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The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
33
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
15
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along' “Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism "Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
War Room
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World' “His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course,...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
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
11
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...
Ben Borgers
The Brain Can Observe Itself
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1988 This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days...
7 months ago
24
7 months ago
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found in Portsmouth, not the most literary of cities despite Dickens and Conan-Doyle (or perhaps because of Dickens and Conan-Doyle)....
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
a month ago
23
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Such as It Is The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
48
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Josh Thompson
Dizzying but Invisible Depth The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post. Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google home page. Simple, isn’t...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions" “Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
“Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or ‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an occasion for festive...
ben-mini
Buying a House Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of...
3 months ago
1
3 months ago
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of 2025. Why are you buying a house? To make money. I see this as an opportunity in a space that many friends and family consider a safe, high-return bet (if done right). When...
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead. A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here' Does anyone still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Does anyone still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation, whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays Notes on process
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the app locally, it is sending data to DataDog. This is super exciting, because I’m getting close to being able to glean good insights from DataDog’s Application Performance...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
5 months ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks... There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell' “People tell us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an end. But...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
“People tell us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”  John Byron Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart of what remains of our civilization. In...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing' I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always...
7 months ago
31
7 months ago
I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting earworm. Much of this...
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style' Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language.”  John Horne Tooke: “I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated.”   Johnson: “No, sir! Indignant wise men...
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right... "It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past' The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark the occasion. Wenthe looks...
This Space
39 Books: 2009 The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Tailwind CSS
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit "Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
11 months ago
12
11 months ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Intense Enthusiasm for Good Literature' I was reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He was, of all...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
I was reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He was, of all the people I ever met, the one who had the most intense enthusiasm for good literature.” Spoken by another, this might amount to glibly rendered bullshit, the sort of thing junior...
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. ...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. 1. Roman plays.  Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy' Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong,...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”   One hint: it’s a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy. Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
25
3 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
We Are the Borg Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us? The post We Are the Borg appeared first on...
6 months ago
13
6 months ago
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us? The post We Are the Borg appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
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
26
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...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
a month ago
17
a month ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
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
7
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...
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
33
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
Born to Be Wild One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
30
6 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
The Perry Bible...
Brushed The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project' Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
23
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...
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it. Since I’m trying to write...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]' Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a generous 417 versions of Ode I.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described by the poet as “rendered almost word for word...
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
2
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception' “There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own sake.”  A fine distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard III and refers us to...
Ben Borgers
How /swipes Works
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad." By this time I had given up reviewing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buttonhole Strangers on the Street' Dedicated readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed, often...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
Dedicated readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed, often decades later, we’re acting on faith, trusting that we and it remain compatible. That’s not always the case, of course. My younger self is not a reliable critic. For too long I was an...
Ben Borgers
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play... I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy.  Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do.  If we...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
47
a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise.  “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
37
7 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2021 I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the...
6 months ago
71
6 months ago
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the many second-hand bookshops, all within walking distance. Many have closed over the years, such as Sandpiper, a remaindered bookshop in Kensington Gardens. It had a backroom in...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too) note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly "Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
32
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
2
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.  Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Ben Borgers
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
The third chair I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks to catch up.) Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas' A friend who is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve ever...
4 months ago
20
4 months ago
A friend who is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal House and 1984. Neither have I read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which are among the most...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress" “Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions...
a year ago
2
a year ago
“Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s list of most-visited websites (see Notes for details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments, and come to your own...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
7 months ago
41
7 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
Wuthering...
But the Moon rescues others as they swim from below - a glance at the essays and dialogues of... The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary Parallel Lives but also the innovative author of a large mass of essays and dialogues which picked up the title Moralia (late 1st C.) along the way.  Plutarch was hardly an original...
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually... Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings.  Each of the novel’s seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting: AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm' Joseph Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still writing, still...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Joseph Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has published reviews and essays devoted to...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
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
39
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity' When John Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small volumes of...
8 months ago
27
8 months ago
When John Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature' “Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The...
9 months ago
15
9 months ago
“Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The best writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are those who work in two media: words...
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
8 months ago
23
8 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925).  It is a monster.  Why did I read it?  No, that is not the right questions.  There are good reasons to read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist' My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
23
7 months ago
My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Consider Seriously My Condition' Soon after he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Soon after he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished salvaging everything useful from the wreckage, Robinson Crusoe builds a calendar:  “After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of...
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I had three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago: October goals: Programming I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2 Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones. I have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading Freewith Kristi and...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked' One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists....
