more of what i like

"That was the idiot hopefulness of humans, always to love what was unformed."

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:47:17 -0500

“That was the idiot hopefulness of humans, always to love what was unformed.”

- Chad Harbach in The Art of Fielding. Cf. John Cage:

I am frankly embarrassed that most of my musical life has been spent in the search for new materials. The significance of new materials is that they represent, I believe, the incessant desire in our culture to explore the unknown. Before we know the unknown, it inflames our hearts. When we know it, the flame dies down, only to burst forth again at the thought of a new unknown. This desire has found expression in our culture in new materials, because our culture has its faith not in the peaceful center of the spirit but in an ever-hopeful projection onto things of our own desire for completion.

The Gauntlet. They used at least 300-thousand-million bullets in...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:20:04 -0500

The Gauntlet. They used at least 300-thousand-million bullets in this film. It’s not the best Clint Eastwood movie I’ve seen, not by a long shot, but I went in with appropriate expectations. It’s just a fun and highly ridiculous road trip movie with a loser cop and a clever prostitute. We need more helicopter chases in movies. Interesting parallels with Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. Check out that promo poster!

Are people who dwell on their problems more creative? - Barking up the wrong tree

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:02:26 -0500

Are people who dwell on their problems more creative? - Barking up the wrong tree:

Because rumination may allow an idea to stay in one’s conscious longer and indecision may result in more time on a given task, it was expected that these two cognitive processes may predict creativity. Self-report measures of rumination, indecision, and creativity were electronically distributed to 85 adults (28 men, 57 women; M age = 32.96 years old). Reflective rumination significantly predicted creativity, moderated by high levels of indecision. This study may resolve previous conflicts between findings on rumination and creativity and introduces indecision as beneficial in the creative process. This study also provided important clinical implications in distinguishing between adaptive and maladaptive rumination suggesting a new cognitive link between creativity and depression.

Insert the “One Single Study Often Means Jack Shit” disclaimer here. But it reminded me of Alain de Botton:

Being cheerful is really no recipe to get down to work: nothing happens until paranoia, jealousy, competitiveness and guilt arrive.

And also of Roz Chast:

I kind of tend to stay up late just about every night, anywhere from 12:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. I putter. I nurse old grudges. I fold origami while nursing old grudges. I think about the past. I wonder if there’s any grudges I should start.

"We expect too much from January and not enough from February."

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:59:21 -0500

“We expect too much from January and not enough from February.”

- @mlarson, aka me. I think I’m on to something here.

Hacking the Used Car Purchase « carsabi. Hack #3: Buy...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:24:48 -0500

Hacking the Used Car Purchase « carsabi.

Hack #3: Buy Luxury Later. If you’re broke like us but still really like performance and leather interiors, consider getting a luxury car that’s 5-6 years old. More luxury owners want newer models than older ones leading to a pretty steep depreciation for the first few years; the average new E320 loses about $12k per year no matter the mileage (112 datapoints). Compare this to the depreciation curve for a Camry: the car holds value like people *want* to drive it into the ground. Crazy! (1,523 datapoints).

"Don’t be dour about it. Straight gay black white young old—it’s not going to kill..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:54:46 -0500

“Don’t be dour about it. Straight gay black white young old—it’s not going to kill you or let you live.”

- Chad Harbach in The Art of Fielding.

thesyllabi: (Image via Prospect Magazine) The Joy of...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:54:36 -0500

thesyllabi:

(Image via Prospect Magazine)

The Joy of Tennis

With the Australian Open coming to a record-breaking, excessively long climax this weekend, what better to fill the tennis void than some great writing on the subject?

The correct way to begin a tour of tennis writing is with David Foster Wallace. In his 1996 essay for Esquire, he uses a profile of Michael Joyce as a cover for an obsessive and effortlessly insightful consideration of tennis. Quite likely the best tennis nonfiction written to date. He revisits tennis ten years later for the New York Times and lets his inner fanboy loose with an equally epic and insightful profile of Roger Federer.

Three years later, Cynthia Gorney gives us a fantastic, sprawling profile of Rafael Nadal.

Rounding out the profiles of today’s top tennis players is S.L. Price with a profile of Novak Djokovic and Sarah Corbett on Venus Williams.

For profiles of yesterday’s best, Julian Rubenstein’s award-winning profile of John McEnroe and Frank Deford’s 1978 profile of Jimmy Connors are required reading.

One of the great pleasures of tennis is the personalities and the rivalries, and as Gerald Marzorati pointed out last year, “rivalries in tennis are like no others in sports.” In recent years, we’ve seen the same three — four or five if you’re generous — players constantly jockeying for the top spots in the rankings, always climaxing in thrilling, suspenseful, and often record-breaking semi-final and final matches in the year’s tournaments. “To be a great tennis player is to need a rival.”

