- Blog
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A Website You Can Talk Over: Assigning Responsibility for a Meaningful Blog
What do I want this blog to be? Perhaps using that very word, blog, assumes too much, imposing a definition. What to I want this website to be? A little while back, I posited that perhaps the essay as a format was something that more bloggers ought to rely on, as opposed to, say, the…
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Rewarded for Cat Pictures (and Whatnot)
All Things D interviews Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Labs, home of the online virtual world Second Life. I have tried out Second Life a number of times over the years, but never stuck with it, for a multitude of reasons: my connection was too slow, my processor too weak, or I realized that true…
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To Be a Species is to Be Special
John S. Wilkins considers the argument that humans are somehow more than “just animals.” The evolutionary view of human capacities is that they have precursors in ancestral traits, and these precursors can be found in other animals. Dogs, corvids, cetaceans, primates, and a host of other animals display moral, cognitive and conscious behaviour. Humans are special indeed in their…
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That Wound Has Been Healed a Little Today
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Scrooge McGroove on the Moon
My new favorite YouTube star, Smooth McGroove has fulfilled what he told me was a very popular request (and one of my requests as well): The Moon theme from DuckTales, the 1989 NES game based on the Disney cartoon. I remember as a kid playing this game, and being really impressed by this piece. Most…
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Stephen Fry and the Paradox of Loneliness
Stephen Fry, one of my heroes, recently tried to commit suicide, and has since told the whole tale of his battle with depression in such a way that only he can. One passage in his latest post stands out to me, a very familiar paradox concerning loneliness, especially considering he and I are both performers,…
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And Don’t You Forget it for a Second!
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We Asked for This
The NSA snooping story is fishy. Here’s Ed Bott at ZDNet: . . . a funny thing happened the next morning. If you followed the link to [The Washington Post‘s] story, you found a completely different story, nearly twice as long, with a slightly different headline. The new story wasn’t just expanded; it had been…
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There’s Only One Rule I Know of, Babies
Image by Miranda.
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Bernanke on Oxen and Parasites
Ladies and gentlemen, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, at Princeton: This is indeed an impressive and appropriate setting for a commencement. I am sure that, from this lectern, any number of distinguished spiritual leaders have ruminated on the lessons of the Ten Commandments. I don’t have that kind of confidence, and, anyway, coveting your…
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A Tendency Away from Certitude: Our Blogosphere Needs the Essay
It had seemed to me that, in the ideal, the chief distinguishing characteristic of the blog format, as opposed to, say, formal print newspaper and magazine article, was that it represented a piece of a larger conversation. Not in the strict sense of point-counterpoint, you-go-I-go, but in the sense of being an individual’s considered musing…
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Syria, Us, and Nothing
For the sake of my own sanity, I don’t keep up with the day to day developments of the world’s centers of crisis. Syria, however, holds a special fascination for me, given how stark and seemingly clear the lines of conflict are (as opposed to, say, the moral muddles of Iraq and Afghanistan). But the…
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Those Funny Germans
Stephen Evans realizes how off-base some myths about the German people are, including the idea that they are somehow humorless (most of my own ancestry is German, not that you’d know it from my Portuguese name): The other day, I went to the site of an unexploded World War II bomb. They frequently turn up…
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Boxes Checked, Conquests Forgotten
I once began watching a film I had felt was important for me to see. Universally acclaimed to a level seldom seen, it was a cinematic box I knew I needed to have checked, a head to mount. The film opens with a live performance of some theatrical dance piece, very arty, very heavy. It’s…
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