Saturday, April 21st, 2018
In Amtrak’s magazine The National, alum David Schisgall welcomes the College’s new overlordettes, for in July 2018, after years of legal wrangles and decades of dusty nazal-gaving, Deep Springs will go co-ed.
Friday, April 20th, 2018
Another nice ongoing Grauniad series, this one where authors and writers describe their typical writing day.
Eventually I get down to writing and then the real problems begin.
Italo Calvino
Friday, April 13th, 2018
Thursday, April 12th, 2018
It’s nice to see Slant Magazine praise something fulsomely and in detail: Chuck Bowen on Billions, Season 3.
Sunday, April 8th, 2018
Saturday, April 7th, 2018
Thursday, April 5th, 2018
Wednesday, April 4th, 2018
Since I’m returning to it for some refreshment, time to add the link: “How to Use Clashing Fonts” by Jonathan Hoefler. “It’s often the dialogue between typefaces that most effectively communicates how information is meant to be understood.”
Saudi heir to throne: “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”
So I’m sitting at a cafe with my elder boy, me with my iPhone and the iClever keyboard, he the iPad (yes, addled addicts both). I’ve been here before but he hasn’t and he needs the wifi password.
As he’s asking me for it, I get a popup on the iPhone asking if I want to share the password with him. I hit Yes and the password pops into the form over on the iPad. Sometimes Apple blows you away beyond what you even expected.
(On the other hand, there is “iOS, The Future Of macOS, Freedom, Security And Privacy In An Increasingly Hostile Global Environment”, an analysis of the worryingly unnecessary level of data detail that Apple has about us; I suppose it’s those whom we trust whom we really must worry about.)
In this interview Ursula K. Le Guin provides a rather thorough little course on the craft of fiction, covering present vs past tense, first-person vs omniscient narration, conflict as action.
“Henry James did the limited third person really well, showing us the way to do it. He milked that cow successfully. And it’s a great cow, it still gives lots of milk. But if you read only contemporary stuff, always third-person limited, you don’t realize that point of view in a story is very important and can be very movable. It’s here where I suggest that people read books like Woolf’s To the Lighthouse to see what she does by moving from mind to mind. Or Tolstoy’s War and Peace for goodness’ sake. Wow.”
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018
Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn interviews Avi Gil, senior aide to Shimon Peres on his forthcoming book, The Peres Formula: Diary of a Confidant.
Gil: “Peres is a bitchonist. He sees first and foremost Israel’s interest, its existence, its survival. In terms of his life mission, to which he gave expression in no few conversations, he saw two mileposts: Dimona and Oslo.”
For a variety of reasons, in many countries around the world, dishwashers are not popularly used appliances.
Here in Britain, they’re considered a luxury not a necessity. Some 20% of Americans report that they don’t use their dishwasher.
I remember reading that Shimon Peres said he liked doing the dishes — it was his thinking time. Is that what everybody’s doing?
Otherwise, why not a dishwasher if you live in an economy where they are affordable and not in a city where you eat out every meal? It’s more economical, it’s less work; it seems a no-brainer. To stand for an hour or so every evening manually scrubbing? Not as arduous as washing clothes but still something that the machine’s been doing a lot better job of for decades. Huh.
Sunday, April 1st, 2018
What did Jews tend to die of? The entry on morbidity in the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906.
Friday, March 30th, 2018
What a refreshing perspective in this must-read piece: “Israel is a democracy because democracy was the only mechanism that was available to mediate and settle the fierce debates about what it meant to be the Jewish state.
Therefore: “Just as having no choice in war has meant that Israel had to win, having no choice but to be a democracy has meant that over time, Israel has become one of the world’s most successful and effective democracies.”
When Galileo looked up at the night sky with his new-fangled teslescope one profound effect was the dislodging of the nonsensical metaphysical notion from Aquinas of the perfection of the stars.
Thursday, March 29th, 2018
A conversation with Kai-Fu Lee at edge.org. He’s an AI researcher who has worked at Apple, Microsoft and Google, and wrote AI Super-powers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order.
He believes SkyNet fears are ridiculous but that much needs to be done to handle the coming massive loss of jobs.
Wednesday, March 28th, 2018
Sunday, March 25th, 2018
It’s Tim Ferriss’s most soulful interview yet: Jack Kornfield, a guru who talks the talk, walks the walk, sat the sit. With a great selection in the shownotes of links and people mentioned.
As these two leaders discuss morning practices, I’m struck by how many of the perspectives and attitudes they hope for are nicely handled by the Jewish morning prayers.
Craig Mod’s interview with Offscreen Magazine. “In my life, America is three locations: New York City, the Bay Area, and Asheville in North Carolina.” This writer/designer, who first impressed me with his review of the Apple Watch, lives in a small coastal town in Japan — some sort of digital-hipster James Bond. Things are very considered.
Saturday, March 24th, 2018
Two British Jewish boomers, Simon Schama and Martin Goodman, write new histories of Judaism, Schama focusing on individuals, Goodman on ideas and practices.
On artists with jobs. “That’s job jobs, the kind you hear about in stump speeches.” Speaking personally, I believe I knew a long time ago that this is a good path but I lacked the gumption to maybe be bored some of the day.
POSSE at indieweb stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. It’s a content publishing model that starts with posting content on your own domain, then syndicating out copies to 3rd-party services with permashortlinks back to the original. It’s the model I pursue.
Friday, March 23rd, 2018
Thursday, March 22nd, 2018
Wednesday, March 21st, 2018
In the wake of the White House conference on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which the Palestinians did not attend, Noah Feldman masterfully lays out the land regarding Jared Kushner’s diplomatic push between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Noah on Abbas’s leverage: “In the end, the Arab states can’t actually sign a peace agreement without a Palestinian state signing it, too.”
Tuesday, March 20th, 2018
Ward Nicholson summarizes the current state of play regarding web typography. He mentions my two go-to Adobe plugins, BalanceText and Dropcap, both of which will eventually be part of CSS.
Sunday, March 18th, 2018
Saturday, March 17th, 2018
Check it out, How We Made, a weekly series by The Guardian interviewing two collaborators on a seminal work of art — from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Swatch watch.
Thursday, March 15th, 2018
Wednesday, March 14th, 2018
On February 19th, Israeli natural gas companies announced a $15b contract with Egypt. These interlocking infrastructure interests enmesh Israel with her neighbors and provide for further possibilities.
