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Briefs

Sunday, December 16th, 2018

The nine totally must-read lessons of Brexit by Ivan Rogers, who was fired as Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union for stating some of these truths. Abject.

Tuesday, July 10th, 2018

A German court has issues the first GDPR ruling, reports The National Law Review. It concerns ICANN, the American non-profit that oversees the global WHOIS database of registered internet domain names, and German registrar EPAG.

Monday, February 26th, 2018

Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion of the 2008 US Supreme Court case discussing the Second Amendment, Distric of Columbia v. Hehher. Surely required reading for being informed on the topic.

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

This 1-hour Smithsonian production is a history of America in the Roaring 20s, with amazing newly-colorized footage. Richly effortlessly narrated by Liev Schreiber, it remedies our black & white impression of this not-so-distant mirror. There are things I should have learned about in school but did not, particularly the Greenwood massacre.

Monday, December 18th, 2017

This investigative piece by Josh Meyer in Politico depicts a DEA investigation into global Hezballah criminal activity undercut by an Obama Administration hell-bent on a deal with Iran.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2017

InspireConversation is the parenting blog of, together with his wife, Jason Greenblatt. He is the presidential envoy who accompanied Israel’s Head of Security Services to Jordan to defuse the recent Israeli embassy crisis there.

Saturday, March 18th, 2017

Comma madness.

Tuesday, March 14th, 2017

Articulating the obvious re the Facebook: it’s a menace.

Friday, January 6th, 2017

Thank you, Evelyn Gordon, for providing some clarity for those now afar over why so many Israelis are supporting Elor Azaria, convicted of manslaughter for killing subdued terrorist Abed al-Fattah al-Sharif.

Sunday, December 4th, 2016

Francis Fukuyama coins and explains vetocracy. The intricacies are bamboozling—which is the point. Seems to me that fixing this is the first domino.

Friday, November 18th, 2016

Some tentative optimism from The American Interest: If the new Administration can both push infrastructure and simplify the regulatory process, “it will have proven that the Trumpian earthquake can in fact break certain decades-long patterns of bipartisan paralysis…”

Saturday, July 16th, 2016

“The Kemalist era in Turkish history lasted for almost 100 years, but finally came to an end in the last 18 hours.” A great balance between up-to-the-minute reports and historical background, Walter Russell Mead live-blogs the failed Turkish Coup.

Friday, June 17th, 2016

As part of a series of articles on Israel in Foreign Affairs, Aluf Benn worries from the center-Left about crumbling social and political norms while Martin Kramer expresses satisfaction about ever-strengthening strategic might [requires registration, only 1 free article].

Thursday, March 17th, 2016

The Weekly Standard again. Trump as Burr, and what Hamilton did.

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

So Bikram has lost the first of the many cases against him filed by women for various sexually-related offences. All I know is that his teachings are great and that he plays the guru, speaking in fanciful exaggerations, making mercurial observations. And it seems he was unable to switch off this character even in front of a jury.

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

Valuable first-hand account of contemporary Saudi Arabia by their special man in the West, Thomas L. Friedman.

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

The United States would be better off with a parliamentary system, argues Diane Francis.

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

Not only isn’t the Israel Broadcasting Association listing the names of the child fatalities from the Gaza bombings but refusing to let B’Tselem pay for an ad doing so. And the Attorney General has upheld the decision. This seems to me a mistake. We must fully own these deeds.

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

Devising tailor-made rules of international law for application only where Israel is concerned undermines international law and can have an insidious and corrosive effect on the rule of law in general.

Friday, March 8th, 2013

Surely the definitive article about internet wunderkind Aaron Swartz. Only eating white or yellow food seems a glaring sign that not everything there was quite right.

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Adam Garfinkle at The American Interest waxes catholic and sensible on the runaway American health care system — or, more accurately, disease repair system.

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012

“Cheese-surrendering eating-monkeys” — apologies for giving away the most brilliant line, but Mark Steyn is back on form. I’d stopped reading because his doom and gloom about Europe just didn’t jibe with the reality I see living here. But here he expresses my misgivings just brilliantly: Americans are in many important ways less free than Europeans.

Monday, January 16th, 2012

It’s not the economy, stupid. Much like the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, Daniel Bell, co-founder with Irving Kristol of The Public Interest, believed that the economic, the political and the social are separate realms and must be kept in healthy balance.

