I wrote a brief essay that starts from an idea of Phil Christman’s and commends (in one respect anyway) Noam Chomsky. You can’t pigeonhole ME.
“I regard neither a class of error nor an example of it as one stone which has made me stumble: I learn to distrust my trot in general and set about improving it. To learn that we have said or done a stupid thing is nothing: we must learn a more ample and important lesson: that we are but blockheads.” — Montaigne
A nice little inside joke in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise: When Lord Peter is told that he must leave the advertising agency in which he’s working undercover, he explodes, “Dash it all, Charles! You don’t understand. It’s a really big scheme. It’ll be the biggest advertising stunt since the Mustard Club.” The Mustard Club was the most famous and successful advertising campaign created by Sayers herself when she worked for Benson’s Publicity. And I’ve just discovered that there was even a short film about the Mustard Club.
“Attention must be paid.”
Those of you who’ve been hipped to the traditional-folk scene by A Complete Unknown (and maybe before that by Inside Llewyn Davis) should enjoy this episode of the Walter Martin Radio Hour. And maybe that will turn you on to the distinctive sensibility of Mr. Martin.
Phil Christman’s gentle pushback to my recent comments on Resistance-blogging is unsurprisingly good. What he’s doing makes a lot of sense.
Margery Brews of Norfolk, in the year of our Lord 1477, writes to her “right well-beloved valentine.”
Today I’ve been going around singing R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” in the voice of Comic Book Guy. You’re welcome.
Two quotations on two visions of “human survival.”
I wrote about true crime and the rise of the detective story.
Further adventures in analog: Currently listening to John Coltrane, Ballads, on vinyl. ♫
Our son Wes in the Tate Gallery London, summer 1996. Taken (by Teri, I’m almost sure) with our beloved Nikon FE-2, which we still have, though it’s in need of repair. Maybe we should’ve stuck with that camera all these years. That print is small … I wonder if I can find the negative …
Here’s the amazing Robin Sloan thinking patiently and carefully through the fundamental question about AI: Is it okay? It’s perfect that Robin is doing this in a blog post — the first of several, perhaps — because this kind of open-ended thinking is what blogs are best suited for.