Claims my Russian wife won't even deign to laugh at

If you get up late in the morning on weekends, you must think sleep is very valuable.  And if sleep is very valuable, that means we should go to bed early.  Because if you go to bed early, you always have the option of sleeping later – that is sleeping more – and getting even more sleep than if you had gone to bed late.  (You can’t just shift your sleep into any hours block you want, given the coordination issues.)  And if sleep is very valuable, the option to sleep more must be valuable as…

Claims my Russian wife won't even deign to laugh at

Time Machine Is Not All the Backup You Need [Mac Tip]

timemachine.png Mac OS X Leopard only: If you’ve got a FireWire drive hooked up to your Mac, chances are Leopard’s dead simple backup utility, Time Machine, has you backing up your data—and that’s a huge step forward if you weren’t backing up at all pre-Leopard. But Time Machine is only one piece of a full backup scheme. Macworld runs down what Time Machine can do (effortless, regular, intervention-less local backups) and what it can’t (system clones and online backup). If you want to complete your…

Time Machine Is Not All the Backup You Need [Mac Tip]

Time to Buy Stock in X-acto Knife?

What should we call this: the Kara Walker effect? Further evidence of the return to handicraft – or at least what looks like handicraft – in graphic design? Discuss…

(Monsters of Templeton is new; the others have been featured here within the past 6 months or so. But it seems like I’m seeing silhouettes everywhere; I’ll try to find some examples.)




Time to Buy Stock in X-acto Knife?

Amy Winehouse and Nassim Taleb

Will Amy Winehouse — who won five Grammys last night — help or hurt the music industry? A few years ago, I went to a tasting event called The Joy of Sake. There were about 100 of the best sakes from Japan. A pre-event talk for retailers discussed the decline of sake in Japan. (Soju is cool; sake is old-fashioned.) That was the reason for the show. I loved tasting 30-odd high-quality sakes but the overall effect on me was the opposite of what the promoters wanted. I quickly became a…

Amy Winehouse and Nassim Taleb

The car as oikos

Chrysler chairman Robert L. Nardelli, in a New York Times article on the trend to outfit cars with elaborate entertainment technology:

“I think a vehicle today has to be your most favorite room under your roof. It has to bring you gratification; it has to be tranquil. It’s incidental that it gets you from Point A to Point B, right?”

Thus the car as oikos. Note that those who are to dwell in this house of the future are deemed incapable of finding gratification in low-tech endeavors:…
The car as oikos

– A Flock of Pigeons. You have to buy them individually

  • A Flock of Pigeons. You have to buy them individually though.
  • According to my New York Times Sunday Magazine, girls have more latitude in their identities, while boys are trapped in boyness. “…if ushered into a room and told they could play with anything, nearly half the boys chose "feminine” toys as often as “masculine” toys, provided they believed nobody, especially their fathers, would find out.“ Boys aren’t really given the leeway to, say, "create an amazing dance routine.” We’ve…

– A Flock of Pigeons. You have to buy them individually