Category: music

links for 2006-09-12

links for 2006-09-07

what Gary said

Wooo!:

if you’re a Mac user you have to check out the three apps they have: Mori, WriteRoom and Clockwork. They are they most simple Mac apps I’ve come across in ages and yet each one had me making that noise in the title because they are all something I can use.

These do look nice: simple and uncluttered, to the point applications.

recent reads


“The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod” (Henry Beston)
Perhaps the most lyrically written nature book I have ever read. What made it even more interesting an resonant is that I knew many of the places mentioned. My wife’s family summered there when she was younger and I was lucky enough to visit a couple of years. The nearest village to the author’s house was the place we stayed, so much of it was familiar.

But the beauty of the prose, no matter the subjects — Beston makes a dogfish an object of wonder — make this a great read.

“Gemma Bovery” (Posy Simmonds)
This was a little something I read quickly while my kids were picking out books at the library today. A riff on Madame Bovary but as a graphic novel. Nicely done, transcending the use of panels, the artist uses the whole page and has no problem using text where it works.


“Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist” (Dan Barker)
This is not what I expected. The author doesn’t spend a lot of time detailing his fall from grace, but instead musters a number of arguments and fact-filled refutations of blind belief, some of which have appeared in other places.

His rejection of faith is dealt with early on, as a matter-of-fact awakening to a need to know, rather than a need to believe. Barker is a powerful writer, well-versed in his material: one would expect that as a former evangelist, but he knows the works better now that he sees them as simple narrative than when he relied on them as holy writ. Recommended for freethinkers and even the faithful, if they think they can handle it.

And of course, a few Terry Pratchett books (Thief of Time, Jingo, Last Continent) to keep me amused.

deus ex Asimov

This feed from Marginal Revolution is by far the most uneven of any I read. Sometimes I feel like I’m reading the thoughts of an educated person, a deep thinker. Then other posts are nothing more than puerile jibbering.

What caused the Agricultural Revolution?:

For instance we are told that if the entire world lived like the United States, fossil fuels would run out within seven year’s time, or maybe ten. What a horror such a world would be. There is no talk of how much higher the rate of invention would be, or how much we would save by having better institutions.

Perhaps this was tossed off after lunch or at some other time when professors are not at their best, but rather than claim “the article was terrible” (is he comparing a piece in a general audience magazine to a refereed journal piece?), why not point to a better one or an argument against the points that were argued.

Instead we’re told the piece was terrible and that some pie in the sky solution would emerge under the constraints of everyone living like an American. This discounts the possibility of how much resource wealth would have been squandered in the meantime, etc.

But this is from a guy who claims driving a car is pleasurable and that living in the country or exurbs is the ideal. [my comments here]