Amidst the ruins of the day (and it’s only 10:24 a.m. as I start this!) just a quick note to highlight some stuff I hope to blog at greater length about soon. First: Just this early a.m. finished Masha Gessen’s Perfect Rigor, about Grigory Perelman, the Poincare Conjecture, the nature of mathematics and mathematicians, and [...]
Archive for February 2010
Short Friday Reading Notes/List
February 26, 2010The GOP War On Knowledge…or how the skids are being greased for America’s decline and fall.
February 25, 2010I’ve got a backlog of stupid and dangerous ideas and claims out there I want to blog about — one of the nice things about being a self-selected watchdog for duplicity and useful ignorance on the web means I’ll never lack for targets — but I want to highlight a theme that links a lot [...]
Happy Birthday, Dr. Ralph Stanley
February 25, 2010Born February 25, 1927. This needs no words from me: Bonus banjo track:
Because I Love You All, More Brain Candy Edition: Santana Meets Tuvan Throat Singing Edition
February 24, 2010One of the things I love most about MIT is the odd nooks and crannies of knowledge one’s colleagues can lead you to at any moment. Case in point…thanks to the documentarian and social historian Vivek Bald, one of my colleagues in MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies (a small but valiant band of [...]
Great Read: MacFarquahar on Krugman in the current New Yorker.
February 24, 2010Larissa MacFarquahar’s profile of Paul Krugman is worth your attention. It’s a substantial tome, full of good stuff, from a portrait of the economist as a young smart guy to the sequence of what I wouldn’t call radicalization, but his conversion to the assumption of a kind of moral duty to speak. But while the [...]
The Still Digging Out From Admissions Season Brain Candy Post: Dead Milkmen Edition
February 17, 2010I’ve got lots to say, no time to say it in (more McArdle gigging tomorrow, I expect), but until I get the hour or so free I need, the smile raised by hearing the tag end of song on my way into the office today will have to do. Enjoy:
A bit of brain candy whilst waiting to post after admissions heck…Russian Tank/Personal Transport Edition
February 16, 2010Via Automotto, this. I want one. (h/t Gizmodo)
A Sad Note Sent to Mr. David Broder
February 10, 2010Here is a slightly edited text to an email sent to David Broder, on the occasion of reading his thoughts (sic) on Sarah Palin’s ascent to political heavyweight status. (h/t Josh Marshall) Dear Mr. Broder, I know it will pain you to hear this from a 51 year old reader, but I grew up on [...]
On Memory, Memoir, and Rebecca Skloot’s journey with and to Henrietta Lacks
February 9, 2010It’s harder than I thought it would be to weigh in with a blog-review of Rebecca Skloot’s new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s not that I don’t like the book – it’s wonderful, and I highly recommend you all go read it. It’s not that I don’t have some thoughts about the [...]
A quickie Saturday post with a brief answer to the question: how do I become a (better) science writer?
February 6, 2010It’s reasonable, I guess. My day job has me running what I can confidentyl say is one of the best science writing programs in the country.* So I often take part in some version of this email conversation I had recently with a graduate student in one of the physical sciences. This student told me [...]
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