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Today: a world where big stuff can never get done.

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Text of David Cameron’s address to Parliament on the looting outbreak.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

On forming a new software startup, how to allocate ownership fairly?

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

The Beginning of Wisdom

Leon R. Kass

♦♦♦♦♦

The book of the Book. I am biased but there is just so much here, and the good doctor is such graciously juicy writerly company. I especially like the Babel treatment.

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Theodore Dalrymple on J. G. Ballard and the socially isolating nature of modern architecture.

Tuesday, January 14th, 2003

In the gospel of America, there are no permanent conflicts.

David Brooks

index topics law law

Denver Met

Tuesday, May 8th, 2018

My intent here is not only to participate in a conference but to suck up myriad Americana as a thirsty exile catapulted back in for a primer.
Yes

It’s a Somewhat Rauschenberg World

Tuesday, April 4th, 2017

I don’t like this use of animals, like Damien Hirst’s. The artist could not have asked the goat for permission so should not have assumed it was granted.

Black Tracks the Presidents

Tuesday, January 31st, 2017

The great virtue of Conrad Black’s Flight of the Eagle is its steady track across the entirety of the nation’s history, treating each president equally under its own law and order.

Homepage Design 2016

Monday, August 15th, 2016

No matter the screen size, a web site should feel like itself, even if it doesn’t look it. So do “mobile first” second.
Yes

From iPhone 4S to 6S: An Appreciation

Monday, December 21st, 2015

The increased size, something I was so hesitant about, feels fine to me now. And because it’s thinner it feels less obtrusive in my pocket.

Spectreview

Thursday, November 12th, 2015

With the villain’s quasi-sibling bond to the hero, 2015’s 007 movie deflates to an incestuous Möbius Strip.

In Gaza, Israel Should Own its Terrible Tactic

Sunday, August 3rd, 2014

Although such excoriating labels as “collective punishment” and “state terrorism” aren’t entirely wrong regarding Israel’s application of the Dahieh Doctrine in Gaza, history does suggest that the method is effective in fighting a fundamentally defensive war.

Go Deny Yourself

Monday, June 17th, 2013

This four-letter little word undermines our modern values of tolerance and presumption of innocence.

Some Consumer Affairs

Monday, December 17th, 2012

I’ve tried to enjoy schlepping water, thinking that it serves to keep us to some human roots.
Yes

From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.

2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

The dancers in the ape-suits; how they move is an incredibly energetic output for us. Contrast their physical reaction when witnessing the monolith to that of the astronauts in the newly-minted 21st century.

The Mouse and the Cantilever

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.

Friendship is for Weenies

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust US President Obama.

Before the Setup

Monday, March 8th, 2010

It’s 1983: Go for the Apple IIe with 64k that could be opened up as a hobbyist machine? Or the smaller, sleeker and newer IIc with double the memory but a closed case?

At Modi’in Mall

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown: Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Yes

The Israel I Love, the Bad So Far

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

If the signage were a bit more effective, the staff’s diction and demeanor more professional, then we might have avoided this testy altercation.

Shanghai Europe

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

So, finally, we stopped yesterday; the Israeli assault on Gaza of late 2008/early 2009 is over. With it, Israel lost moral purity and made vital strategic gains.
Yes

Panning for MacBook Pro

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Even if it did nothing, was just a prop in a futuristic movie, the MacBook Pro would be impressive; it’s like a sculpture of my previous computer, the MacBook, except it’s actually an improved computer!

Stop Yesterday

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Is the goal of Israel’s current assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets or to render them incapable of doing so? These are two quite different projects.

Short-circuiting Place-based Longing

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

If there’s one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.

A Crawl Across Crawley, Part 1

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Irit, the Jam and I walk from Brighton to Gatwick Airport.

Clash of the Midgets

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I was annoyed to have my sauna moments despoiled and dominated, reverberating with this old geezer’s most naff yap.
Yes

Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak?

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

If Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was part of a masterplan to staunch the damage done by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967, then today we see another step in its unfolding.

The Small Adventures, Part 2

Monday, January 7th, 2008

There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a crème brûlée. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up.
Yes

The Small Adventures

Monday, December 10th, 2007

Late for the 11pm train to Milan, we enquired frantically among the taxis for one who’d accept the two dogs and take us to Termini Station so I could begin our journey to Britain.

