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a missing word
I need a word that I can't find. There are tremendous lists of specific arcane phobias, but there doesn't seem to be an official name for paralyzing fear of finishing, completing things. What is it ( Read more... ) -
remedial Shakespeare
I haven't seen a lot of actual productions of Shakespeare. That's the main reason it took until Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing for me to learn that even more than a peak challenge to an actor (Hamlet, Lear, yadda yadda), Shakespeare is a peak challenge for a director.
Well, I just got out of a showing of Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight. ( Read more... ) -
Rahm two terms
We'll see how prescient, impatient, or foolish this post ends up ( Read more... ) -
well, that contextualizes things
From Poesy to Carrot Carnations - When arts die, they turn into hobbies.
The short story, like poetry, already may have gone from being a minor art to being a craft. When I worked as an editor at Harper’s magazine in the 1990s, many acquaintances would comment on our essays and features, but I never heard anyone mention one of the short stories we ( Read more... ) -
luck? omen?
A couple of days ago, I was already going to be near one of my favorite thrift stores, so I stopped in. I haven't done much thrifting for a while . . . The rare find I keep my fingers crossed for is pants in the right size. Decent shoes are once or twice a decade, and it's unusual not to find interesting shirts. But I often have only a few ( Read more... ) -
Is brute-force "soft AI" a natural monopoly?
There seems to be gradually growing sentiment toward reining in Google as a monopoly. I appreciate some of the problems, but -- do we need competing indexes of the internet? If there's one, what's the point of the tremendous investment in another ( Read more... ) -
Is this one thing or two?
There has been quite a spike in news reports of rape and sexual predation. It's not that rates have suddenly shot up, but there seems to have been a sudden change in what's reportable ( Read more... ) -
At 8:30 a.m., it’s 53° in San Antonio.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Maira in Kalamazoo calls up and says, I'm giving a paper at a conference in San Antonio, wanna come along? We can visit [important mutual friend] Donna in Virden on the way.
Well, what else am I doing with myself in my second retirement?
So, after a two-day drive (man, is there a lot of Texas!), here we are. -
Dept. of It's Not Just Me
For quite a while, I've been baffled by the convention that bands have to make up two names; one for the band, and one for the kind of music they make. Like "industrial ambient acid folk death ska". I've had people laugh with recognition when I talk about it, so I know something is there.
But
I just heard a straight-faced reference to "the self- ( Read more... ) -
pre-Loncon Tue 8/12
I really should have gotten up earlier this morning. By the time I got to Westminster Abbey, the line was about two blocks long. So that's tomorrow - earlier ( Read more... )