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Not "My Pet Goat"

Austinist Takes A Look At What Bill Clinton's Been Reading:

Clinton may be an Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar, political genius, former president and potential first First Gentleman, but he still likes to occasionally read cheap paperback thrillers you'd find at an airport news stand like the rest of us.

Austinist editors were in a bookstore last week when Bill Clinton did a book signing and took notes on Clinton's book recommendations, browsing habits, and what he finally purchased.

Mind Hacks brings us two citations of Harry Potter in field of headache research. The journal Headache, published an article Harry Potter and the Curse of the Headache, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published "I know you are but what am I?!" [PDF].

I always assumed Harry's headaches were simply manifestations of teenage angst, but the authors of the Curse of the Headache track every mention of headaches in the first six volumes and offers a medical context. I wonder how much research (if any) Rowling did on headaches before she decided on that particular affliction to symbolize the proximity of Voldemort, or if she herself suffers from migraines or other serious headaches. I also didn't realize that headaches were passed on biologically.

The second article demonstrates it's there's less brain activity required for younger people to consider people familiar to them than people who are not familar. Other studies show that the ideas of familiarity and belonging are in fact very malleable. I think there's more than headaches going on here, if it's easier for us to consider those closer to us than those foreign to us, that may explain how both communities and bias form in young minds.

I had to use Google Scholar to find the full text each of these articles. \I was a little disappointed the Headaches article only covers the progression through the first six books.

Also, Tricia links to HipHop.CN's Rap Challenge, "in search of China’s next big rap talent." I think Alaina's cousin run's this site? I also can't help but notice how similar The Rap Challenge logo is to Otorevo's logo.

Assassination Vacation

I'm late to the Assassination Vacation party, but I'm here. What a book! This book reminds me very strongly of a few close friends of mine - the ridiculous missions, the obsession with American presidential history and radical politics, and the deep appreciation for a good coincidence. I can recommend this book to anyone, although since it seems like everyone has already recommended it to me and I'm late I'll just stop repeating myself.

Dave Welch's interview with Vowell at Powells.com is a fun read. Dave Welch asks Sarah about her love for Siskel & Ebert and her response is worth quoting:

That show was important for me as a hick kid from nowhere; it was my first exposure to criticism.

I loved that these two guys argued with each other as if movies actually mattered. Nobody I knew talked about movies that way, but Siskel and Ebert took each movie as it came and talked about whether it was a success on its own terms. They talked about things they liked, not things they were supposed to like.

...

And that's one of the things I think my work is about, really, the difference between things you're supposed to like and things you actually do like.

What I think I appreciated most about the book was how much Vowell loved America. The architecture of the tiny memorial stalls most of us skip by without thinking, all of the docents and historians she encounters along the way, even the freeways and mall parking lots were transformed into sites of high (or at least medium) adventure. Most of all, Vowell loves a good road trip, the unique freedom of traveling in America.

Flying home Saturday afternoon, I was clutching only this book and my MacBook as I trudged through security. Big dude in front of me was upset about having to pour out his Coke (Coke was, of course, for sale not twenty yards further down the concourse.) I commiserated with him, and also made a sympathetic nod to the mother ahead of us who was pouring milk out of her baby's bottle, and his response was "This is why I can't wait to get back over there and kill more of them. I've already killed of six of them for y'all, and I want to get to ten."

I realized that the foiled spine declaring ASSASINATION in all-caps arial was on full view under big man's nose in the grey security tupperware also containing my shoes, quarters and cell phone. Of all the days to travel with a book called Assassination Vacation. I skirted away and made it home without further incident.

Marlon James' Plog

The Googlerati are abuzz with the news of Malcolm Gladwell's new blog. It looks like he intends to post often, which would be a gift.

But my favorite new author's site came to me not as a blog, but as a plog - it's Marlon James' "space" on Amazon.com. His review of Wide Sargasso Sea immediately caught my attention: "Call it collective male guilt, or the result of living in a world where fathers never kept their side of the bargain, but I am drawn to stories of women who come undone and women who have to make do."

Mr. James, if you like, I'll set up your typepad blog for free. It will look less crazy than this blog, more like the Ted Blog, and you can escape that Amazon frame.

Time Shifting Ink

It's like TiVo for books for free.: "So how about it, friends? Who among you has a library card?"