Tony Blair and the Four-State Solution

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. If Tony Blair were to acquire this view, perhaps he really could help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Restoration and Return

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

There she was, sitting outside the apartment block! How did she do it? Dogs—or at least Jam—must have some sort of navigational sense we don’t understand.

Curs to Fate

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Yesterday I lost Jam in Villa Borghese, the central park here in Rome, some five miles from Talenti, the neighborhood where we’re staying. She has not turned up since.
Yes

Jam and Bread, Jam and Bread!

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

My dog Jam has spent over a third of her time here in Italy as her fixtures have fallen away—first Maddie, then me. But now I’m back!
Yes

This Trip’s Last Day

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

I went to Astor Place Haircutters. I crossed Manhattan Bridge on foot. I walked west along Canal St, seeking a bamboo steamer.

I, Thou and Pastor Bob

Friday, October 5th, 2007

At the Calvary Church here in Fort Lauderdale the Biblical locations feel so far away that they can be abstracted and spiritualized. There is religious energy here.
Yes

The Big and Easy

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

The American stage is grand, as are the achievements and ambitions, but daily life seems lamed by a compulsive denaturing.

A Drop in Time

Monday, August 27th, 2007

The camera hit the ground lens first, bashing it in so that it would no longer wind in and out, and couldn’t switch on. Without it, my perception of an important personal era was degraded.

A Ride to Gatwick Airport

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Airports. They’re so charged, so symbolic, and so empty once you’re at one; I dream of them so often.

Only the Rustle in the Trees

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Grief, loss — these are the great teachers surely. What one has will pass.

A Cabaret, Old Chum

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

It’s a last bastion of civility, being allowed to drink at Penn Station, Brian mused ruefully as we carried our beers to his train home to Great Neck.

Fatahland and Hamastan

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Now Israel has a dog in a real Palestinian fight: the nationalists rather than the Islamists.
Yes

Stars, Stripes & Superlatives

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Here in Los Angeles I am bombarded with superlatives. Daniel’s record collection. The Bikram Yoga College of India world headquarters. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. All mixed in with the most ravaging mediocrity.

Shite on Brighton

Friday, May 18th, 2007

“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”

Daily Yin

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

For my first test of the day as day, I open the back door and step outside to the little patio to see the sky and feel the air. I realize not everybody does this, so if people tell me I’m a miserable bastard then perhaps this little habit will correct their impression.

Mind the Dream

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Dreaming about our passed companions as if they are alive requires tricks to the dreaming mind to overcome what it believes and knows to be true.

The Dharma Tits

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Buddhism is the philosophy and psychology closest to Cognitive Therapy and vice versa.
Yes

Still Got the Jam

Monday, March 12th, 2007

Jam was one of Maddie’s nine puppies, the one who remained after the others were all taken. That was always my plan, to keep the runt.

Such a Tramp

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Maddie, who died 18 months ago today, was a mangy mutt and stank, but she was also among the most beautiful dogs I’ve ever seen and for me the longest, richest, widest, deepest streak of feeling lucky.

So You Noticed

Monday, February 26th, 2007

I have had something very flattering: a request. Juan Carlos has asked me for comments on Casino Royale.

Reminds Me of Tel Aviv

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

You get to a stage in life where you are already formed by the past. Thoughts and dilemmas about place are either central questions or a distraction from real issues.

Fly the Blag

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Ryanair has brought wretchedness to the skies. Rather than existing on a privileged plane, you stew in a poisoned atmosphere.

Approaching Infinite Justice

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Immediately after 9/11, the burgeoning war on terror was named “Operation Infinite Justice”. Within days it was renamed “Operation Enduring Freedom”, but is the new name a mere cloaking of the first?

On the Seventh Day

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

The Mrs is skeptical of David Allen’s Getting Things Done self-management system because it eschews the rigors of time management in lieu of what feels right. But GTD is about informed feeling.

Don’t Panic!

Monday, July 12th, 2004

An academic romp through Jewish American comedy starts out as a veritable rollercoaster ride, but grinds to halt with its obsession with one Bob Dylan.

Photographing a Handsome Old Man

Saturday, July 10th, 2004

I want to get people in my pics, but it’s tougher when you’re no longer a wide-eyed teenager, because people generally don’t like to think they are a spectacle.

