1. Running is a solitary activity, and when I say this I don't mean simply that one tends to run alone. One also practices the violin alone; but it is possible to share music with others in a way which is more difficult with running. I don't expect someone else to appreciate my running a marathon as they might appreciate my playing Kreisler or Bach. ( Read more... )

One thing I like about Camille Paglia, Slavoj Zizek, Chuck Klosterman, and David Foster Wallace is that they don't distinguish between high and low culture. (To a large extent I also think of Barb this way, since her aesthetic judgments are very often unconventional.) What's to like in low-brow? Well, one answer is simply that there is something ( Read more... )

Here is an excerpt from a lecture by Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt:

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Broadly speaking, the subject of this excerpt is what psychologists call "implicit bias." (Think of the difference between someone who unabashedly claims that blacks are dangerous, and one who insists that this is untrue but crosses the street whenever a black man ( Read more... )

I like off-color jokes. I think they're funny, but I also think they're healthy, even important, and I'm impatient with people who insist on constant political correctness. At the same time, I've found that most of the people whom I admire are not at all the sort to enjoy (or to tell) off-color jokes. There are times when I'll crack up at a ( Read more... )

I always thought it was kind of funny that the word "highfalutin" is itself highfalutin, with the result that you can never criticize any speech or writing as such without falling into self-parody.

I thought that the love scenes in Wall-E were really affecting. The green angle--it wasn't entirely too heavy, but it came close, and when the film snuck in a  George Bush reference ("Stay the course"), I had flashbacks of George Lucas' ham-fisted attempt to inject political overtones into Star Wars ("Only a Sith deals in absolutes"). I really like ( Read more... )

When I was a sophomore in high school, Ms. Desai had one of her classes create self-identity projects (I don't know what they were actually called). I wasn't in that class, but the projects were exhibited in the library, and the idea seemed to be to create displays or presentations or works of art which symbolized aspects of the creator's ( Read more... )

Diary of a Bad Year J.M. Coetzee
Coetzee has the makings of a fine blogger.
Disgrace J.M. Coetzee
Really, really lovely.
Ball Four Jim Bouton
Take home message: (1) Ball players constantly fear for their livelihood, and (2) nearly everyone in the sport is parochial and/or stupid.
After Dark Haruki Murakami
Kind of underwhelming. There's just not much here ( Read more... )

One of the things I love best about Amherst is the way the birds begin chirping around 3:30 or 4:00 am. They're very regular about this: When you hear them, you can see that the sky has begun to turn from black to deep blue, and you know that the sun is about to come up. If you're like me, and tend to work late, this can be as alarming as it is ( Read more... )

I really need to learn to pace myself: Running 10mi on a first workout only to be sidelined for the next week is counter-productive. That's my comeuppance. But when you're actually out there, running, it's so easy to say "one more mile, one more bend." I have no idea why it is that running is so bothersome now; if i ever had pains like this running ( Read more... )