Tuesday, 15 June 2004
Home, James, and don't spare the seahorses.
Richard Branson drove to France. And he didn't take the Chunnel. Now i'm hoping my pals Shama and Guido Bothe get this project into the water soon, so i can do another of these.
Deep, er, Throat revisited
Are you, like me, one of the six people on the net who hadn't seen the Washingtonienne blog? Some kind soul took the trouble to bring it back for us. Welcome to the Washingtonienne Archive.
But Jacko knew this all the time
Apparently chimps are more closely related to us than scientists have conventionally accepted.
As the Fandango dancer said to the Hawaiian...
Time to say to graçias to His Babuness for manning the breaches here despite countless deadlines (Hurree does insanse amounts of work without appearing to), a book in the final stages (er, am i allowed to out you like this?), cats - and The Partner - to be fed and played with, guests to be entertained, and so on.
So all together now, all two of you, "Hurree, onek dhanyabaad." (Er, did i get that right? The Babel Fish has some regrettable lapses in the languages it covers.
So all together now, all two of you, "Hurree, onek dhanyabaad." (Er, did i get that right? The Babel Fish has some regrettable lapses in the languages it covers.
Tuesday, 1 June 2004
How to get your story into The New Yorker
1) Take the "Kolmogorov-Smirnov Two-Sample Goodness of Fit Test" and the "Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test."
2) Or do it the old-fashioned way: ask your good friend Salman Chacha or Jhumpa Mashima to hold the Fiction Editor's arms behind his back while you stuff your deathless prose down the front of his shirt.
(* New York Times story: registration required, but worth it.)
2) Or do it the old-fashioned way: ask your good friend Salman Chacha or Jhumpa Mashima to hold the Fiction Editor's arms behind his back while you stuff your deathless prose down the front of his shirt.
(* New York Times story: registration required, but worth it.)
That warm feeling...
"When we adopted the description 'Business Literature', we wanted to send the message that this was not just about writing for the daily press, writing for the weekly magazines.
The use of the word literature was intended to send the message that this is about writing a book."
"Writing books of this sort is a little a bit like springing a leak in a dark suit – that you get a warm feeling but not a lot of people notice."
I did not make any of these up (though I wish I had). These are actual quotes from an actual report on The Blake Dawson Waldron Business Literature award. I like the bit about "the use of the word literature" (in what, his PowerPoint presentation?) almost as much as I like the simile about "springing a leak in a dark suit", which ignores the minor fact that there are some warm feelings you just don't want to experience unless you're kinky about diapers.
The use of the word literature was intended to send the message that this is about writing a book."
"Writing books of this sort is a little a bit like springing a leak in a dark suit – that you get a warm feeling but not a lot of people notice."
I did not make any of these up (though I wish I had). These are actual quotes from an actual report on The Blake Dawson Waldron Business Literature award. I like the bit about "the use of the word literature" (in what, his PowerPoint presentation?) almost as much as I like the simile about "springing a leak in a dark suit", which ignores the minor fact that there are some warm feelings you just don't want to experience unless you're kinky about diapers.
He Ordered A Hit On Who??
"A 15-YEAR-old schoolboy has become the first person in Britain to be convicted of inciting somebody to murder him. The boy, who may only be identified by the pseudonym John, invented a cast of characters in an Internet chat room as part of an elaborate plan to commission his own killing, the Manchester Crown Court heard this week."
I blame the decline of the public school system and the death of bullying. In the old days, he would just have had to refuse to toast some senior guy's muffins.
I blame the decline of the public school system and the death of bullying. In the old days, he would just have had to refuse to toast some senior guy's muffins.
Block(heads)
The thing about hate sites, like the recently blocked www.HinduUnity.org, is that they love being banned. They want to be banned. They're there to be banned. They're hoping to be banned because nothing makes them feel more vindicated, more martyred and more virtuous. I know the guys out there at this particular rabid, Islam-hating, woman-fearing band of brothers: they've sent a lot of mail to the Babu as well as to his offline avatar. (Funny, that, how all hate mail sounds the same. I used to wonder about this until I discovered that most hate sites thoughtfully provide a cut-and-paste, One-Size-Fits-All Hate Spewing Form.)