The Beauty of Rain

Friday, December 19th, 2003

Rain makes the rocks shine. It puts in motion things that are otherwise static. It illustrates gravity most prettily.

Ode to Salame

Monday, December 1st, 2003

It’s supposed to be the arsehole of Tel Aviv, Salame Street, running east-west at its southern tip, but it always does me darn good.

I Love Laundry

Wednesday, November 19th, 2003

How pleasing it is to have my own washing machine. If all isn’t right with the world, not even in my world, at least the laundry cycle is functioning.

Lovely Scenery, But Walks Getting Boring

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

Unless I drive somewhere new, it’s not much fun to just step out the door and wander. But driving to go for a walk seems a tad ridiculous.

For Love of Economy

Monday, November 17th, 2003

It disturbs me to be driving a car that gets fewer kilometers to the shekel than did my previous.

Shinui and the Seven-Year Itch

Wednesday, May 21st, 2003

How refreshing to see Asian faces out shopping in Tel Aviv, or Africans riding the bus to Ra’anana. With them Israel is given fresh wellsprings of culture.

Allah Help the Jackals

Tuesday, May 13th, 2003

While it’s obvious that overplaying your power can result in a downfall, it’s less obvious that underplaying it also leads to trouble. America did this in the 1970s under Carter. Israel seems to have done it almost perennially.
Yes

For Tel Aviv, Better a Skylift Than a Subway

Wednesday, March 12th, 2003

Rather than copycatting a transportation system from the 19th century, Israel could inject into its civic planning the same audacity and resourcefulness that it has historically brought to agriculture and defence.
Yes

Canada Obscura

Monday, July 8th, 2002

There’s not a patch of water to be seen—the most liquid thing is the word “Coffee” on one of the low-slung strip-mall buildings. It’s a scene more artful than art itself.

Tour of Kitchen Duty

Monday, May 20th, 2002

There was yelling and spray and I raced to keep up. One can enjoy, briefly, the company of men.

Shiny Bright Toadstool

Thursday, August 27th, 1998

In Israel’s case, burgernomics don’t add up because significant factors contribute to the 30%-odd surcharge on a Big Mac.

The Fresh Jewels of Spring Mound

Tuesday, July 14th, 1998

Quality of life in Tel Aviv is fundamentally enhanced by two simple factors: trees are everywhere, and so are apartments.

Independence Park Up for Grabs?

Tuesday, July 7th, 1998

To this day men of many ages walk these bushes, they delicately lurk these bushes, and stand in places odd to choose.

We Tri Harder

Monday, January 19th, 1998

A land could be governed not only by the three separate arms of government, but by three sovereign states.
Yes

Tira Saunters

Sunday, August 18th, 1996

The one-lane road is empty; down below is the Sharon Plain, looking vast. Israel may be a small country but we’re still speaking here of land.

A Call to Thumbs

Friday, October 22nd, 1993

When you hitchhike it’s out of your hands, and that’s therapeutic. Paradoxically, you also see how much control you do have.
 

Briefs (cont’d)

Thursday, January 24th, 2019

Some good clear thoughts on decision-making in this review by Agnes Callard of Steven Berlin Johnson’s book on the topic.

Thursday, January 17th, 2019

Jonathan Hoefler explores something that typeface designers have long known but that researchers have only now corroborated: horizontal lines appear thicker than vertical ones.

Most in-depth article on hoarding I’ve yet seen.

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019

Life’s a lot easier when the bin’s not full.

ASK

Tuesday, January 1st, 2019

Chronicling from “below the API line”, as Venkatesh Rao calls it, are Austin Murphy with “I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon” in The Atlantic and Lauren Hough with “I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America” in The Huffington Post.

The depicted harshness of American work life for so many is terrible not just for those involved but for all. (Also these two share a prodigious unmet need to urinate on the job — is this the top new workplace tribulation?)

Monday, December 31st, 2018

The Six Day War, Fifty Years On is a series of articles by Tel Aviv University’s INSS think-tank including authors such as Gabi Siboni and Moshe Ya’alon.

How great to see some persuasive pundit prophecy: At the Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Jordan-born translator Abe Haak argues that the Palestinian Authority’s collapse is coming and in the ensuing violent anarchy Palestinians will rush to safe haven with friends in family in Jordan — and soon enough Jordan will instead come to them.

