Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 272 entries, all of them here in full.
December 29, 2009 · 454 words
Where’s Jesus? (A Holiday Game)
I picked this game up from Boing Boing, and discovered that it’s a perfect way to waste a cold winter afternoon, particularly during the holiday season.Go to Wikipedia. Click on “random article” (on the left side, under the globe). Of the various links on that random page, click on the one most likely to lead […
Read entry →December 29, 2009 · 336 words
Black Hole Created! Sorta.
Scientists have created a black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Well, an acoustic black hole. Not a real black hole.But they may get some perfectly genuine Hawking radiation out of it, so it’s still cool. One of the many curious properties of Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs) is that the flow of sound through them i
Read entry →December 26, 2009 · 231 words
We Caught the Terrorist, So Let’s Have More Restrictions!
Some goofy terrorist wannabe named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set off an incendiary device in his own lap on an aircraft, and scorched the living fuck out of his thighs. (Of course “thighs” may be a euphemism here.)(He was on a watch list, apparently, so I have to wonder why he and his thighs weren’t checked […]
Read entry →December 23, 2009 · 980 words
Noir
Saw a couple of films noir recently, one a classic, the other more recent.Gun Crazy (1951) was the classic, and was a pure example of the film noir— or, as we called them in America, B pictures. Made on the cheap, full of actors you don’t remember ever seeing before, and filmed on the streets […]
Read entry →December 23, 2009 · 233 words
Managers
Noam Scheiber blames the decline in manufacturing on . . . business schools. A lot of people talk about reviving the domestic manufacturing sector, which has shed almost one-third of its manpower over the last eight years. But some of the people I spoke to asked a slightly different question: Even if you could reclaim
Read entry →December 22, 2009 · 79 words
The Pentagon Does a Good Thing
I occasionally use this space to talk about the military or the government, usually to point out their errors.Seems only fair that I congratulate the Pentagon when it does something right.The Pentagon used a multimillion-dollar grant to fast track the burgeoning art of face transplants, in hopes of helping the 200 or s
Read entry →December 22, 2009 · 449 words
Drones
The Army Times reports that Iraqi insurgent militias supported by Iran seemed to have early warning of U.S. actions, apparently because of their ability to hack U.S. drones.“We noticed a trend when going after these guys; that sometimes they seemed to have better early warning” of U.S. actions, said the officer briefed
Read entry →December 21, 2009 · 283 words
Relics
Some years ago Kathy and I were in Munich, and we found ourselves in the giant walk-in safe that holds the Wittelsbach family’s personal collection of holy relics, almost all of which were neatly labeled. (The Wittelsbachs, you may remember, included [in chronological order] Mad King Ludwig I, Mad Max, and Mad King Lud
Read entry →December 21, 2009 · 239 words
Meepery in the First Degree
The word “meep” has been banned in a high school in Salem, which I’m sure I don’t have to remind you was the home of the famous witch trials. Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television […]
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