Here are a smattering of items that have come my way.
From the Mind Hacks blog, newly added to the blog list at mine:
“Good God there's a lot of scientific research on chewing gum. And I mean a lot.” This is correct. Research on the impact of chewing gum on performance and what is the most valuable flavor, etc. I have often found gum to be helpful if I need to drive but am sleepy. Now, science backs me up.
Helmet with brain on it - Odd question about an odd product
There is a biking helmet on sale that is painted on the outside to look like a brain. The commenter asks if I would buy underpants with sex organs painted on the outside. Hmm.
Plot complexity
Louis Menand is a professor of English and a good writer and commenter. In a review of Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice”, he mentions moving a plot from a book to a movie. He reports that once Howard Hawks was directing the making of The Big Sleep from Raymond Chandler’s novel. The movie group was having trouble with an aspect of the plot. It was clear who had killed the main victim but there was this other corpse in the story. Who had killed that person? Not clear. So, they got hold of Raymond Chandler and asked him. Now that the author thought about it, he didn’t know either.
Blog list
I keep finding more great blogs. I keep directing people to give them a try. I find that part of getting into new areas is to find and look at a blog’s previous posts, often called “related posts”. Officially, there are ten blogs linked to mine but both Wired.com and Amazon.com each have more than a handful going at once. Just looking at all the current one at either site is lots to explore. The trick is to click on the headline just below the name of the blog. It is often a much more valuable link that the blog name.
Trying to stay calm in the firehose stream
It is difficult to stay calm in the downpour of information, art, insight, challenge and such that tv, books, magazines, phone calls, emails and paper mail bring every day. It was probably easier and safer to be gainfully employed and just have my mind set on my job each day.
Getting Greenberged
I am being Greenberg-ed. This happens when a person falls under the spell of Robert Greenberg, musician, composer and historian of music who lectures for the Teaching Company. He is witty and quick. He is passionate and clever. I have tried to avoid him because the descriptions sounded overblown. But then we saw his series on the life and music of Mozart. That I was interested in. I listened and learned and laughed. Lynn is enjoying him too and recently posted on Mozart’s first piece. Now we are set to listen to him on Beethoven, Verdi, Mahler and Shostakovich. Each set is expensive so if you are interested but don’t want to buy, see if your local public library will buy or borrow his discs for you. I love listening in my car and find I look for excuses to run downtown and back so I can get a little listening in.