I do, both NYC and Brooklyn. Bloggers should feel comfortable in libraries, the shelves even have permalinks!

More: iPalimpsest, Librarian.net.

New Years Resolutions

Caterina says:

I've been considering, since New Year's Eve, a possible Resolution that I will not, in 2006, buy a single book, but instead read only books that I've already bought. ... And as a friend recently noted, when I buy a book, I am also, with great optimism, buying the time in which to read it. Now if *that* were true, by God, I'd be a Methuselah.

We have a similar resolution, but less constrained: We're only buying one book for each one we read and sell or give away. So far we've sold three books (on Amazon, via the wonderful Delicious Library), but the only glue bound pages I've spent any real time with this year are the puzzles found within Sudoku to go: Tough.

My other resolutions are pretty straightforward, nothing you wouldn't expect.

"Oprah ain't no punk," James Frey and the Definition of Memoir

Angela on the Million Little Pieces scandal and James Frey's appearance on Larry King Live last night:

Towards the end of the show, Oprah called in. This call was a 'surprise' to most but not to me. Oprah ain't no punk. She's gonna make her opinion known and not via publicists. She said it was up to publishers, whom she said she relied on to document the authenticity of a book, to decide what rules govern memoirs and how they differ from other forms of nonfiction. She felt this whole thing honestly was much ado about nothing.

I did not know there was a difference between non-fiction and memoir. If memoir was a genre onto itself, why is there no memoirs section at Barnes and Nobles? It seemed to me to be a variation on the autobiography genre, a member of the non-fiction family.

This makes sense to me. In addition to autobiography, non-fiction and memoir[1], I've also heard the genre "creative non-fiction" bandied about, which is more or less autobiography with a declaration that facts have changed to make the story more interesting. I wonder what genre most weblogs and weblog posts fall into. My guess is autobiography, because it's easier to tell the truth. Lying takes effort, which is one reason I also take people at their word.

[1] Make no mistake: Dave Winer will be writing a "memoir."

Don Quijote Day / Tips for Reblogging

Over at Reblog (where I've been a having little too much fun) it's Don Quijote day.

We Make Money Not Art and Eyeteeth pointed me to X Reloaded, a parade of "proposed new readings" of the classic story. Regine's highlights are the best.

Jason pointed out the story of a French Monk who bound an edition of Don Quijote in the skin of his dead dog. Marcus Trimble, who originally blogged the story writes: "Funny, I happen to be reading Don Quixote at the moment/last eight months, so now all i need is a pet..."

And since I'm probably going to have stop hogging the Eyebeam Mic soon, I thought I'd offer a few observations about reblogging. Reblogging is nothing more than fast blogging, so it's no coincidence that making your content friendlier for rebloggers has the pleasant side effect of making the user experience more pleasant for all of your readers.

Procrastination and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The BBC has just published an interview with Steve Meretzky, who co-authored, with Douglas Adams, the Hitchiker's Guide Infocom adventure.

What was he like?

He was the ideal dinner companion. He could speak intelligently and with wit about almost any topic under the sun. Unfortunately, he was also the world's worst procrastinator! Otherwise, working with him was great.

Most people don't use the word procrastinator precisely enough. I seriously doubt that Douglas Adams was a "dawdler, dilly-dallier, or laggard." In fact I bet he was a little bit like me and most of my friends, where he was always working on something, just not necessarily the most pressing thing.

Ask a certain PHD student I cohabitate with about IMDB sometime.

I found this link while browsing waxy.org.

Amazon Customer Service

Amazon's Customer Service # is (800) 201-7575. For some reason this is hard to find.

Knight Potter! Harry Hasselhof! Wizard Rider!

Every once in a while one of those Internet rumors comes along (usually courtesy of the UK tabloids) that is just too ridiculous to not report.  The latest comes via The Mirror, which is apparently trying to hint that Baywatch and Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff may appear in the next Harry Potter film.  As completely ludicrous as it seems (and we believe it is), the paper goes on to assert that "insiders" working on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire have told them that Hasselhoff is "up for a part in the wizard adventure."

IGN just got bookmarked. I was wondering why I saw Lia camped out at the Ziegfeld Theater.

