Hermenautic Circle blog

May was really tiring. But in a good way.

Back on it shortly.

Just saw the picture of the Guatemala sinkhole....Did anyone else read about this, a few weeks back?

The house’s bright green metal roof was all that was visible the next day in a vast mud crater near the village of St. Jude, Quebec, about 50 miles northeast of Montreal. The landslide created a hole 100 feet deep, 300 yards wide and a third of a mile long....

On Wednesday, officials allowed residents of several nearby houses to return home. But the family’s shocking demise was a stark reminder of a hidden menace under many parts of Quebec, one that dates back 10,000 years to an ancient inland sea.

The following passage is from a forthcoming novel:

A navigational beacon in ___’s black Levi’s, a long-dormant transmitter buried by a more advanced civilization, was sparking back to life. Where he ought to have felt guilt, he instead was getting hard. Oh, the clairvoyance of the dick: it could see the future in a heartbeat, leaving the brain to play catch-up and find the necessary route from occluded present to preordained outcome.

Can you name the author?

David Barret responds to my Sue Em All Solved post, in which I say that the Sue Em All campaign is *succeeding*:

Are you sure it’s working out well? All the troubles of TPB amount to
little more than a couple slight dips — from enormous piracy to
slightly less enormous piracy. TPB is still alive and well. … nothing has been remotely effective at reducing torrent pirating.

It’s precisely wrong to see downloads as the measure of success –
what matters is activity that could be monetized. Unauthorized
downloads don’t matter unless the downloader would have made a
purchase. The point is to extract as much money as possible from each
potential customer, not to extract money from people who aren’t ever
going to be customers.

Sell Donald Trump a gold-plated tour jacket. Sell box sets to
20-somethings who passionately love a particular band. Sell single
MP3 downloads to teens with no more than a single dollar to spend.

in what possible universe can you claim pirates aren’t demolishing
their foes in every field of battle they choose to fight? … The only battles the copyright forces are winning are Pyrrhic. They’re *masters* of those.

I know that people who read tech blogs think P2P is winning and don’t
understand why anybody would be in a business that assumes copyright
will continue to exist. This is a dream world.

Licensed content businesses are a big deal, techies.
YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm, Spotify, and on and on. And
awesome products from startups like Mog keep coming in wave after
wave.

href="http://siteanalytics.compete.com/hulu.com+thepiratebay.org/">Hulu
vs The Pirate Bay:

Or note that Limewire earned on the order of $20 million a year, while
the iTunes music store probably earns on the order of $150 million -
an order of magnitude. And it will probably cost Mark Gorton far north of a hundred million dollars to settle the lawsuit. That
investment is a huge disaster, even though he had the #1 product in an
important space!

Money reshapes the economy like icebergs reshape continents.
Slowly but inexorably, value follows investment and users follow
value. Spotify’s users are there because Spotify’s investors
subsidize them. Who is investing in the Limewire of tomorrow? And
who is investing in their competition?

So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.

Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.

April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.

Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work done. I'm giving a lecture at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter. 

So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.

Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.

April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.

Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work done. I'm giving a lecture at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter. 

So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.

Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.

April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.

Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work done. I'm giving a lecture at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter. 

Hi. My name if Rutherford B. Trace, and I’m the new editor of this weblog. I beg pardon from the ongoing series Frederick Douglass In Brooklyn, which I will soon continue, to implore, beseech, encourage and even— in some cases— command all ya’ll who can get near Grand Army Plaza Tuesday June 1 to see the Internets Celebrities, live at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Regular denizens of Eastern Parkway hardly need an introduction to writer and guerilla filmmaker Dallas Penn but with the ICs, DP has two partners, co-conspirator and co-host Rafi Kam, and director Casimir Nozkowski. Tonight they’ll be screening their latest and— dare I say it?— greatest work yet, Stadium Status. Don’t be jealous! It literally couldn’t have been done without you too, at least those of you who pay taxes and have seen “one thin dime” of your money go to support scumbags like George Steinbrenner, Fred Wilpon and Bruce Ratner.

One might wonder, is “scumbags” a proper term for an editor and historian to use? And what about “scumbags,” as I’ve put it, like Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg, not to mention almost the entirety of the New York State legislature, New York City council and the Borough Presidencies of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens? In 1995, Christopher Wallace famously asked “Who Shot Ya’?” It’s long past time the people of NYC demanded their own answer, especially at a time when great institutions and good people like the Brooklyn Public Library are threatened with severe budget cuts.

In the more affable words of Rafi himself:

This Tuesday, June 1, we’re going to be screening a bunch of videos at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. So come out to the fabled Grand Army Plaza at 7pm and check out some of our classics on the big screen, ask us questions and be among the first humans to see our new documentary STADIUM STATUS.

Stadium Status is a documentary which examines the rush of new sports stadiums in NYC, the public money that drives these private developments and the impact they have on the communities around them. The creation of Stadium Status was funded by you via Kickstarter!

Hope to see you there.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
— Frederick Douglass, from “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1852)

Internets Celebrities aren’t all Negroes but they are all Americans, and New Yorkers. None of them are false.

Rutherford B. Trace is a historian and editor from Brooklyn. He despises most professional sports but has, in the past, played handball in a Latrell Sprewell #8 Knicks jersey.

Model aircraft and even a souped-up John Deere mower joined cars at Derick Samson's second annual car show Saturday, May 22, in Marshall.

Ed Park brought his 1936 Ford Cabriolet, which he has owned for nearly 50 years.

