http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?020701ta_talk_struby The Mets’ pitchers eat Gino’s penne vodka with grilled chicken. “The fact that the Mets have so far been the sole beneficiaries of the penne doesn’t bother Phil Mangiafridda, a lifelong Yankees fan. ‘It don’t matter,’ he said. ‘I root for anyone who comes in here to eat.’ ” 13:36

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/020701fa_fact Lennox Lewis profile, by David Remnick. 13:05

http://www.securityedition.com/ Handsome version of the “Bill of Rights,” stamped in metal, suitable for use in making political points at metal-detectors. 10:46

http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/590/op2.htm Edward Said on the Middle-East peace process. He doesn’t like Arafat either. 17:24

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067092 On the unabridged Kamasutra: “The surprise is that descriptions of sexual positions are a relatively minor part of the Kamasutra; what really matters are the folk recipes (which are nuts) and the moral advice (which is vile).” 11:12

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067095 Paean to on-line personals. 11:08

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_
2047000/2047940.stm Mahathir criticises Malays for not making enough of their government-given advantages. Would like to know more about the circumstances of this. 11:09

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067029 Scott Shuger has died in a scuba diving accident. 16:43

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2002/feature-writing/works/
“A Father’s Pain, a Judge’s Duty, and a Justice Beyond Their Reach.” 10:24

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/06/fallows.htm “Uncle Sam Buys an Airplane.” “All this new thinking was in the service of an even blander-seeming, yet revolutionary, concept within the military: CAIV, or ‘cost as independent variable.’ In layman's terms this is nothing more than the idea that the airplane would be held to a cost target. In most military contracting, cost is the dependent variable.” 15:38

http://www.tonypierce.com/2002/3/escalator/3.htm “Interview with an escalator.” 23:42

http://sksmith.diaryland.com/020611_56.html Contains plausible explanation of the “root of lesbian mystique.” 23:17

http://www.smh.com.au/media/2002/06/13/1023864315824.html The Argentinian soccer team models … handbags! 16:40

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/17705#288003 “The key to comfortably using the one-button [Apple] mouse is simple: put the mouse under your palm, not under your fingers.” This is a pleasant way to weild a mouse. 16:26

http://jewishcheerleaders.com/6_2_02.html Porn-maker Sam Stern's journal (the contents page) is very good, although it does take a few readings to figure out the right way to approach his writing; a few readings to “get it.” Sometimes he describes shoots he's done, sometimes he talks about his relationship with the porn industry, and sometimes he talks about, well, other stuff.

This paragraph, on why he hates journalism, resonates:

I've thought before that the very essence of reporting, of critiquing and evaluating, even of storytelling, is one of reductionism, oversimplification. I hate most journalism for this reason. Fiction is preferable to me because I never have to question the veracity of the reportage—it's filtered through the narrator, or novelist—it's made up. It's when it comes to telling about life that I start to distrust, not only the actual story that I'm hearing or reading—but the ability of speech and words in general to accurately describe an event or an occurence. People are liars, and even when they're not, they leave a lot out.

(I don't hate journalism, but I do have the suspicion that almost any proposition can be sensibly argued for.) 13:13

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_2035000/
2035578.stm From the police blotter: “Police said they did not disbelieve people who thought they had been woken up by a chimpanzee. They are looking for a suspect who is three-foot tall with a large amount of luxuriant dark hair.” 12:24

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/terry_baddoo/
news/2002/06/09/baddoo_insider/ Boxers vs. footballers: “why is [it] that Lennox, and Mike in particular in this case, were repeatedly able to take vicious assaults on their bodies and come back for more, while the slightest hint of contact on many players in these finals produces a reaction like they've just had their legs amputated with a light beer for anaesthetic?”

I made a special trip to my local to see that fight. God I love boxing.

Another report—Tyson was remarkably gracious, especially when compared to the Tyson of the past. And in Gadfly, Neal Shaffer explains why we need sportsmen like Mike Tyson. 12:12

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/020617ta_talk_angell Gardner Botsford collects unusually-titled books. (Amazon reviewer Henry Raddick (interview) has an eye for the off-beat too.) 18:20

http://www.apc.fr/uk/communiques_de_presse.php “ ‘Listen to this picture’ is the catalogue of an exhibition by the photographer Pierre Bailly consisting in portraits of twelve women, at home, while they are listening to their favorite music.” 16:20

http://www.snpp.com/guides/ralph.file.html “When I grow up, I want to be a principal or a caterpillar.” —Ralph Wiggum 14:47

http://typographi.ca/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=285 “What kind of reaction do you get when you tell people you design fonts for a living?” Font designers vent. From typographi.ca. 13:02

http://www.adage.com/images/random/lips01_big.jpg Information Security Begins With You! 12:51

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/721833.html Splendidly dogmatic essay on punctuation: “Periods and commas are lovely because they are simple. They force the writer to express his ideas directly, to eliminate unnecessary hedges, to forgo smart-aleck asides. They also contribute to the logical solidity of a piece of writing, since they make us put all our thoughts into words. By way of contrast, a colon can be used to smooth over a rough logical connection.” (The author especially dislikes semi-colons.)