A Jordanian return to the population centers of the West Bank may seem merely wishful thinking, though it does seem to me the most likely long-term scenario (though perhaps will remain so indefinitely). By holding Area C and being patient for two generations Israel will have widened its narrow waist to a more defensible size without having to swallow a couple of million hostile people; shame Israel and Jordan couldn’t have come to such an arrangement during the aftermath of the Six Day War.

Saturday, December 22nd, 2018

Bikram Yoga

Bikram Choudhury

My first reading of Bikram’s second book in light of Bikram’s sexual assault accusations and exile from the USA, this one is not only weaker than his first due to a more lecturing tone and structure, now it seems downright tawdry, given the clean living Bikram advocates that he himself allegedly was not living up to. Ah well.

Sunday, December 16th, 2018

The nine totally must-read lessons of Brexit by Ivan Rogers, who was fired as Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union for stating some of these truths. Abject.

Saturday, December 15th, 2018

Ashdod-based Aleph Farms is growing bovine steak within 3 weeks.

Harvard’s Belfer Center has produced an English translation of the Israel Defense Forces’ 2015 formal defence doctrine directed mainly against Hizbollah. This is the first such publication, which is worrying because pieces of paper now comprise at least some elements of the country’s deterrence.

Friday, December 14th, 2018

A seriously fun piece on Agatha Christie, modernist.

Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class

Bikram Choudhoury

A re-read due to renewing my practice of Bikram’s hot yoga, again I’m struck by how perfectly balanced is its jaunty tone of humor, optimism and inclusion; it’s evidently a product of what in retrospect now seem the buoyant optimistic 1970s.

Thank you JINSA for this bracing, worrying overview of the situation between Israel and Hezballah: “Israel’s Next Northern War: Operational and Legal Challenges” [PDF].

Tuesday, December 11th, 2018

Our subterranean biosphere is teeming with some 20 billion tons of micro-organisms, scientists discover.

“The Effects of Bikram Yoga on Health: Critical Review and Clinical Trial Recommendations”, as published 2015 in Evidence-Based Complementary Alternative Medicine.

A screed we need: “When Supplements Become Substitutes” by Joshua Mitchell in the redoubtable City Journal. This conceptual framework clarifies much of what Western societies are concerned about regarding themselves.

Monday, December 10th, 2018

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success

Albert-László Barabási

♦♦♦♦

This book seems like one for our times: a self-improvement topic given fresh life by being supported by social science data. There are sufficient surprising results — similar to say Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow — to warrant reading, despite, when stepping back and taking it on the whole, the thing feeling largely self-evident. But it is not, and probably deserves a reread.

Sunday, December 9th, 2018

The insect apocalypse is here, reports The New York Times. This seems likely to be what does us all in; indeed most of us already have been.

Monday, November 19th, 2018

To wit, via the pun.

Saturday, November 17th, 2018

“Respected journalist” Joel Golby has pulled off a rather spectacular series of mini-essays for Vice in Choose Your Own Adventure: Friday Night Edition!. More relevant perhaps for people say a quarter of a century younger than me, but one can appreciate.

Thursday, November 15th, 2018

The more you keep your mouth shut, the more fertile you become.

Saul Bellow

If you don’t give literature a decisive part to play in your existence, then you haven’t got anything but a show of culture.

Saul Bellow

Sunday, November 11th, 2018

It All Adds Up

Saul Bellow

♦♦♦♦

Bellow is meaty to pick up on any topic; we’re confident in the arms of a leading novelist. His tributes to old friends read the richest, even though impressionistic, more journalistic pieces such as his coverage of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signing are also satisfying.

Saturday, November 10th, 2018

According to The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East by Prof. Meir Zamir, British Intelligence provoked the Arabs to invade Israel in 1948. The link is to an episode of the Tel Aviv Review podcast featuring Zamir.

Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

A savvy 69-year-old Dutchman who “identifies as 45” aims to legally reduce his age.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

Concentration without effort is the heart of the thing.

Saul Bellow

America and I, both exceptional, would together elude prediction and defy determinism.

Saul Bellow

The degree to which you challenge your own beliefs and expose them to destruction is a test of your worth as a novelist.

Saul Bellow

Telling all is the function of intellectuals.

Saul Bellow

The historic task of a civilization is to remake the world in its own image.