Defending Derrida

Jonathan Kandell’s obituary for Jacques Derrida is mean-spirited and uninformed. To characterize Derrida, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, as an "Abstruse Theorist" is to employ criteria which would disqualify Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Heisenberg.  

With scarcely concealed xenophobia, Kandell describes deconstruction as another of those "fashionable, slippery philosophies that ... emerged from France ... undermining many of the traditional standards of classical education." In fact, Derrida wrestled with central works of the Western tradition, including Plato, Shakespeare, and the Declaration of Independence - none of which he slighted.

Remembering Jacques Derrida, signed by over three hundred academics, is an answer to the patronizing New York Times obituary from last week. You can add your name to the list.

Judith Butler wrote a second, more direct letter:

Jonathan Kandell's vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher's death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time.  Why would the New York Times assign the obituary to someone whose polemics are so unrestrained and intellectual limitations so obvious? ... Why would the NY Times want to join ranks with American reactionary anti-intellectualism precisely at a time when critical thinking is most urgently required?

Why indeed. I wish I could sign this letter. I once saw Judith Butler getting coffee in Oakland.

Elsewhere, Judith Zissman posted a picture the New York Times headline, and Caterina pulled out a funny quote from the Washington Post's story: "The lack of fixed meaning in a text did not keep Mr. Derrida from publishing hundreds of books."

Like Angela and Adriana, I recommend Kirby Dick and Amy Kofman's documentary on Derrida, which our friend Kirsten Johnson also worked on.

Euphorbia Abdelkuri!

I love when geek pursuits collide, and that's what happened this morning on the Crown of Thorns Yahoo Group when a Harry Potter 5 enthusiast offered up a botanical analysis of the book:

The Seattle Public Library

As part of our recent (too short) west coast vacation, Adriana and I set out with my mom and my sister to the Seattle Public Library. I took pictures, of course. There have been lots of glowing reviews of the library (Paul Goldberger, Julie Leung, Herbert Muschamp) and the Seattle Times Library homepage is a great resource, but the Project for Public Space's critique hit a nerve with me.

PPS would like nothing more than to announce that this library is part of a new wave of iconic buildings that succeed as public spaces. But while some of the library's spaces are comfortable, active, and visually stunning, the building as a whole turns inward from the city around it, limiting its effect on downtown. Of course, there are contemporary buildings out there that contribute to lively streets and public spaces. These buildings may not have earth shattering ambitions, but they are indeed important additions to our cities and towns (see sidebar). You just wouldn't know it from reading most architecture reviews.

...

Considered in a vacuum, these spaces do function quite well: They are often full of people reading, browsing the web, and mingling. But, situated above street-level without any relation to the sidewalk below, they relate to the city outside in a purely visual fashion. If the library were a true "community hub," its most active areas would connect directly to the street, spinning off activity in every direction.

...

A more sober analysis would point out the obvious: The building's relationship with downtown is only skin-deep. When it comes to actual human activity--the kind that brings real benefits to a city by encouraging people to stay and explore downtown--the spaces around the library are dead zones.

When you're done with the full article, waste the rest of your Friday night at PPS's Great Public Spaces page.

(Hello.Typepad's 5 loyal readers wonder - "To what to do we owe the pleasure of 3 posts in one night?" and I answer: "We set aside an evening to watch the Olympics. Big mistake!")

Why Review Books?

Apropos to my participation in the Virtual Book Tour: Why Review Books? (via librarian.net)

Five questions with M.J. Rose, author of The Halo Effect

Author MJ Rose on the Virtual Book Tour:

By the time I'm done I will have written over 10,000 words for the 8 blogs on which I'm touring. That's a lot of writing in a short period of time. But the exciting part is that over 100k people will read about me and The Halo Effect this week - most of them on sites that attract readers that is great target marketing. Even if I had the money - I couldn't even figure out a print vehicle that would read that many readers in such an innovative and interactive and targeted way.

I'm participating in the Virtual Book Tour today. I asked M.J. Rose, author of The Halo Effect, five questions ranging in topics from the impact of technology on book distribution to good places to eat in Soho.

Virtual Book Tour

Tomorrow I'll be participating in the latest installment of the Virtual Book Tour. We'll be hosting the author of The Halo Effect, M.J. Rose.

Summer Cleaning (the story of my life)

I've been on an eight hour cleaning rampage. I'm very good at reorganization, but not as good at reduction or prioritization.