His car, he said, is "what you call a survivor of the old '40s/'50s custom; ... '37 DeSoto bumpers, '49 Chevrolet license plate surround, '39 Ford taillights, '40 Chevy headlights, '39 LaSalle grille, '49 Mercury dash," he said, and made reference to Johnny Cash's song "One Piece at a Time." —Marshall (MO) Democrat

• Gallery of “homely tools.” : http://bit.ly/b2tvDc #
• Cory Doctorow makes the case that these Pulitzer winners are basically fanfic: http://bit.ly/9YY4iT #
• Via @emlegendary: Box of objects, for iphone. Vanitas http://ow.ly/1QmMF Pretty cool! #
• Phone booth converted to “world’s smallest library.” http://bit.ly/apvfh2 #
• Book Sales Up More Than 16.6 Percent in March. Who knew? http://bit.ly/c6qzIH #
• The Buenos Aires “book tank.” Pretty cool. http://bit.ly/au6KJA #
• Help out S.O. contributor Gabriel Levinson, raising dough for his awesome book bike project: http://bit.ly/aTBNUm #
• only one question really matters to writers. How do we make money out of it? http://tinyurl.com/2fytqgf #
• Bkln store sells “unusual objects” w/ “singularly fascinating purposes, characters and origins.” http://bit.ly/aLYgvs (thx @patrickcates) #

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Game birds are more difficult to find for a reasonable price than you’d like – makes you think about buying a shotgun – but I turned up some lovely frozen quail at my local market (The Roslindale Fish Market for those in the Boston area) and did them up with a sort of composite recipe initially inspired by Scappi (in his Opera).

Scappi, Opera (1570), recipe 131:

Several ways to roast and do up turtle-doves and quail (side note: I had a de-clawed cat growing up whose undying desire it was to catch a turtle dove. Never did it – caught moles by the hundreds, robins, a bat once, but never one of those enticingly round turtle-doves)

Get a turtle-dove in its season, which goes from June to the end of November. Right after it is dead, pluck it dry and sear it on coals without drawing it. Put it on a spit crosswise and set it to roast over a sprightly little fire, turning it rapidly so its grease will not drip off. When it is almost done, make up its crust of flour, fennel flour, sugar, salt and grated bread…Sometimes fat quail are semi-salted in salt and fennel flour and left in a wooden or earthenware vessel for three or four days.

In the course of my investigations, I ran across some charming Provençal ideas for quail which included wrapping them in grape leaves and then roasting them. I merged these – dredging the quail in fennel flour (which I made with a 20 to 1, or thereabouts, mixture of mortar crushed fennel and flour) and salt before wrapping them in grape leaves and putting them on the spit.

I found the grape leaves adhere pretty well and you can just tuck them in around the thighs to keep them situated.

The grape leaves slowly catch fire and disintegrate, and the remains are easily removed. They keep the quail wonderfully moist, and leave a very faint briny flavor.

I also cooked quail for Crudifest, using the same techniques, but on a larger scale. I soaked a wooden dowel overnight to keep it from catching fire, but it quickly caught fire anyway.

Also it was pouring rain.

I tried the second suggestion as well – even leaving it for a few days in an earthenware pot. The quail starts to sweat and by the end, appeared to be beginning to melt from the salt (which gives them a slightly troubling appearance but is harmless). It’s not bad like this, but doesn’t compare to the wrapped in grape leaves method, especially here at the start of grilling season. I really can’t recommend these enough – truly charming finger food. This recipe would probably work on partridge or squab, probably snipe, if they exist.

The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to wrap everything in grape leaves before grilling – chicken breasts, for sure, but also hamburgers, pork chops, certainly fish (swordfish, halibut, mako shark), and vegetables, but maybe not hot dogs.

Notable because this is the first time I’ve seen a small self-produced flier posted on a phone pole here, as opposed to the professionally produced ones large enough to be visible from cars. Those tend to advertise religion, payday loans, weight loss, and/or overcoming addiction. It’s not a walking town.

What I like about this is the underline.

And I think I take a photo in this parking lot every time I’m here. There’s just something about a largely empty parking lot that I find irresistible.

I am unlikely to read Christopher Hitchens' memoir, but glad to learn this anecdote about an encounter with Margaret Thatcher shortly after her election as Conservative party leader: via Toby Young's review for the Observer:

After a bit of friendly banter about Rhodesia, she tells him to bend over and whacks him on the bottom with a rolled up order-paper. As she walks away, she looks flirtatiously over her shoulder and mouths the words "Naughty boy". "I knew I had met someone rather impressive," he writes.

Not only is it now an iSchool, and they’re offering an MLIS [among other degrees. I have an MLib] but they’re making information accessible and popular. Enjoy this Lady Gaga sendup. Watch for the Nancy Pearl cameo. Awesome job folks. I really should go back for my PhD. Some discussion and adoration on BoingBoing. [via]

Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Christine” single came out May 30, 1980. Here’s the original promo video.

With a listing in the NYT!

1001 by Jason Grote
Directed by Jonathan Spector
May 28 – June 20

A kaleidoscopic riff on the Arabian Nights that combines savage wit, political insight, Borgesian time-warping, and theatrical ingenuity in a dazzling tour de force that Scheherezade herself would envy.

Cast: Michael Barrett Austin*, Aleph Ayin, Lance Gardner*, Anthony Nemirovsky*, Rachel Rajput and Katherine Tkel

Production: Sam Callahan (assistant stage management) Christine Crook (costumes), Drew Kaufman (set & lights), Chris Kristant (props), Dina Maccabbee (sound) & Louel Senores (stage management)

At the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave, Berkeley

Fri May 28 & Sat 29 Pay-what-you-will Previews
Monday, May 31 Opening Night
Run Thurs – Sat at 8pm and Sunday at 5pm through June 20th
no performance Sunday, June 6

Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/109633 or at (510) 488-4116

Crawling Chaos’s “Sex Machine” single came out May 30, 1980.

Elvis Costello released “New Amsterdam” as a single on May 30, 1980. Here’s the original, very floral promo video.

Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), based on the Booth Tarkington novel of the same name, focuses on an Indianapolis family around the turn of the century. The most important family in town, with an impressive neo-gothic mansion, horses and buggies, beautiful clothes, and perfect pedigree, the Ambersons represent “old money” at a time when there wasn’t any other kind. “Old,” at least, for Indianapolis. But times they were a-changing, horses were yielding to horseless carriages, agriculture was shifting to the new industrial economy, and the old society, in which you are born to it, was being pushed aside by the new, in which you can become what you make of it.

The storyline is Hamlet transposed to the American Midwest, Welles’ native land, and concerns one George Amberson Minafer, spoiled scion of the old line.  In her youth, George’s mother Isabel had spurned her favored suitor, inventor Eugene Morgan, for “unbecoming hijinks” (he tripped over his bass viol while serenading her window, something more or less unimaginable now), and married a more conventional man. Years later she has poured all her unfulfilled affection onto her adult son, George, who has become so arrogant and impossible that the entire town dreams of him “getting his comeuppance.”  Meanwhile, Eugene has done well with his innovations in the automobile industry, and has come back to town, a wealthy widower, with a beautiful daughter, Lucy, who is around George’s age.  George’s father then conveniently expires from the stress of bad investments, and Isabel and Eugene resume their long-interrupted courtship, while George proceeds to court Lucy.

All well and good, but not for George. Caught in an immediate Oedipal rage, he forbids Eugene from seeing his mother — and she agrees.  He insists on an extended European tour, just mother and son, to separate the lovers, which so weakens her broken heart that she dies upon return.  Meanwhile Lucy has declined George’s numerous proposals, because he refuses to get a job, or come up with any direction in life whatsoever.  George stands for a way of life in which you simply “are,” which might have been a great deal if you were rich enough to afford it, but from Lucy’s (and our) perspective it seems wasteful, unproductive, and dull.

But, as Eugene proclaimed during the ballroom scene, there are no old times. The only times are new times! The European tour spent the last of the Amberson/Minafer money, and now reality finally catches up to George. And — Aunt Fanny.

The Ambersons lived as an extended family in their mansion, and why not? There they could associate with the proper sort of people (each other). Contrary to expectations, it is George’s relationship to Aunt Fanny that turns out to be the shaft around which the story turns. Played to neurotic perfection by Agnes Moorehead (later Endora in TV’s Bewitched), Fanny is an old maid in a time when that really meant something. Nursing an unrequited love for Eugene, she hovers around the edges of life because she hasn’t got anywhere else to go, and even less to do. Despite general sympathy for the underdog, Fanny’s desperation is particularly unlovely; she and George fight like irritable children, which in a sense they both are. When Eugene returns to town Fanny rekindles her one faint hope, but it is quickly and casually dashed — of course, she never had a chance. Her despair over Isabel and Eugene kindles George’s anger, and while he probably would have acted the same in any case, Fanny’s hysterical edge sends him over his.

When the money runs out the only Ambersons left to be evicted are George and Fanny, the rest having either died or left (for jobs!) elsewhere.  Fanny has a breakdown in anticipation of George leaving her basically on the street — she has $28 to her name, having put her personal inheritance into the same bad investments as George’s father.  At this point, George does the unthinkable — not only has he hit up one of his father’s old friends for an actual job in a law firm, an idea he once despised — he immediately resigns it for something higher-paying, a blue-collar job working with dangerous materials. He thinks of someone other than himself, perhaps for the first time, and it’s not his mother, or his girlfriend: it’s his maiden aunt, with whom he’s never had a single positive interaction.

The job is dangerous. But going to work one day, George is hit by a car, that hated symbol of Eugene Morgan and progress, and is taken to the hospital, severely injured.  It is at this point that the film we see diverges fully both from Welles’ original vision, and from the novel.

Welles seems to have felt the subject matter acutely, oddly declining to take the lead role himself (an excellent actor as well as director, he was never shy of self-promotion), allowing his moods to affect production and, most damagingly, turning over final sign-off to RKO, the production company, while he left town on another project before editing was completed.  The outcome was perhaps predictable. Shown to a test audience following a light comedy, the reaction to The Magnificent Ambersons was overwhelmingly negative. In response, almost an hour of footage was cut from the piece, and a new, happier, ending was quickly shot and tacked on, in Welles’ absence and against his wishes. The negatives were then destroyed so he couldn’t sneak back and produce a “director’s cut.”  The new ending feels rushed and the note it strikes rings false.  But the changes were enough to get RKO to release the film, where even in its diminished state it was declared a masterpiece, second only to Citizen Kane, and has given rise to almost 70 years’ worth of “if only’s.”

It is Welles’ genius that takes Tarkington’s heavy-handed symbolism and not only makes it come alive, but come alive in two of the least sympathetic protagonists ever to appear onscreen. He manages to gain our allegiance for George and Fanny without sugar-coating or diluting their unpleasantness in any way.

Life is not about “out with the old, in with the new.” It’s not necessarily about love, or money. It’s not even about finding yourself or having adventures. It’s about the relationships you end up having, or that end up having you. Those stories may not fit into a top-ten list of themes and plots, but they are rich, and unpredictable, and worth telling, and may reveal more about what it all means than happily ever after, after all.

From my review for the Brattle Theater Film Blog.

Douglass’ advocacy of slave revolt was a view shared much more widely among black than among white abolitionists. In 1856, Lewis Tappan became alarmed at Douglass’ “vengeance is mine” attitude toward slaveholders. “In your speeches and in your paper,” Tappan complained, “you advocate the slaughter of slaveholders. I cannot go with you.” He accused the black leader of “scattering firebrands, arrows, and death.” Tappan was still a strong adherent of nonviolence and his shock at Douglass’ rhetoric is understandable. His reaction, though, serves as a good measure of Douglass’ changing thought on slave insurrection. Douglass never encouraged slave revolts with relish, but by the time of John Brown’s raid in 1859 he was prepared to accept and make the most of what appeared inevitable.
— David W. Blight, from Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith In Jubliee (Louisiana State University Press, 1991)

The Lewis Tappan letter Blight quotes was dated December 19, 1856 and sent from Tappan’s home in Brooklyn which I believe was on Degraw Street. Wait, wait, wait I hear the Brooklyn historian plead— that Degraw Street? “You bet your sweet rosy ass!” as Allan Nevins— no relation to that Nevins, I don’t think— might have said. (This might be apocryphal.)
— Caz Dolowicz

I'm thrilled to say that I will be blogging all summer from the late-lit northern evenings of Montreal, where I will be hosted for two months by the Canadian Centre for Architecture as part of their 2010 Visiting Scholars program.

