I wrote a post for my Buy Me a Coffee supporters on the importance of redundancy in one’s stupidity-prevention system.
I’ll be offline for the next week or so as I try to finish a complete draft of my Sayers biography, but as I ride into the sunset I’ll share the news that Dan Wang’s annual letter is back, after a year’s hiatus during which he published an excellent book. Ciao for now!
Dictating a passage of my Sayers bio to my computer, I uttered the name “Bertie Wooster.” The computer rendered that as “Birdy Worcester.” I now want a canary I can name Birdy Worcester.
I wrote about design amnesia.
Happy 90th birthday to Sandy Koufax, who became my favorite baseball player when I was eight years old. And that never changed.
Let this give you hope in the New Year: No matter how powerful AI becomes, it will never quench the primal human desire to tell total strangers on the internet that they’re stupid and wicked.
Listening with pleasure to this conversation between Sam Harris and Ross Douthat, I felt that they were often talking past each other and thus failing to identify the true nature of their disagreement. I can help with that!
Re: what human life might be like in a post-scarcity society, I’d recommend my essay on Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels. (I’d also recommend Banks’s novels, of course, but first things first.)
Re: demons, I’d recommend my outline of a demonology.
Sidney Lumet, from Making Movies:
The sound editor on Murder on the Orient Express hired the “world’s greatest authority” on train sounds. He brought me the authentic sounds of not only the Orient Express but the Flying Scotsman, the Twentieth Century Limited, every train that had ever achieved any reputation. He worked for six weeks on train sounds only. His greatest moment occurred when, at the beginning of the picture, the train left the station at Istanbul. We had the steam, the bell, the wheels, and he even included an almost inaudible click when the train’s headlight went on. He swore that all the effects were authentic. When we got to the mix (the point at which we put all the sound tracks together), he was bursting with anticipation. For the first time, I heard what an incredible job he’d done. But I had also heard Richard Rodney Bennett’s magnificent music score for the same scene. I knew one would have to go. They couldn’t work together. I turned to Simon. He knew. I said, “Simon, it’s a great job. But, finally, we’ve heard a train leave the station. We’ve never heard a train leave the station in three-quarter time.” He walked out, and we never saw him again.
I feel great sorrow for this man.
Today is the feast day of St. Thomas Becket — known in his own time as Thomas of London. A white back I wrote a briefish essay about him and his native city.
Whether or not one enjoys listening to the music of George Crumb, his scores are fabulous fun to read. ♫
SO much great stuff in this year-end edition of Robin Sloan’s newsletter — and not just, or even primarily, because he links to a few things of mine. Though I will admit that when I posted the one he calls “a scintillating multimedia post that is, honestly, the most ‘hypertext’ thing I’ve seen in years” I thought: “If Robin doesn’t like this nobody will.”
The empire of money, war, and fire
cuts across the land.There are in the same country
shepherds watching their flocks.
One of the longstanding Christmas campaigns of my childhood was to forbid any reference to “Xmas.” Anyone attempting to remove Christ from Christmas was surely of the devil. And yet, Xmas comes from the Greek letter chi (X) which happens to be the first letter of Christos (Χριστός), meaning “Christ.” It turns out that Xmas is a way of honoring Jesus, not extracting him. Furthermore, doesn’t the letter “X” resemble something else? What if it’s a cross? Even if by accident, all signs point to Jesus.
I joined The Rest Is History Club four years ago, when the podcast was just a baby, a largely neglected, marginal baby — and now TRIH is the Apple Podcasts Show of the Year. I’m so proud.