Saul Bellow

Thursday, November 1st, 2018

In this survey of Palestinian opinion conducted 25-27 October 2018 in the West Bank and Gaza [.doc] by the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University, there’s a drop in support for “the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders as a final solution for the Palestinian cause” from a mere 34.6% to a meager 16.4% if it includes “some land exchange”. But if they don’t want this, what do they think they can achieve that’s any better?

Important to consider: despite choice fatigue, users do benefit from some symbolic choices, this piece argues.

Tuesday, October 30th, 2018

Species eradication and wiping out animal populations seem to me a more dire problem than mere climate change. It should be our environmental priority.

Thursday, October 25th, 2018

Note to self: Eric Elliott’s article entitled 12 Books Every JavaScript Developer Should Read.

British influence in the EU has been far greater than recognised, this piece argues. If this was better understood in Britain — and if, say, the BBC had devoted a couple of hours a week to pure Europe news — I’m guessing Britons would be much more pro-Europe today and the Brexit own-goal would not have occurred.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

The 1953 Bergren Residence, on the market for $2m, is a pretty Wrightian Lautner, especially around the fireplace.

Cool graphic article in Bloomberg on US land use.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2018

itshello.co — clientless, open-source video chat in the browser.

Sunday, October 14th, 2018

You’re ♬ never ♫ too old ♬ to ♫ be young. “The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45” in the Harvard Business Review.

Saturday, October 13th, 2018

I’m with Thomas (now Giselle), as robust as it blimmin’ gets with his Empire for Liberty.

My own sort of wacky view about it is that the American Revolution was basically a dispute over the course and direction and ground rules of the Empire.

Friday, October 12th, 2018

Worrying that you’re late is one of the signs of a good idea.

Paul Graham, How to Get Startup Ideas

Hussein Agha, senior Fatah member, discusses at some length — and it seems to me with honesty — the prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

When Palestinians are close to reaching an agreement and are genuinely faced with giving up 78 per cent of their homeland, they feel surrender, so they recoil. Whenever Israelis find themselves at a similar point and try to justify giving up material assets in return for mere words, i.e. promises about future conduct, they recoil.

An interview at the impressive Fathom Journal with Lyn Julius, author of Uprooted.

The Jews were intrinsic to the rhythm of life in the Middle East. It all ended in the space of a generation. Some 850,000 Jews fled 10 Arab countries; most found refuge in Israel, where over half the Jewish population has roots in Arab or Muslim lands.

Try to do things that would make your friends say wow.

Paul Graham, “How to Do What You Love”

Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

Now that’s a web site: New York City tree map — every last one, including street view, species, diameter. [via Kottke]

Monday, October 8th, 2018

Wow, a 360° Taliesin West walkthrough.

Friday, October 5th, 2018

The Power of Pull

John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison

♦♦♦

The core ideas are repeated so unabashedly often that distaste for the repetition makes me want to reject the ideas. Perhaps though repetition is deliberate, like in television commercials, working under the rhetorical theory that the reader will be irritated into remembering the message?

At any rate, the book posits three steps to getting anywhere: find the resources you need, attract others to your vision, and move at the appropriate pace to implement it. Crossing these three steps is the idea that innovation tends to occur not at the heart of things but at the edge, and so there must be an interplay between the incumbents and the hungry marginal outsiders. And the current business paradigm of digital transformation pumps up these perennial dynamics to where they must now be utilized as a framework.

The book’s blurbs are so hyperbolic and from such high-powered people, perhaps its simplicity is its power and the repetition worked on me: I dismiss the book merely because I understand it, and I understand it due to the repetition. And my understanding the book proves it a good one.

Since a few years have now passed since publication, some of the enterprises cited as exemplary wonders in the making, like Shai Agassi’s Better Places, have collapsed, giving further if unintentional insight into the topic.

You could argue that I missed the point entirely, in that I don’t even mention here the concept of “pull”. But that’s because to me it gradually lost any meaning, they used the term so often, and became a stand-in for “good”.

Saturday, September 29th, 2018

Tim Berners-Lee announces his startup Inrupt to support and popularize Solid, a platform to enable people to regain control of their own data.

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

In case anyone else was mildly traumatized by the way fonts appear on MacOS Mojave due to the disabling of subpixel antialiasing, here’s the solution by Github user alexanderyakusik:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

Also, in System Preferences > General, check Use font smoothing when available.

Then reboot.

 
 

•••

Newsroll ↻

A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.

experiments in refactored perception

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