[Image: From the drawing instruments collection of the CCA, courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

The CCA is an amazing institution, and I'm very excited to be there for the summer; for the most part, I will be writing about many of the items in their ambitious collection—films, models, photographs, manuscripts, architectural tools, and more—and publishing the results both here and on the CCA website.

There is a truly mind-boggling amount of material to explore up there, from the archives of Gordon Matta-Clark and Cedric Price to a collection of antique drawing instruments and souvenir models, John Hejduk's Bovisa sketches, photographic plates from English India, Canadian fire insurance maps, speculative proposals for river lighthouses, massive archives of stage set designs and dramatic scenography, and a beautiful manuscript copy of the Plan of St. Petersburg, among far, far more than I could possibly mention in one post. Konstantin Melnikov. Aldo Rossi. Three airports by Lloyd Wright. Travel sketches by Louis Kahn.

[Image: "Unknown photographer. Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974) and his wife stand before their house" (1927); courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

The overall idea is something that I've been calling "Bloggers in the Archive," a program that I am starting in collaboration with the CCA, with myself as a guinea pig, but that I would love to bring to other institutions elsewhere in the future.

In other words, there are architectural and design archives all over the world, full of astonishing things, but these same collections are often unexplored in their entirety, even by members of the institutions that have collected them. Even more commonly, many of these global collections are open only to scholars who stop by once every five or six years—if that often—to write niche monographs or academic publications about specific aspects of an archive's contents.

But what if you could install an architecture blogger—or a film blogger, a food blogger, an archaeology blogger, a fiction blogger—in an overlooked archive somewhere, anywhere in the world, and thus help to reveal those items to the general public?

[Image: From Scenes of the World to Come: European Architecture and the American Challenge, 1893-1960 at the CCA; courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

Why not put Archidose up at the National Building Museum, for instance, or Frank Jacobs in the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Library, Enrique Ramirez at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Colleen Morgan at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, or even give Clastic Detritus a guest residency at the central archives of the USGS? Maud Newton, temporary blogger-in-residence at the British Library.

Call all of it part of "Bloggers in the Archive," and suddenly collections all over the world are being appreciated and seen by more than the five professors who have been deemed qualified enough to explore a specific phase in architecture, design, or landscape history. Put Tim Maly up at the Reuleaux Collection of Mechanisms and Machines for two weeks, or Bruce Sterling at the National Science Foundation.

After all, are academic essays the only textual form appropriate for archival exploration, or does the relatively ad hoc, point-and-shoot blog post, motivated less by scholarly expertise than by curiosity and personal enthusiasm, also have something valuable to offer? Somewhere between front-line archival reportage, historical research, and what we might call popular outreach.

[Image: "William Notman & Son, Building encased in ice after a fire, 65-83 Little St. James Street, Montreal" (1888); courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

In any case, in addition to surrounding myself with the CCA's seemingly endless collections—international expositions and fairs! winter festivals! fortified cities in colonial North America! Roman archaeology!—I also hope to find time to explore the landscapes around Québec (including the megascale hydroelectric stations peppered throughout the province's subarctic forests, such as MANIC-5—leading me to wonder if Hydro-Québec has ever been the subject of a minor architectural retrospective, and, if not, if mammoth, Pruned, and BLDGBLOG could perhaps be hired to curate one...).

So stay tuned for regular posts beginning late next week from Montreal—and also watch for updates on the CCA's website (I'll have specific info on exactly where my posts for the CCA will appear soon). And, of course, huge thanks to the CCA for making this summer possible! I'm very much looking forward to it.

[Image: A "telescopic" book from the Great Exhibition in London (1851); courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

Finally, if you, too, would like to apply for a Visiting Scholar position next year at the CCA, here is the application form.

"Academics are hedgehogs and I am a fox": Deborah Ross interviews Malcolm Gladwell for the Independent.

Tom Cox plays a round of golf with Judas Priest axman K. K. Downing (FT site registration required).

At the Guardian Review, Nicholas Lezard on the latest installment of David Kynaston's history of Britain in the twentieth century (lots of good snippets there).

Arthur Danto's post at the NYT site the other day tipped me off to the existence of MOMA's Flickr photoset from Marina Abramović's recent show. Jason Grote points me to the fact that one immediately recognizable sitter is Lou Reed!

Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” single came out May 29, 1980. Here’s a live performance from slightly later.

The Birthday Party’s self-titled debut album came out May 29, 1980. Here’s “Mr. Clarinet” from it.

The Stranglers’ “Who Wants the World” single came out May 29, 1980. Here they are being interviewed on a TV show around then; the video starts around 4 minutes into this clip…

I said a few vague words on the All Things Considered piece about the Dorfman protocol for syphilis screening, which is an early example of the exploitation of sparsity to improve signal detection.  Jeffrey Shallit follows up with a really nice explanation of the method at his blog.  Good stuff in the comments, too, especially this souped-up recursive Dorfman suggested by Gareth McCaughan, in which Fibonacci numbers arise in a mysterious way!

via Arthur, posted at Spectre:
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/mall-farming/

The failure and abandonment of shopping malls throughout the country has a bright side: smart communities and businesses are turning them into greenhouses for organic agriculture. Talk about a nice urban hack. (Hack, as in its original sense of retooling something for a better purpose.)

