Month: October 2007

Language Log has obtained a presentation slide from the inventor of the Crockus. Spoiler: it’s bogus.

My Adium upgrade seems to have hosed my Keychain file. Headaches ensue.

• I have enjoyed Stephen Fry’s work in various contexts; it’s now my delight to enjoy reading his blog., and not only because he slags “Dan Whatsit” and his “preposterously awful” book The Leonardo Code. And now I know many things not to say if I ever meet Stephen Fry.
  His paragraph, far down the column, on receiving compliments is highly pertinent; I am very maladroit at accepting compliments, and I have been trying to manage better when people say kind things about me.
• A link in Fry’s blog sent me to the bibliography of Dornford Yates, which informs me about quite-possibly delightful novels and a series of exquisite cover designs.
• I’m gearing up to write something about the Anglican brouhaha, but my higher faculties are unwaveringly fixed on finishing the technology article (which is coming around slowly but nicely, if I do say so myself). In the meantime, I appreciated Jason Byassee’s article in the Century, and the group blog over at Covenant.
• Posts at (and linking to) Dan Wallace on “Pauline Scatology” and Tall Skinny Kiwi on Bad Language have generated interesting conversation.
• Resources: Biblical Studies Bulletin 43 quotes something I wrote about Dan Whatsis as their “quote of the month” for March (yes, I’m slow): “The staggering popular phenomenon of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code testifies to the level of success that academic interpretive authority brings to bear on egregiously misleading interpretive claims: none at all.” I didn’t remember saying that, and it’s surely an overstatement, but I’ll stand by it as a bit of rhetoric.
• I have a stored-up photo blog about a once-in-my-lifetime culinary experience, but I don’t have time to post it right now.

I wish Apple made the iPhone an open platform as much as the next person, but if they’re going to try to put lipstick on the pig of a closed platform, why don’t they just argue that they’re making the iPhone theft-proof? If the thief can’t swap out the SIM to enable another account to use the same unit, ta stolen iPhone becomes useless as a phone (or else the thieves/purchasers will give themselves away by using someone else’s phone number).

Mark wonders what I think about Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows — not the recording itself, but the business model: “Self-released w/out a label! Discbox which includes vinyl! Downloadable for… whatever you want to pay! Interesting…”

Very much so — and it confirms the kinds of claim that many people have been making for a long time. You prosper in the digital environment by giving away what the internet makes easy and by charging for what the internet doesn’t facilitate (personal appearances, physical artifacts like packaging, clothing, books, and so on). It’s that simple, but some people and some corporate entities want to force the internet to conform to the properties and characteristics of a pre-digital environment. In the long run, they’ll be as successful as the dinosaurs who commanded mammals to respond the the ice age by voluntary mass extinction. Now, if you’ll pardon me, our car is running low on gas, so I have to go to the leather goods store to get a new buggy-whip.

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Whoops, Metalepsis sent me a notice pointing to Radiohead, too (my mail client identified his message as spam, which it assuredly was not. Sorry to have missed you, M.)

Pippa regards her store-bought or hand-me-down clothing as raw material, subject to refinement and enhancement if the means present themselves. Over the past few days, she’s been hard at work on the Duke hoodie that Margaret and I gave her:

When I first took her to Michaels, the local crafts franchise, I ran into Pippa in one of the aisles; she was grinning like a lovesick sophomore, and she beamed at me: “I’ve found my people.” Yes, she has, and we love watching her and her work.