John Le Carre mentions an extraordinary thing in the introduction to Smiley's People, namely the principal difference in his method of writing the previous two volumes. (Not really that noteworthy, for he blows my mind on a regular basis.) For Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, his primary research tool was his imagination and many of the places he'd ( Read more... )

My 3-season package of Deadwood arrived earlier today. I can haz new obsezion?

P.S. I was reading Axelrod's The Complexity of Cooperation earlier this evening and his tribute model is exactly what I need to explain the empirics of my thesis. But the whole time he was talking about unit wars and whatnot, I kept envisioning scenes from The Wire. ( Read more... )

Just reread the screenplay for Traffic (after having already seen the movie right before I left) and this film remains the most intelligent, by far, on America's "War on Drugs." Holy shit, it is so good ( Read more... )

McMAFIA - A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GLOBAL CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD

Misha Glenny

Wow. If nothing else, this book gave me ideas for the next ten books after View from MasadaSeriously, though, Misha Glenny’s tome arrives as a sort of encyclopedia on globalization’s dark side across the world. Glenny targets the usual suspects, Balkan arms dealers, Chinese ( Read more... )

It's funny, I almost feel more at home in Dubrovnik than I did in Hvar, and this place has got loads more tourists. There's a sort of cheeky charm to the city though. Incredibly Catholic, yet in decidedly Slavic way. I'm already falling for this place ( Read more... )

A scene from season 1 (I think) of The Wire.

Click to view

Absolutely brilliant.

Ashes 7/13/07, 2.54 AM

New Words: 977

Total Words: 100090

Page Count: 483

Mean Things: Spoiler.

Reason for Stopping: Um, check the timestamp.

As promised, the aforementioned ( Lem-Shane Convo - Warning: Major Spoiler, like for the entire series )

I'm stuck ( Read more... )

A moment of splendor ( Read more... )

Me (while eating ice cream): Mom, how long does it take for a pregnant woman to start showing ( Read more... )