If this is the way the post-apocalypse looks, count me in.

The Galleria Mall in Cleveland, Ohio is leading the way by growing organic food for mall patrons and local restaurants. The mall has transformed the lost retail space within its glass-top confines into a gigantic, organic-food greenhouse. The idea sprouted when the mall’s marketing and events coordinator Vicky Poole teamed up with Jack Hamilton, a business owner in the Galleria. Together they began operating Gardens Under Glass, a hydroponic garden in the Galleria at Erieview in downtown Cleveland. The project is funded by a $30,000 start-up grant from the Civic Innovation Lab.

Peter Van Dijck sez:

I want apps on my tv. But the UI has to be TV-UI, leanback. They should build some kind of html5 television UX standards that I could then easily build apps on. The TV UI would be quite different from the regular web UI.

The Kylo browser for televisions is a pioneer in this space. Their business is selling infrared mice that you can use as a remote. It’s a mouse that controls a pointer on the television from over on the couch.

This is a totally kamikaze user experience. But so what? They’re smack on the evolutionary cusp, figuring out how little has to change.

So are they more of a neanderthal than a homo sapiens, too close to the ancestor to live on among the descendents? How much more do they need to change, then?

Given years of smug certainty among techies that sue-em-all was a mistake, how come suing em all seems to be working out pretty well?

suing consumers didn’t work, but suing businesses did. Unlicensed companies have been forced out of business or forced to license. Those which do license come out with new products, and consumers are going where the products are.

Limewire’s software will certainly survive legal annihilation because it is open source, but it will lose the casual users who rely on the quality level that Limewire the company has been providing. Sites that host the source code will hold their noses and take it down when they get credible lawsuit threats; then even developers will miss the polish, since the source repositories will have to be hosted on private servers or in the gray market.

In the end anybody who can be upsold to a licensed music source will be. The only people who stick to filesharing will be those who are too broke to pay and don’t care about the unpleasantness of life in the gray market. People with a few bucks will surely cough them up. Sue Em All has turned out to be a method of price discrimination, leaving the black market running but limited to the poor!

The video’s title is “Hard Disc – NEED HELP – Can this be fixed?” Um, no buddy, I’m pretty sure it can’t.

I. Sam Sifton Mad Libs at The Eater.

II. Lindy West's Sex and the City 2 review at The Stranger:

It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache.

III. I read something else funny, but I forgot what it was.

IV. This is funny/weird:



(via Jonathan)

V. This Paper Cuts post on the "Theory of Advancement" in pop music inspired me to find this video of Lou Reed singing "The Original Wrapper," funny on multiple levels:

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of something called “The Swinger.” It’s a piece of Python code that debuted at the San Francisco Music Hack Day a few weeks ago, which uses The Echo Nest‘s remix software to automagically stretch and shorten beats in a song to give it that swing. It went massively viral—over the last few days, somewhere north of a million people listened to these “swing” versions.

Naturally, I decided to get in on the fun – you can hear my contribution to the meme, a swing version of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” below. I uploaded it to SoundCloud, which asks you what kind of licensing you want to use – all rights reserved, a Creative Commons license, or no rights reserved – and it stopped me cold.

The legal status of remixes and sampling is grey, to say the least, with differing rulings on whether it constitutes, for example, transformative use. One solution would be compulsory licensing for remixing and sampling, similar to what currently exists for covers (this is why the Sex Pistols were Sid Vicious was able to cover “My Way” – unhappy though he was, Paul Anka had no legal recourse).

Calls to address this aren’t new, of course (Lawrence Lessig is the most vocal advocate). But what really struck me over the last few days is how urgent the need for legislation is getting, given the rapid rise of tools that let even musical and programming ignoramuses like me create remixes. The next iTunes is probably going to look a lot more like Google Picasa, since the tools that are the musical equivalent of crop, resize, or ‘remove redeye’ are pretty much on our doorstep—simple, painless and requiring no special skills or expensive software. It’s past time for the laws to catch up.

EDIT: Sid Vicious, not the Sex Pistols. Thanks to Martin Packer for the correction.

Thanks to Quinn Norton and Ethan Hein for excellent discussions on the legal issues surrounding remixing. And a very mild disclaimer of a collaborative relationship with the fine folks at The Echo Nest.

Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” (The Swing Version) by debcha

A rather charming volume detailing the libraries, and dining rooms of literary figures. No bedrooms in the 1876 edition – this isn’t France, after all. Mitchell was a travel writer and novelist – Oliver W. Holmes, père, called him “One of America’s pleasantest writers” which seems pretty effed up, but maybe he was trying to [...]

Harold Bloom’s glowing recent review, in the Times Book Review, of Anthony Julius’s “Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England” attracted an unusual number of responses–including from the English-born, Harvard-based literary critic James Wood and the British philosopher Galen Strawson, who is visiting M.I.T. …

Malcolm Gladwell wrote:

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how risk homeostasis applies to NASA and the space shuttle. In one frequently quoted phrase, Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize- winning physicist who served on the Challenger commission, said that at NASA decision-making was “a kind of Russian roulette.” When the O-rings began to have problems and nothing happened, the agency began to believe that “the risk is no longer so high for the next flights,” Feynman said, and that “we can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time.” But fixing the O-rings doesn’t mean that this kind of risk-taking stops. There are six whole volumes of shuttle components that are deemed by NASA to be as risky as O-rings. It is entirely possible that better O-rings just give NASA the confidence to play Russian roulette with something else.

If this is really what Feynman said, wasn’t he wrong?  In Russian roulette, you know there’s one bullet in the gun.  The chance of a catastrophe is just one in six the first time you put the gun to your head; but if you survive the first try, you know the round is in one of the remaining five chambers and the chance of death next time you pull the trigger climbs to 20%.  The longer you play, the more likely disaster becomes.

