Perusing the new books at the UC library, I'm once again awed by how little time it takes for some people to become eminent: Mikhail Lermontov died at 27, killed in a duel after writing more masterpieces than most of us manage in 100 years ( Read more... )

"I say 'Florida'. You say ( Read more... )

Morning really. It's after midnight, but I intend to stay up for at least another six hours, until it's light enough outside that I can turn off the kitchen light ( Read more... )

I dreamed that Daniel Handler and I worked at neighboring library systems. We were both at a party, where no one except me knew that he was a famous writer ( Read more... )

The other day I signed up with a Web site that, in exchange for the opportunity to market to you, will tell you where it thinks you should live. It bases its conclusions on your answers to a series of questions about your preferred climate, activities, topography, etc., as well as your political and religious beliefs. For reasons I have not ( Read more... )

I just took a quiz designed to pinpoint a person's particular variety of American English. Not too surprisingly, the results said that my idiolect would seem least idiotic in Providence, R.I ( Read more... )

This morning I heard that the Syrian regime had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons on its citizens. There was no explanation given for why chemical weapons should be considered unacceptable when apparently it was perfectly OK to slaughter tens of thousands of citizens with conventional weapons. Why the outrage over doing it chemically? ( Read more... )

An article in an online women's magazine asserts that "There's no right or wrong way to give birth." The author criticizes what she sees as the competitive nature of childbirth: Women feel inadequate if they aren't able to give birth "naturally" or even vaginally, or if they don't breastfeed for a full year. These feelings of inadequacy, the author ( Read more... )

Today I walked into one of my two neighborhood CVS stores (yes, they are taking over) and saw that it had been completely remodeled almost overnight. After reorienting myself, I found a bottle of store-brand calcium tablets for $8.29. As instructed by the label, I compared this bottle with the name-brand product, which sold for about $10 for the ( Read more... )

Thirty years ago I thought it was the height of cinematic rudeness to give viewers a reason to laugh uproariously in one scene and then immediately follow that cheerful moment with one of unspeakable tragedy. Every time this happened I felt hoodwinked and hornswoggled. Now I see that my resentment was symptomatic of a general obliviousness: I hadn' ( Read more... )