This is one of my favourite colon-droppings ever:

It is possible that there are uglier towns in the world than Walsall, but if so I do not know them: and I consider myself better than averagely traveled.

(From the lead to Crudity beyond belief, by Theodore Dalrymple. I suppose he's “[smoothing] over a rough logical connection” here but goddamn it was worth it.) 23:24

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52997,00.html Man in charge of important password-protected Norwegian historical documents dies taking the password with him; hackers' help is requested. (Why were they password-protected in the first place?) The story ends with a moving tale of Web designer Kenny LaGuardia's misfortune at the hands of a “Dead Man's Switch”—a program that, if not regularly reset “automatically carries out a series of pre-designated tasks.”

”I went on vacation, and forgot all about the switch,” said Kenny LaGuardia, a Web designer from Los Angeles. “When I returned home, the program had posted, ‘So I guess I'm dead’ messages to all the newslists I subscribe to, and destroyed all my adult entertainment files.”

12:10

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/nyregion/05WOOD.html Woody Allen is suing his “former producer and friend Jean Doumanian”: “He said he had intended that he and Ms. Doumanian would remain friends and actually enjoy the lawsuit, like playful adversaries in a Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film. He said he thought that she would find the suit ‘amusing’ and that they would be “having dinner at night at Le Cirque and facing each other by day.’ ” 15:33

http://tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610;s=kauffmann061002 Decent review of Attack of the Clones. (Actually, more a review of the Star Wars universe.)

Two other analyses of Star Wars politics: from Salon (in 1999), “Star Wars” despots vs. “Star Trek” populists (about every third paragraph is readable) and from The Weekly Standard, The Case for the Empire: Everything you know about Star Wars is Wrong. (The premise of the second is rather similar to that of this Usenet post from 2000: “star wars trilogy is vicious rebel propaganda.”)

I quite liked Attack of the Clones. I liked the plot. I have described it as “complicated,” but I've discovered people don't agree with me about this. I think what I really mean is “nuanced.” Sure, the plot can be stated in a couple of sentences, but to stir up universe-spanning conflict (including two entire armies!) to make your request for additional powers more reasonable—now that is fascinating. It's completely unprecendented in human history! Imagine if Napoleon, say, pulled some stunt like that? How intriguing would that process be? 13:16

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/106/story_10681.html An exchange between Ed Koch, one-time mayor of New York, and Woody Allen. Koch is unhappy that Allen attended the Cannes Film Festival, ignoring the boycott called for by some Jewish leaders.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me: why is France widely considered to be an anti-semitic nation of long standing? There was that Dreyfus Affair, but France provided arms to Israel for much of its first decade. (There was a falling-out after the war of 1967.) What led France to do this? (Even the US didn't become actively involved until later.) Was the move not popular with the public?

(The article linked above is not brilliant, but I can't find a better web resource.) 18:11

http://www.redmeat-feelgood.com.au/ Found via this sticker:

(The other scenes of people made happy by red meat are: (1) a judge (in wig, carrying book, head thrown back, laughing hard); and (2) a set of four butchers (in aprons, clanking pots and pans and tongs together). Priceless!) 16:36

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/02/education/02REGE.html The excerpts used in an English exam taken by New York's public-school high-school seniors have been “extensively altered,” etc. I don't think anybody needs to get very excited about this. It's not first-and-foremost an example of the sort muddle-headed thinking over-zealous liberals get up to, and that conservatives like to mock. It's mostly a mistake. It will be changed. (Slate: the wronged authors can sue. NYT: the policy has changed.) 01:00

http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i38/38a01401.htm W. Kip Viscusi says that smokers do correctly assess the risks of smoking. I don't know about this—lots and lots of experiments have demonstrated that people aren't very good at evaluating risks. 21:17

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610;s=hitchens Tut, tut, Christopher Hitchens. You repeat the story that the FBI allowed (helped?) the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, fly several members of the Bin Laden family out of the US on September 11. But they didn't.

Update: I finally found the January 21 Minority Report column Hitchens refers to. There he implies that the Prince's appearance on the Larry King Show of October 1st is the source of his information. But the transcript (Reminder: “It's 2001, and we can Fact Check your ass.”) reveals that the Prince, though he talked of the flight, said nothing at all about the date the Saudis left. Where is Hitchens getting his information from?

I like those I admire to be, at least in matters of simple fact, unassailably correct—in all things, and at all times. 12:28