But what if you don’t know how many chambers are loaded?  Suppose you play “Bayes Roulette,” in which the number of bullets is equally likely to be anywhere from 1 to 6.  Then the chance of survival on the first try is (5/6) if there’s 1 bullet in the cylinder, (4/6) if 2 bullets, and so on, for a total of

(1/6)(5/6) + (1/6)(4/6) + … (1/6)(0/6) = 5/12

which is about 41%.  Pretty bad.  But let’s say you pull the trigger once and live.  Now by Bayes’ theorem, the chance that there’s 1 bullet in the cylinder is

Pr(1 bullet in cylinder and I survived the first try) / P(I survived the first try)

or

(5/36)/(5/12) = 1/3.

Similarly, the chance that there are 5 bullets in the cylinder is

(1/36)/(5/12) = 1/15.

And the chance that there were 6 bullets in the cylinder is 0, because if there had been, well, you would be a former Bayesian.

All in all, your chance of surviving the next shot is

(5/15)*(4/5) + (4/15)*(3/5) + (3/15)*(2/5) + (2/15)*(1/5) + (1/15)*0= 8/15.

In other words, once you survive the first try, you’re more likely, not less, to survive the next one; because you’ve increased the odds that the gun is mostly empty.

Or suppose the gun is either fully loaded or empty, but you don’t know which.  The first time you pull the trigger, you have no idea what your odds of death are.  But the second time, you know you’re completely safe.

I think the space shuttle are a lot more like Bayes Roulette than Russian Roulette.  You don’t know how likely an O-ring failure is to cause a crash, just as you don’t know how many bullets are in the gun.  And if the O-rings fail now and then, with no adverse consequences, you are in principle perfectly justified in worrying less about O-rings.  If you shoot yourself four times and no bullet comes out, you ought to be getting more confident the gun is empty.

Just had a double espresso – didn't quite do the trick – may have to double down. # Some guy at the DUA just hung up on me and I wasn't even asking for money. # If this is how they treat employers, I'd hate to be unemployed. # In the heat of the moment, earlier, I called [...]

Hey, another Graduate song! This is “Ever Met a Day,” released as a single May 28, 1980.

Torie Atkinson on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 13.

Jorden Ellenberg on why taking a chance on O-rings is Bayesian Roulette rather than Russian Roulette.

Between October of last year and February of this one, the curators of Significant Objects parsed the data from the project’s first, experimental phase in the following thirteen ways.

1. We classified the 100 object-stories in our experiment as talismans, totems, evidence, and fossils.
2. We presented the raw original price/final price data.
3. We listed the week in which each story was published, and its associated object listed for auction on eBay.
4. We neutralized the Duration Factor by adding $18.00 to the final sale price of each item in Week 1, $17.00 to the final sale price of each item in Week 2, and so forth through Week 18 of 19. The resulting Adjusted Final Prices have been used in our figuring ever since.
5. We presented the experiment’s overall, week-to-week mean and median price data.
6. We compared the Final Prices and Adjusted Final Prices, and made it possible to rank sales data by either factor.
7. We presented the experiment’s Top 25 most significant object-stories (according to adjusted sales rank) in a visual manner, and invited readers to point out aesthetic considerations that might explain the objects’ popularity (i.e., independent of the associated narratives). We also invited readers to point out aesthetic considerations that might explain the unpopularity of some objects.
8. We analyzed the effect of CATEGORY on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: inconclusive.
9. We analyzed the effect of FUNCTION on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: inconclusive.
10. We charted CATEGORY and FUNCTION on pie charts. (OK, we didn’t use the VISTA 1.0 for that.)
11. Before leaving the question of FUNCTION behind, we asked readers to vote on whether particular objects were a novelty, or houseware.
12. We started analyzing the effect of EXPOSITION STRATEGY on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data. Result: not in yet.
13. We started analyzing the effect of HOT and COOL narrative modes on the experiment’s 100 object-stories, ranked by adjusted final sales data, and (what’s more) correlated with CATEGORY. Result: not in yet.

Then, in early March, our VISTA (Verifiable Insignificant-to-Significant Transubstantiation Analyzer) 1.0 threw a rod, and our parsing efforts ground to a halt.

Working around the clock, while also publishing our third volume of stories and holding down day jobs, we’ve finally managed to repair and upgrade the VISTA (now 2.0); on Monday, Rob Walker trotted out the first new analysis in fifteen weeks. Rob noted:

Object-stories sold in v1 were valued by the free market (meaning thrift store and yard sale sellers) at a total of $128.74. After our contributing writers converted these thingamabobs, via invented back stories, into Significant Objects, they sold through our eBay shop for a grand total of $3,612.51. The second 100 object-stories (v2 and v3 combined) were purchased for $134.89, and sold for $3,992.93

Despite the slightly higher cost-of-doodads, the Significance Premium also increased: v1 objects rose in value by a total of 2,706% thanks to our contributors’ stories. The second 100 object-stories sold in v2 and v3 combined jumped in value by 2,860%.

Rob’s finding prompted me to return to an adjustment I’d made to the v1 sales totals back in November. As I explained at the time, the Significant Object experiment’s duration affected sale prices. News about the project didn’t spread widely for the first week or three — so object-stories auctioned off early in the experiment sold for less, on average, than did object-stories auctioned off for the remainder of the experiment’s duration.