Although you wouldn’t call them rivals, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut found themselves locked in a seemingly neverending first round match-up at last year’s Wimbledon. Most tennis matches end long before the 11 hours this one took to end, usually because a player loses concentration, but neither Mahut or Isner blinked for 3 days of play, and Ed Caesar explains why in his GQ piece following the match.

In “The most beautful game,” Geoff Dyer considers the beauty of tennis. It’s not enough that the players are simply good at tennis — everything you see on Centre Court at Wimbledon can be “replicated by an average player in a park.” The draw for the viewing public, he thinks, is wrapped up in the mechanics of the game: the most effective way to play is gracefully, as best exempified by Federer’s memorable single-handed backhand.

Read these and then read John McPhee’s Levels of the Game (part II) [$], and you’ll have just about covered all of the best writing on tennis.

Mean Streets. Didn’t enjoy this very much. I appreciate...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:03:16 -0500

Mean Streets. Didn’t enjoy this very much. I appreciate how Scorsese mixes up the camerawork and the musical interludes, but otherwise it seemed a bit of a drag.

"We know the cruelest of fanatics by their exceptionally clear consciences."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:03:04 -0500

“We know the cruelest of fanatics by their exceptionally clear consciences.”

- Adam Gopnik.

Amy Rebecca Klein: The Last Thing I'll Ever Write About Lana Del Rey

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:23:02 -0500

Amy Rebecca Klein: The Last Thing I'll Ever Write About Lana Del Rey:

When the world decided that Lana totally bombed on Saturday Night Life, we could see Lana telling us nothing other than what we already tell ourselves about women in music. We already assume that the feminine is inauthentic. So, I mean, why does everyone care so much if she has had plastic surgery, or if her management company created an image for her? What’s the big deal with being deceived? Some of our most respected musical icons (Bob Dylan, anyone?) used music to continually invent and re-invent possible selves.

Eli Manning's Burden | The Classical

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:22:54 -0500

Eli Manning's Burden | The Classical:

He took the burden of history, carefully placed it in the garbage, and lit the garbage on fire.

I just thought that was a nice turn of phrase.

dusttodigital: Alan Lomax’s dream of a “global jukebox” comes...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:44:14 -0500

dusttodigital:

Alan Lomax’s dream of a “global jukebox” comes true with 17,000 music tracks being made available for free streaming.

Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital. Oh hell yes.

Me, Reading: In the Mind of a Subway Reader - The New Yorker

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:43:16 -0500

Me, Reading: In the Mind of a Subway Reader - The New Yorker:

Patricia Marx nailed it.

Take Care of Your Choropleth Maps. Great overview of how some...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:14:09 -0500

Take Care of Your Choropleth Maps. Great overview of how some seemingly simple tweaks in the data limits, colors, etc. can result in a different story.

"I owe my livelihood to technology and I love the raw capability it offers us as a tool, but I fear..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:32:26 -0500

“I owe my livelihood to technology and I love the raw capability it offers us as a tool, but I fear it a bit more than most people do. It’s a tool, but it’s not quite a hammer, because a hammer doesn’t seduce you into sitting around lonely in your underwear for 6 hours at a stretch.”

- Brian Lam.

Are There Fundamental Laws of Cooking? | Wired. They found that...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:32:16 -0500

Are There Fundamental Laws of Cooking? | Wired.

They found that [the food pairing hypothesis] was true, at least when it came to Western cooking. North American and Western European cuisines, which share many of the same ingredients, both adhere to the food pairing hypothesis: Foods in the same recipe often have the same underlying molecular components. However, once we stray from these cuisines, the food pairing hypothesis breaks down. East Asian and Southern European recipes use ingredients that do not overlap in their flavor compounds, implying that these styles of cooking are in fact quantitatively distinct.

Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can’t...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:32:06 -0500

Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can’t See.

Red-green and yellow-blue are the so-called “forbidden colors.” Composed of pairs of hues whose light frequencies automatically cancel each other out in the human eye, they’re supposed to be impossible to see simultaneously.

I had no idea.

"I’m almost annoyed when something I’ve been interested in becomes valuable. Then it becomes trouble...."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:35:18 -0500

“I’m almost annoyed when something I’ve been interested in becomes valuable. Then it becomes trouble. I have to take care of it.”

- William Gibson.

The Iron Giant. The greatest anti-war film ever made. I LOLed a...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:51:17 -0500

The Iron Giant. The greatest anti-war film ever made. I LOLed a lot. So good.

"I was always somebody. I was famous at the Chevron. I’ve had some trials that would have made the..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:13:10 -0500

“I was always somebody. I was famous at the Chevron. I’ve had some trials that would have made the average motherfucker jump out a window a long time ago, but if you wake up one morning and say, ‘I can’t do it no more,’ then it’s all over. That’s why I wake up every morning and say, let’s do this shit. Let’s get it.”

- Young Jeezy on staying optimistic. (via howtotalktogirlsatparties). And don’t forget:

I don’t give a fuck if you’re doin’ petty shit or big shit. […] Get your motherfuckin’ money and make other people’s lives better.