New bike. A bit of buyer's remorse, to be honest; not sure I got the sort of bike I really needed. We'll see, I suppose ( Read more... )

Some weeks ago, I purchased an app/puzzle game called Threeby. I don't have much to say about it except that I found it very addicting, to the point where I had to delete it in order to get anything done. Then I would re-download it, waste an embarrassing amount of time on it again, and then re-delete it ( Read more... )

But I thought I'd share anyway (Berio's Sinfonia, Third Movement):

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The movement consists largely of musical quotations, layered on top of and against one another. So if you don't know the canonical pieces it cites, you might not appreciate it as much. If it sounds confusing and almost wrong - well, it's supposed to. I love it love it love it.

I hate to admit it, but I love Mahler. I hate to admit it because Mahler is a composer that everyone loves these days; he's a reliable ticket-seller, with the result that symphonies (like the Chicago Symphony) will over-program him rather than exploring other, less well-known composers and works ( Read more... )

A lot of heat has been generated by Paul Ryan's recent comments about "inner-city culture." Here's my transcription of his comments, taken in broader context than has typically been reported:

And so, that's this tailspin or spiral that we're looking at in our communities. You know - your buddy, Charles Murray or Bob Putnam, over at Harvard - those ( Read more... )

I use the term "radical" and "radicalism" to describe a perspective of the world that rejects hegemonic dialectics in favor of views and discourses that challenge the underlying assumptions of those dialectics. A radical might reject conventional ideals regarding the equality of the sexes, for example, by asking whether "equality" is really ( Read more... )

At work, I receive (compulsorily, it would seem) a publication called Leading Lawyers. It's not clear to me what kind of publication this is. It presents itself as a something capable of carrying information one might want to learn, though as a matter of fact it appears to be primarily a vehicle for lawyers to advertise to other lawyers. Much of ( Read more... )

Standing on the crowded train this morning, I observed my co-travellers, queuing and disembarking, a crowd of hunched shoulders and caps of varying sizes and textures, and I thought - idly to myself - about all of the pain, suffering, and loss ahead of them, including their (our) inevitable deaths; every one of them, one day destined to inhabit a ( Read more... )

It might seem odd to pick this out from the cultural miasma, but it suits. The existence of films such as That Awkward Moment make me question whether there is any point to life, living, the whole thing ( Read more... )

This post, from the NYTimes, suggests one way in which a fairly simple government program could serve to improve the educational, health, and economic outlooks for children born into poverty. Of course, such a government program would be bizarrely anathema to libertarians and conservatives in our political environment, being not just a "handout" ( Read more... )