Going through an extended, painful breakup with my girlfriend of the last seven years, I realize that my reactions to this particular kind of suffering have changed. In my twenties, I'd find comfort in poetry and music that expressed that pain. I'd sing along to Otis Redding's 'These Arms of Mine' and listen to the same Roy Orbison song ten times ( Read more... )

[From an article on why more people get the flu in winter].
The ideal study would expose people to the virus under different conditions and ask how likely they were to become infected. Such a study, Dr. Palese said, would not be permitted because there would be no benefit to the individuals.

There were no suitable test animals. Mice can be infected ( Read more... )

At three a.m. I went to pick up the next day's breakfast at the overpriced Korean market near my house (good produce though). On the way home, I walked by that Williamsburg institution, Planet Thailand, and looked through the wall of windows into the restaurant. On the large TV screen over the bar, a pretty East Asian woman was masturbating on a ( Read more... )

A friend of mine stationed in Iraq just notified me about a special project he's involved in. I guess he only told me about it now because the army had been very secretive about it until recently. Basically, he's a scout on a low-flying plane that attacks insurgents trying to plant IED's. The detail in this article is fascinating, if you're ( Read more... )

'Whenever I can get my hands on it.'

'Police pulled Tyson over after the boxer had spent the evening at Scottsdale's Pussycat Lounge. An officer said he saw Tyson wiping a white substance off the dashboard of his black BMW, and that his speech was slurred.

Authorities said they found bags of cocaine in Tyson's pocket and in his car.

Tyson told ( Read more... )

Somewhere Borges said, 'There are pages in Proust almost as boring as life.' I thought of that just now as I was doing the incredibly boring work of reducing primary research to sentences on a page. There is nothing more boring than turning journal notes, transcripts, and ideas into that first step toward a first draft. It feels like I'm gnawing on ( Read more... )

'Under the current federal law, for example, the minimum sentence for possession of 5,000 grams of powder cocaine is 10 years, the same as the minimum sentence for 50 grams of crack cocaine.'

They've lowered, slightly, the mandatory sentence for crack possession. Maybe in another ten years, they'll take another baby step toward sanity.

Gentrification really shows here on Halloween. A decade ago it was a mostly Latino affair, but now the grups ushering their little dinosaurs, witches, princesses and aliens are overwhelmingly white and well-off. Still, there are some benefits to living where this is still a high percentage of artists. A man in a clown wig carrying an electric ( Read more... )

One of the attractions of baseball is how much it involves navigating complete randomness. Six inches one way, a ground ball leads to a single; six inches the other way, a double play. In the playoffs, that randomness is intensified. Cleveland's two ace pitchers had four terrible games, and yet Cleveland was only one small accident away from ( Read more... )

In the Mysterians, the band's frontman and primary songwriter was Question Mark. Though the singer has never confirmed it, Library of Congress copyright registrations indicate that his birth name is Rudy Martinez. His eccentric behavior helped to briefly establish the group in the national consciousness. He claimed (and still claims) to be a ( Read more... )