Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
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 […]
Read entry →December 21, 2009 · 1,286 words
ICE Castles
I haven’t commented on the Peter Watts thing, partly because I’ve never met Peter Watts and don’t know whether or not he’s capable of trying to strangle a border agent after being pepper-sprayed in the face. (I know I am. If someone pepper-sprayed me for no reason, I’d do my absolute best to crush his […]
Read entry →December 21, 2009 · 529 words
What Were They Thinking?
So it seems that our Predator drones, on which we depend for so much intelligence and air-to-ground support in Afghanistan, have been using unencrypted communications. Which have been intercepted by Serbs, Iraqi insurgents, and probably the Taliban and al-Qaeda. (Because, y’know, a Western-educated multimillionaire lik
Read entry →December 16, 2009 · 570 words
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
Fake Steve Jobs speaks with AT&T’s Randall Stephenson:Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands . . . And when I say that “we” have a hit on our hands, I’m really giving you way too much credit, because let’s be honest, the success of iPhone has nothing to do with you. In fact, […]
Read entry →December 15, 2009 · 314 words
Oops! Dropped the Palantir!
It’s the 6 Lord of the Rings Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball. Gandalf’s leadership in The Fellowship of the Ring exemplifies the perils of on-the-job training. Let’s test your knowledge of the trilogy with the following questions: 1. How many horses did Gandalf insist the Fellowship bring? 2. What would Gandalf
Read entry →December 12, 2009 · 510 words
Aigues-Mortes
So here we have two views of the intact medieval walls of Aigues-Mortes, in southern France near the coast. Aigues-Mortes, which means “dead water” in the old local dialect, is built in the marshland of the Camargues, a perfectly flat stretch of wetlands that forms the Rhone delta. Aigues-Mortes isn’t on the sea, but i
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