The first adjustment made to SO v1 sales totals — I added $18.00 to the sale price of each item in Week 1, $17.00 to the sale price of each item in Week 2, and so forth through Week 18 ($1.00 added) — helped neutralize the Duration Factor. However, the first Duration Factor adjustment didn’t change the overall results that much. A few object-stories from Week One (Necking Team Button, Smiley Mug, Halston Mug, JFK Bust, Creamer Cow, Miniature Bottle, Chili Cat Figurine, Sanka Ashtray) jumped in the rankings, while a few object-stories from late in the project (Flip-Flop Frame, Umbrella Trinket, Toothbrush Holder, Swiss Medal) dropped quite a bit. But object-stories that had ranked in the unadjusted Top Twenty, Thirty, Forty, and so forth, tended to remain in those brackets. In the Top Ten bracket, object-stories no. 1,2,3, and 8 remain the same, while the no. 4 and 5 object-stories, and no. 6 and 7 object-stories, respectively, merely swapped places. All of which suggests that SO v1’s intramural Duration Factor might not yet be entirely neutralized. Object-stories from the project’s earliest weeks (which weeks, exactly, will be analyzed below) didn’t have the fighting chance object-stories from subsequent weeks did to make it into the top quartile of sales rankings — or, at least, out of the bottom quartile.

At the same time, Rob’s findings suggest that the Duration Factor caused SO v1’s sales price total to be less than it otherwise might have been. Subtracting the SO v1 total from the So v2+v3 combined total, we get an exact figure: The project’s intermural Duration Factor robbed $380.42 from SO v1.

So — we’re trying a new adjustment method for SO v1 sale prices, one intended to neutralize the Duration Factor both inter- and intramurally. We’re adding $380.42 to the sale price of the 18 object-stories sold in SO v1’s first two weeks.

Why the first two weeks only, this time? Our decision was influenced by Mimi Lipson’s Metal Boot Peak Effect theory, which claims “there was a tipping point in Week 4 after which some process of disinhibition caused the possible peak price to shoot up for those [object-stories] with a certain X-factor.” (SO v1’s 24th object-story was Bruce Sterling’s Metal Boot.) However, according to our calculations, the upsurge in possible peak prices came with Stewart O’Nan’s Duck Tray. See the table below.

The Duck Tray, from SO v1’s third week, sold for $71. The highest sale price for any object-story from SO v1’s first and second weeks was a little more than half that amount: $36.88. Instead of the Metal Boot Peak Effect, we’re looking at a Duck Tray Peak Effect.

In order to give Week One object-stories the fighting chance they deserve, while still increasing the sale price of all pre-Duck Tray items, we’ve decided to assign $285.30 (3/4 of $380.34) to the sale price of our thirteen Week One items, and $95.10 (1/4 of $380.34) to the sale price of our five Week Two items. Each Week One object-story’s sale price will be adjusted upward by $21.95 (instead of $18.00); and each Week Two object-story’s sale price will be adjusted upward by $19.02 (instead of $17.00). The sale prices of object-stories from other weeks will remain unadjusted.

Here are the results of this second adjustment:

Object	Final Price (orig.)	Final Price (2d adjust.)	Rank (orig.)	Rank (2d adjust.)	Week
Russian Figure	$193.50	$193.50	1	1	Week 08
Indian Maiden	$157.50	$157.50	2	2	Week 15
Wooden Animal	$108.50	$108.50	3	3	Week 17
Pink Horse	$104.50	$104.50	4	4	Week 18
“Hawk” Ashtray	$101.00	$101.00	5	5	Week 13
4-Tile	$88.00	$88.00	6	6	Week 08
Metal Boot	$86.00	$86.00	7	7	Week 04
Cape Cod Shoe	$77.51	$77.51	8	8	Week 04
Missouri Shotglass	$76.00	$76.00	9	9	Week 19
Fish Spoons	$76.00	$76.00	9	9	Week 15
Fake Banana	$76.00	$76.00	9	9	Week 16
Wooden Mallet	$71.00	$71.00	12	12	Week 08
Duck Tray	$71.00	$71.00	12	12	Week 03
Cow Vase	$62.00	$62.00	14	14	Week 05
Felt Mouse	$62.00	$62.00	14	14	Week 18
Necking Team Button	$36.88	$58.83	35	16	Week 01
Rainbow Sand Animal	$57.66	$57.66	16	17	Week 09
Rhino Figurine	$57.00	$57.00	17	18	Week 06
Kneeling Man Figurine	$56.50	$56.50	18	19	Week 05
Geisha Bobblehead	$56.00	$56.00	19	20	Week 19
Smiling Mug	$32.08	$54.03	41	21	Week 01
BBQ Sauce Jar	$54.00	$54.00	20	22	Week 17
Bird Figurine	$52.00	$52.00	21	23	Week 09
Rooster Oven Mitt	$51.99	$51.99	22	24	Week 18
Meat Thermometer	$51.00	$51.00	23	25	Week 05
Idol	$51.00	$51.00	23	25	Week 05
Halston Mug	$31.00	$50.02	42	27	Week 02
Ziggy Heart	$50.00	$50.00	25	28	Week 09
Jar of Marbles	$50.00	$50.00	25	28	Week 18
JFK Bust	$26.00	$47.95	48	30	Week 01
Creamer Cow	$26.00	$47.95	48	30	Week 01
Motel Room Key	$45.01	$45.01	27	32	Week 12
Miniature Bottle	$23.00	$44.95	55	33	Week 01
Chili Cat Figurine	$22.72	$44.67	56	34	Week 01
Maine Statutes Dish	$42.00	$42.00	28	35	Week 13
Rope/Wood Monkey Figurine	$41.00	$41.00	29	36	Week 06
Ireland Cow Plate	$41.00	$41.00	29	36	Week 05
Amoco Yo-Yo	$41.00	$41.00	29	36	Week 18
Sanka Ashtray	$17.79	$39.74	70	39	Week 01
Mr. Pickwick Coat Hook	$38.00	$38.00	32	40	Week 14
Santa Nutcracker	$15.50	$37.45	77	41	Week 01
Marines (Upside-Down) Logo Mug	$37.00	$37.00	33	42	Week 07
Alien Toy	$37.00	$37.00	33	42	Week 16
Mule Figurine	$14.50	$36.45	84	44	Week 01
Hand-Held Bubble Blower	$36.00	$36.00	36	45	Week 11
Seahorse Lighter	$36.00	$36.00	36	45	Week 10
Round Box	$35.00	$35.00	38	47	Week 11
Kitty Saucer	$15.53	$34.55	76	48	Week 02
Piggy Bank	$15.50	$34.52	77	49	Week 02
Cigarette Case	$33.77	$33.77	39	50	Week 12
Nutcracker With Troll Hair	$14.50	$33.52	84	51	Week 02
Candyland Labyrinth Game	$11.50	$33.45	88	52	Week 01
Pen Stand	$11.50	$33.45	88	52	Week 01
Ocean Scene Globe	$33.00	$33.00	40	54	Week 13
Windsurfing Trophy/Statue	$31.00	$31.00	42	55	Week 15
Penguin Creamer	$31.00	$31.00	42	55	Week 09
Crumb Sweeper	$30.99	$30.99	45	57	Week 13
Blue Vase	$30.00	$30.00	46	58	Week 19
Toy Toaster	$6.25	$28.20	95	59	Week 01
Lighter Shaped Like Small Pool Ball	$27.00	$27.00	47	60	Week 19
Praying Hands	$26.00	$26.00	48	61	Week 09
Dilbert Stress Toy	$26.00	$26.00	48	61	Week 16
Unicorn	$26.00	$26.00	48	61	Week 06
Toy Hot Dog	$3.58	$25.53	99	64	Week 01
Fred Flintstone Pez Dispenser	$5.50	$24.52	96	65	Week 02
Cracker Barrel Ornament	$24.50	$24.50	53	66	Week 17
Elvis Chocolate Tin	$24.00	$24.00	54	67	Week 07
Flip-Flop Frame	$21.80	$21.80	57	68	Week 17
Military Figure	$21.50	$21.50	58	69	Week 11
Choirboy Figurine	$21.50	$21.50	58	69	Week 12
Umbrella Trinket	$21.50	$21.50	58	69	Week 19
Sea Captain Pipe Rest	$21.50	$21.50	58	69	Week 14
Pabst Bottle Opener	$20.51	$20.51	62	73	Week 06
Ornamental Sphere	$20.50	$20.50	63	74	Week 13
Uncola Glass	$20.50	$20.50	63	74	Week 11
Grain Thing	$20.50	$20.50	63	74	Week 08
Wave Box	$20.50	$20.50	63	74	Week 14
Tin Ark	$19.50	$19.50	67	78	Week 03
Thai Hooks	$19.50	$19.50	67	78	Week 15
Foppish Figurine	$17.82	$17.82	69	80	Week 04
Spotted Dogs Figurine	$17.50	$17.50	71	81	Week 03
Cat Mug	$17.00	$17.00	72	82	Week 10
Dome Doll	$16.49	$16.49	73	83	Week 04
Swiss Medal	$16.00	$16.00	74	84	Week 17
Duck Vase	$15.75	$15.75	75	85	Week 12
Star of David Plate	$15.50	$15.50	77	86	Week 07
Popsicle-Stick Construction	$15.50	$15.50	77	86	Week 04
Device	$15.50	$15.50	77	86	Week 08
Toothbrush Holder	$15.50	$15.50	77	86	Week 14
Basketball Trophy	$14.90	$14.90	83	90	Week 12
Golf Ball Bank	$14.50	$14.50	84	91	Week 03
Clown Figurine	$11.61	$11.61	87	92	Week 14
“Hakuna Matata” Figurine	$10.50	$10.50	90	93	Week 03
Bar Mitzvah Bookends	$10.50	$10.50	90	93	Week 19
Small Stapler	$10.50	$10.50	90	93	Week 06
Coconut Cup	$10.00	$10.00	93	96	Week 10
Kentucky Dish	$6.75	$6.75	94	97	Week 10
#1 Mom Hooks	$5.50	$5.50	96	98	Week 07
Hawaiian Utensils	$4.24	$4.24	98	99	Week 11
Porcelain Scooter	$2.38	$2.38	100	100	Week 07

Have we neutralized both the intermural and intramural Duration Factors? Your comments are encouraged.

There is an unwittingly funny passage in the Spanish edition of Ignacio Echevarria's introduction to "El Secreto del Mal," a still-untranslated collection of Roberto Bolano's stories, a passage that could easily have been cribbed from one of Jorge Luis Borges' metafictions or, more to the point, from one of Bolano's. Echevarria observes that Bolano's work is "governed by a poetics of incompleteness." Bolano tends to interrupt his stories with other stories, and those with other tales in turn. He spends page after page building tension, then mischievously buries the climax or neglects it altogether. This makes it difficult to determine, Echevarria laments, which "among the pieces that he did not end up publishing can be considered finished." —Ben Ehrenreich's review of 2666 in the L.A. Times

A friend sent this photo from the Sixth Avenue/West Village Barnes and Noble:

I must say, it feels pretty swell to see Empress (which is almost nine years old now) out on display!

And in fine company with Roland Smith, Ellen Hopkins, Ally Carter, John Boyne, and S.E. Hinton.

Writers at io9 propose candidates for the best year for science fiction. Would it be 1999? (“The Matrix,” “Galaxy Quest,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Cryptonomicon,” the hype surrounding “Phantom Menace.”) 1977? (“Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Ender’s Game.”)

Or do those choices represent generational bias? Josh Glenn, the former Brainiac author and co-editor of HiLobrow, goes with a wild-card pick: 1912.

McSweeney’s offers “A Campus Tour for Rejected Applicants,” which begins this way: “Each of you should have received a viewbook and a tote bag containing a T-shirt, lanyard, beverage cozy, and other university-branded paraphernalia from the Admissions Office. These will come in handy later as shameful reminders of everything you failed to achieve …”