Random 31 Jul 2008 10:27 pm
Today was a big day. I read about the world’s oldest joke and heard an old favorite, Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, on XM Radio.
Okay, here’s the joke, recorded ca. 1900 BCE by a Sumerian who shall remain nameless:
Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.
Hey, [...]
Random 21 May 2008 3:08 pm
The lefty blogs have gone so batscheiss crazy over the fact that Clinton is still in the race, it’s impossible to read them. So, for some weeks now, I haven’t. It’s very pleasant.
I finally got around to reading a novel a friend gave me a while back, Beyond Sleep, by the Dutch writer Willem Frederik [...]
Agora 23 Apr 2008 8:11 pm
It’s one thing to be slipshod and sleazy in your depiction of evolutionary science and how it is taught in American schools. You might bore the pants off the general public and piss off a lot of scientists, but you may make a few bucks at it.
It’s another thing to use a copyrighted song without [...]
Random 17 Mar 2008 9:42 pm
And now for another installment of the popular Basement feature “Gee, Where Have I Heard That Before?” The trigger this time was Strangers With Candy—specifically, the episodes where Jerri Blank joins a cult. The members sing a song repeatedly—relentlessly, one might even say. (After her ride in the van to Safe Trap House, Jerri says, [...]
Russia 6 Feb 2008 7:10 pm
A day in the life …
Today it was announced that the legendary British band Deep Purple will perform in the Kremlin this month as part of the 25th anniversary celebration for Gazprom, the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. Attendance will be by invitation only. Possible attendees include Russian President Vladimir Putin and [...]
Random 28 Jan 2007 4:02 pm
It should come as no surprise that composers of music for motion pictures continually mine the classical repertoire, just as contemporary novelists grab whatever they can from the stocks of literature, ancient and modern. (Have you heard the story, for instance, of “a cultivated man of middle age [who] looks back on the story of [...]
Random 10 Jan 2007 12:23 pm
On December 31, I thought about resolving to be even lazier in 2007 than I was in 2006, but I never got around to it.
Random 14 Jul 2006 10:22 pm
The other day I found myself whistling a theme from Scheherazade as I pedaled up the ramp in the parking garage, leaving work. And I thought, “Hm.” Not because I was whistling. First of all, the acoustics in the garage are very good. Second, I’ve always made music on my bike. When I did my [...]
Random 13 Mar 2006 11:45 am
A friend at work gave me an old bicycle (a Giant—that’s the name, don’t blame me). After I added a few essentials for commuting safely (rear-view mirror, front and back lights, etc.), the bike was ready to serve as a backup to my old Trek hybrid (which badly needs a new middle chain ring—on order [...]
Random 27 Feb 2006 11:45 am
The subject of passion arose recently in this electronic space, and it sprang loose a quote that I have yet to come to grips with, almost twenty years after encountering it as an epigraph to a book by Don Robertson:
Passions are not natural to mankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences. The ideal, genuine man [...]
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