Today's coffee was even better (first cup: 7pm), and the turntables are back in action (soundtrack: Mingus Plays Piano, Wee Bee Foolish).

One sad note: The Tribble is no more.

Mind Wide Open review

I'm only a half way through Mind Wide Open, by Steven Johnson, but I'm already willing to recommend this book to all of my friends, and beyond that anyone who's day to day life involves relationships or critical thinking. In the first chapter, Johnson writes:

The more you understand the brain in light of modern science, the more you realize that the isolated traits you posess aren't really isolated — the brain is full of zero-sum games, where one talent prospers at the expense of another. Sometimes those balancing acts involve related skills; sometimes the connection is more obscure.

I think about this all the time. I spent many hours during the summer of '97 playing Quake. A few things happened as a result - one is that I became scared to turn sharp corners in real life without peeking ("lookahead" in Quake lingo) first, and sounds or visual patterns that were familiar in the game were slightly unsettling. To make matters worse, I was living in an huge off campus dorm straight out of a haunted house movie (indeed, we had Bats in the attic). I now know that this was a natural tension between my brain's amygdala and neocortex. Also that summer, I became a better programmer, forged strong friendships, and generally relaxed more than I have since.

So when the BBC reported that Taxi drivers in London have unusually large brains, I didn't doubt it for a second. Since then, I have been searching for a mental exercise routine to keep me fresh. Johnson visits a few companies developing "neurofeedback" video games to encourage concentration, and I'd be interested in trying them out. He envisions a future in opposition to William Gibson's - instead of a future of over-stimulated citizens living everywhere but nowhere, Johnson suggests that video games that encourage attention could become a "... Walkman for the early 21st century. A Walkman that makes you faster, sharper, more in control. Assuming of course that faster, sharper, more in control is what you want." Quite frankly, this sounds boring to me, I love my morning espresso. Ironically, he cites mentral control of Quake as an example of what brain outputs currently are not capable of.

My first college counselor, who had been one auto-assigned to me by the Oberlin computers, recommended that I go into neuroscience since I had a few credits to burn. She pitched it to me as a mix between Biology and Computer Science, a field that was going absolutely to boom as dramatically as the technology industry had. I quickly dropped her for a CS professor, but now I think maybe she was onto something.

I'm can't vouch for Steven Johnson's understanding of the scientific principles he describes, since I have no one to compare him with. I'm also wary of positing the responsibility of human instincts down into individual sections of the brain - behavior modification surgery (neo-Operation Ivy) can only be so far behind. I'd also like to read an Animal Rights' activists critique of the brain surgery done on rats - surely this is not as conclusive as Johnson makes it out to be.

I wish I knew more about the science behind the brain, and Mind Wide Open seems like a good gateway into this field of study. I'm so happy this book is good, I really hated the last book I read and I had to get that awful taste out of my head -the same thing happens to me with films and issues of The New Yorker. At least now I have a little more insight as to why.

Sorting Books

The book borrower . . . proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures . . . as by his failure to read these books.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

(Walter Benjamin, Unpacking my Library)

We moved recently, and we've taken our time unpacking and getting settled in. We don't enjoy much idle time at home, and our bookshelves are about three inches taller than the plaster detail border around our walls which bugs me every day. We also haven't spent enough time sorting our collections. We like to mix our DVDs, LPs, books, comics and magazines, but we can't agree on much more than that.

I was pleased to see Jessamyn post about her new sorting order, by color , as ROYGBIV is an old favorite of mine. In the past I've been the subject of intense ridicule at the hands of my "friends" with advanced degrees - Adriana, Kate and Jenny and Irene (PhD candidates in "rhetoric" - and her diploma is going to be signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger!) Now I take comfort in the tenuous connection I've made with a kindred soul who prefers to know a book by it's cover even when there's not enough time spent between the pages.

Adriana's generals are at the end of the month, and until then every surface in our apartment is covered with books, and that's good and proper. Come June, however, things are gonna change. "Physics for the Rest of Us" will go at the end, in case you were wondering. (I've got to give Jason credit for that line).

!Update: Creaky.typepad on sorting by color.

23:5

I first heard about 23:5 via randomwalks:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From Erik Benson's Man Versus Himself:

This was a problem I had long been peeved about.