourite books 2021 If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books' “Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne...
4 months ago
44
4 months ago
“Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour this book.
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0 A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win. From mid-may until June 7, I...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
2 weeks ago
28
2 weeks ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Steven Scrawls
Not As Giants Love Not As Giants Love Short story, ~2000 words A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
Not As Giants Love Short story, ~2000 words A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I thought the most painful thing you could’ve said was no. I don’t know if you remember, but when you said “Of course I still love you” and asked if I still loved you, I started to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind' On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned' In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
10
a year ago
In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism”  -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world unaccompanied by...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
8 months ago
39
8 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative? We're asking the wrong questions.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense' “Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
“Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I am always hesitant to make them...
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World' One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility....
5 months ago
28
5 months ago
One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers "It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
Wuthering...
Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer - an adventure is merely a bit of bad planning One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir...
a month ago
23
a month ago
One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir covering the polar explorer’s entire career.  It’s a good book, full of adventure. To the explorer, however, adventure is merely an unwelcome interruption of his serious labours. ...
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage' “The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
“The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against  any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”  Marianne Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...
The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
8 months ago
63
8 months ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lead the Thoughts Into Domestic Privacies' A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime obituary writer and she thinks it would be...
a year ago
13
a year ago
A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime obituary writer and she thinks it would be an ideal job for me. I’m not in the market but she’s right. Good obituaries are small-scale biographies and always a privilege to write. The first thing I wrote as a newspaper...
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer. I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs.  In the interval many things had changed.  Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
5 months ago
4
5 months ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air' A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of me that finds the obscenity...
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
6
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection' Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
12 months ago
19
12 months ago
Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let the Words Glide Through the Air' Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly...
a year ago
31
a year ago
Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly Estate: The Religious Poetry of Patrick Kavanagh (The Columba Press, Dublin, 2002) by Father Tom Stack. I was grateful because it sent me back to the Irish poet (1904-67) who seems...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For the Ordinary Educated Man' I’ve read most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the sole passage...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
I’ve read most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the sole passage I have almost committed to memory:  “Literature exists for the ordinary educated man, and any literature that actively requires enormous training can be at best of only peripheral...
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living... Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously' “Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
“Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
7 months ago
34
7 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel. I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it, but in a sense I did finish a...
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision” Three prompts The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
22
4 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Squeaky Wit the Light, Improper Verse' Without context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart...
7 months ago
45
7 months ago
Without context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart little couplet?:  “With squeaky wit the light, improper verse Falls on the heavy lunch and makes it worse.”   I first encountered him in the eighth grade, in English class. He was sold to us as the “poet...
Josh Thompson
Thoughts on Money from 2013 I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons: Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding... "The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
7 months ago
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable...
9 months ago
55
9 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable things, but I have limits.  Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post. Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun Tenderness and grit The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
5 months ago
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy...
a month ago
9
a month ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave' In observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I had never read...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
In observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:  “The brave respect the brave. The brave Respect the dead; but you -- you...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
a month ago
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days' The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form,...
10 months ago
51
10 months ago
The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy "Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish. That’s not to say...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
56
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
Anecdotal Evidence
Kenneth C. Kurp 1955-2024 My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two weeks of his life. He was age sixty-nine. I was with him as was his son, Abraham Kurp. I watched as his eyes closed and he stopped breathing. There was another sense, too, of a sudden...
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe. I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Possible Verdicts Are Five' As binary thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just about...
a year ago
9
a year ago
As binary thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just about everything else -- becomes harsher and more fashionable, interesting conversation withers. Have you noticed how quickly people dismiss a subject before it has been pondered and probed?...
Josh Thompson
Constraints Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or restriction Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration: I have to be to work by 9a I have to get up at 7a I have...
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read only three other books about Zen: the...
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life) This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Brio Enough Here' A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or an...
a year ago
15
a year ago
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or an energy drink. We have an Italian restaurant in Houston called Brio. My Italian dictionary translates it as “zest” and the OED gives “liveliness, vivacity, ‘go.’” It suggests...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration' The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
11
a year ago
The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September 1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
a month ago
13
a month ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer' I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
8 months ago
67
8 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick. I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim 1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False' In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief!  When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the...
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
4
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.) I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
2 weeks ago
25
2 weeks ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791).  First, David Hawkes, the original translator of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job.  Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin, dies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery' Last week I wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
Last week I wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old Marine Corporal in Vietnam, and the war correspondent who wrote a dispatch about him for a newspaper. Two days later, after learning that the stringer, Albert W. Vinson, soon took his own life,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers' Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until the third grade to rebel against...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Josh Thompson
Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
The American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope' Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature beloved by editors and loquacious respondents – this one titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Such things tend to be heavy on posturing and vast generalizations. I might have been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else' “In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as...
8 months ago
31
8 months ago
“In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words' At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely...
a year ago
12
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea... Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The American Scholar
The Given Child To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The...
7 months ago
21
7 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November' The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):  “We enter again November; cold late light  Glazes the field, a little fever of love,  Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;  While lonely on this coast the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?' “What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
“What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life...
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Laravel
over a year ago
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep "It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."