I'm all for promoting peace and goodwill and noble thoughts through the Net, but the Mumbai police's decision to ban the site makes little sense. I don't like the idea of stiffnecked government officials deciding what we can and can't read--and when you ban a site like Kynhun (an e-group that discussed the petty corruption of petty officials in Meghalaya as well as the possibility of seceding from the Indian union), you create a genuine grievance out of a minor kvetch.
All that banning websites accomplishes is to put little men with hate in their hearts on the fast track to learning about anonymisers and mirror sites. The Net has a simple rule: if you don't like it, don't go there. And the first thing we did when we heard about the HinduUnity ban was to hit the cache and revisit a vile site we'd have avoided like the plague pre-ban.
I'm all for promoting peace and goodwill and noble thoughts through the Net, but the Mumbai police's decision to ban the site makes little sense. I don't like the idea of stiffnecked government officials deciding what we can and can't read--and when you ban a site like Kynhun (an e-group that discussed the petty corruption of petty officials in Meghalaya as well as the possibility of seceding from the Indian union), you create a genuine grievance out of a minor kvetch.
All that banning websites accomplishes is to put little men with hate in their hearts on the fast track to learning about anonymisers and mirror sites. The Net has a simple rule: if you don't like it, don't go there. And the first thing we did when we heard about the HinduUnity ban was to hit the cache and revisit a vile site we'd have avoided like the plague pre-ban.
All hail the Swiffer!
While I was away, Mark Morford was boldly going where no man has gone before: into the murky world of household cleaning products.
"These silly new products, these sexist new ads, are merely a small but nasty sign, like a malignant lump, a festering murmur, in the karmic heart. Just more proof of how we are still being trained not to care, still trained since birth to believe the supply of paper and wood and plastic and petroleum is inexhaustible and that America is the land of abundance and it will all last forever and, besides, most of us will die well before there's any 'serious' problems, right? So who the hell cares, and leave it to the next generation to figure out. Now pass the giant tub of foam packing peanuts. Mmm, landfill.
As it is with toilet brushes and brooms, so it is with our national agenda, our environmental policy, our war motives. In other words, there is a straight and unwavering line connecting the Scrub N' Toss with our environmental policy, our worldview, our motives for war and destruction. The world is our commodity. This is the message, the American standpoint. The world is our giant toxic overlit soul-sucking Wal-Mart. Restrain it at your peril."
Inventoried my household. We have a) one broom, made of twig-type stuff, which lasts for six months b) several dusters, washable c) some MagicMop shit which disintegrates into furry pulp the first time you use it d) an absolutely brilliant Neem and Citronella spin on phenyl which is available only in Calcutta, thanks to a Bengali proprietor who doesn't understand why anyone outside the state might want to buy it and e) many cats who produce toxic but environmentally sound emissions. Our big problem is garbage bags. Cats=cat litter=many garbage bags, however politically incorrect, required. Someone source me jute garbage bags and I'll be a happy Babu.
"These silly new products, these sexist new ads, are merely a small but nasty sign, like a malignant lump, a festering murmur, in the karmic heart. Just more proof of how we are still being trained not to care, still trained since birth to believe the supply of paper and wood and plastic and petroleum is inexhaustible and that America is the land of abundance and it will all last forever and, besides, most of us will die well before there's any 'serious' problems, right? So who the hell cares, and leave it to the next generation to figure out. Now pass the giant tub of foam packing peanuts. Mmm, landfill.
As it is with toilet brushes and brooms, so it is with our national agenda, our environmental policy, our war motives. In other words, there is a straight and unwavering line connecting the Scrub N' Toss with our environmental policy, our worldview, our motives for war and destruction. The world is our commodity. This is the message, the American standpoint. The world is our giant toxic overlit soul-sucking Wal-Mart. Restrain it at your peril."
Inventoried my household. We have a) one broom, made of twig-type stuff, which lasts for six months b) several dusters, washable c) some MagicMop shit which disintegrates into furry pulp the first time you use it d) an absolutely brilliant Neem and Citronella spin on phenyl which is available only in Calcutta, thanks to a Bengali proprietor who doesn't understand why anyone outside the state might want to buy it and e) many cats who produce toxic but environmentally sound emissions. Our big problem is garbage bags. Cats=cat litter=many garbage bags, however politically incorrect, required. Someone source me jute garbage bags and I'll be a happy Babu.
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