2 weeks ago
8
2 weeks ago
One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Breathing--Still' R.L. Barth is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
R.L. Barth is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English' “We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”  It’s fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
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
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by... The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in...
10 months ago
51
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in February.  I gotta catch up on my posts. One big book down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible. TRAVEL, let’s call it Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), Rebecca...
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
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
10
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
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
a year ago
1
a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know. Similarly, I wrote a long time ago that: We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
Ben Borgers
Is Advice Flawed?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.' “The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
“The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the January 2025 issue of The New Criterion.: “Rickard often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit' “A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
“A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool head in a tight situation.”  Long before he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible. Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
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....
10 months ago
15
10 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...
Ben Borgers
Publishing my Fall 2022 class notes
a year ago
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
2 weeks 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...
3 months ago
22
3 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.
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
4 months ago
30
4 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony' I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead, I switched to keeping notebooks. In The Golden Gate I see that I...
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the... Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
a year ago
48
a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps.  What can that mean, without any gaps? We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap.  In an undergraduate philosophy course you...
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist The Firefly Artist Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly imprisonment. Two hours...
a year ago
2
a year ago
The Firefly Artist Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly imprisonment. Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth' The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is strictly binary --  like/dislike, good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks crackdowns and there is no appeals...
The Marginalian
Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life,...
a year ago
30
a year ago
An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life, with its duration so short it obliges us to surpass ourselves."
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done. Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.  He said, in short: I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
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."
3 months ago
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
39
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest' In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections (1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
a month ago
19
a month ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections (1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered: “Silence is more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever) When’s the last time you trained for that activity? Finally: When is the last time you trained for that activity with someone else?...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
36
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d' I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He wanted to play golf and go...
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
28
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...
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you. That’s...
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month. I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Domestic Privacies" Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of Literature,” when she refers to Dr. Johnson as “grand master of English prose.” She also practices what Anecdotal Evidence preaches: “the intersection of books and life.” We might...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise' A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry. First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
7 months ago
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
6 days ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will... Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
54
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel (2009). ...
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired... Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity' Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies, thirty...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies, thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on the cheap. One of them, the...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance' Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous points of disequilibrium”:  “True ease in writing...
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions' In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.” For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
7 months ago
51
7 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 Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
4 days ago
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected generosity is potency
2 months 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
12
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies' As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s, a month after my eleventh...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder' I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by...
5 months ago
26
5 months ago
I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Why Not Get Out of This Rut?' "Books offer what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal Christmas-present...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
"Books offer what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal Christmas-present problem.”  Well, yes and no. I’m a graceless gift giver and receiver, especially when it comes to books. People like my middle son are inspired and have a knack for...
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
11
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...
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
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
17
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
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle' I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
yesterday
6
yesterday
I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow in nostalgia can prove deadly. But the language in Clive James’ twelve stanzas cataloging an Australian childhood is exotic enough to interest this American reader, apart from their poetic...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts An antiquated take on antiquity The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
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
2
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...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
8
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical literature.  I had never heard of him, partly because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean satire” even though...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Permanently a Monument As Anything' Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely moistened with the sender’s tongue and sealed. A person-to-person letter, not junk mail, credit-card come-ons, campaign postcards, jury summonses and the rest of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Indubitably I Should Miss Them' Every year, in the weeks preceding Christmas, I face the question I’ve been asked since I was a kid,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Every year, in the weeks preceding Christmas, I face the question I’ve been asked since I was a kid, and my answer always leaves me feeling sheepish. “What do you want for Christmas?” “Well, ah . . .” “Yeah, we know: books.” Piteously, I’ll add, “Socks. I could use some socks,”...
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard the “serenity prayer”: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is...
Ben Borgers
October 5th, 1582
over a year ago
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V... “What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
14
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside' Reporters and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Reporters and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work... "I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
22
6 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
60
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
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
36
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
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective. I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists' I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago enters...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get a craving for spaghetti...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech' After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island,...
a year ago
10
a year ago
After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:  “When you see a dead man wrapped in...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture' “Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.” Understandably, Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or destroying books, even...
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light' The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over the previous decade...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death" Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
9 months ago
12
9 months ago
Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being "You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative? We're asking the wrong questions.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past' I will quote the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it – than any...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
I will quote the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it – than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak, Memory, in which he writes at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account ' The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply... "A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
8 months ago
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
sbensu
Enterprise sales meets product development What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide and more of a cautionary tale.
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
39
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Goals In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in two months. Frankly, neither of those is good for me. I like writing because it clarifies my own thoughts. Sometimes it seems useful to others. I like to be useful (“utility” can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
7
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are "We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Source The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018 Slides are available here on Dropbox Git Push, Git Paid Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned: Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself' “[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
“[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet little cemetery of English...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
19
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is' The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products. How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month? Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dictionary of Dead Words' How to account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language?...
a year ago
13
a year ago
How to account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language? I’ve always supposed it was laziness or the absence of imagination. Why work hard at writing or speaking when a ready-made word, phrase or thought shows up automatically like pain with a...
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
44
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...
The American Scholar
Martha Foley’s Granddaughters What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The post Martha Foley’s Granddaughters appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
11
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good. I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight' My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink' Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to himself. In the early pages of his...
The American Scholar
Bridges The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt The fabric of life The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable' This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors....
a year ago
12
a year ago
This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”  Stern (1928-2013) was seventy-one at the time and...
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...
10 months ago
11
10 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November' The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
a month ago
23
a month 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...
Josh Thompson
Switching to Jekyll Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog post. So, I put it in a gist on Github. I’m an advocate of writing publicly, and making it a habit, so why was I putting it in a gist, instead of here, on my website, where I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lasting Vivification of a Word' I’ve read Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the...
9 months ago
16
9 months ago
I’ve read Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the second time in a week, and have decided one might easily write a book about it. The prose is dense with interesting and useful ideas:  “The prevalent weakness, too, of many minds–the...
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a week ago
10
a week ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
Robert Caro
Alone on the Desert Her Dream Fades A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half...
a year ago
1
a year ago
A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half back to her tiny shack.
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation' As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture? These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of maturity. We wanted to be...
Ben Borgers
Planning my week
a year ago
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible You Are Not Incompressible can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking. —Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings” Im returning...
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words. I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Songful, Tuneful Land' "None can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the sound of names;...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
"None can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United States of America.”  Robert Louis Stevenson means place names. He’s...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here. This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work. Here’s the gist: One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones' The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s...
9 months ago
22
9 months ago
The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of subjective idealism – he called it “immaterialism” -- is recounted by James Boswell on August 6, 1763:  “After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar' For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure. (Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him' A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough. Everybody wants to look for failure...
This Space
39 Books: 1991 One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old...
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
62
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...
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on Including me
11 months ago
Ben Borgers
Information Distribution
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Demographer of the Common Woe' Only in the last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Only in the last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a internal list and weighing them against my own precious self. I’ve led a improbably healthy life which only encouraged the universal young man’s conviction that I was immune to mortality and...
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
16
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1987 From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
24
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Matter of Nobody’s Style But Her Own' “It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
“It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring evenings when the windows were opened) but the world in which they sounded, and the young ears they sounded for. I shall never forget how beautiful they were or what they meant to...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 356 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word' “I cannot but think that we live in a bad age, / O tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”  The...
3 months ago
17
3 months ago
“I cannot but think that we live in a bad age, / O tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”  The Latin tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!” It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the opening lines of...
Josh Thompson
On Feedback Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback: Explicit feedback , which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss. Implicit feedback , which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy' When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations, strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise us. An Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School' When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
7
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about! The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead.  In what may be the most...
Josh Thompson
Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a 4.2 -> 5.2 upgrade because Rails 4.2 is no longer supported. You, dear reader, have just suddenly found an interest in resolving deprecation warnings, and as one jumps a few Rails...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level' “I’m not a great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I read through...
5 months ago
30
5 months ago
“I’m not a great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch. Most marvellous book. Best thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
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
1
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic' Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially biodegradable. Who...
This Space
39 Books: 1995 Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
7 months ago
34
7 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Toated Him' R.L. Barth, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, has written a new poem, “Exercise”:  “The...
a year ago
9
a year ago
R.L. Barth, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, has written a new poem, “Exercise”:  “The chopper landed; in full combat gear We loaded single file to practice rappelling Into a jungle lacking an LZ. The exercise aborted when a cherry, Some private with a couple weeks...
Ben Borgers
Tufts & Change Makers
over a year ago
The Marginalian
What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and... The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood...
11 months ago
31
11 months ago
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood under a totalitarian dictatorship. Desperate for assurance that the future need not hold the total moral collapse of democracy, I reached out to my eldest friend for perspective....
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope' Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
16
3 months ago
Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2017 The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
36
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared...
8 months ago
24
8 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Locked Posts on Ghost
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
26
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out. If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
8 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
49
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.