what they teach you in harvard business school

An astute observation, from today's ny times:

“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” President Bush declared as he watched the $700 billion bailout package fall apart before his eyes, according to one person in the room.

grammar rules

Pomona College has recently setup a David Foster Wallace memorial site w/ a lot of great stories from people who knew him there.  

An excerpt that brings to mind a *lot* of corrections and red ink:

5) He was obsessed with grammar. He wrote about it some, especially in one published essay, but it’s hard to understand the depth of his obsession without having written and turned in papers to him. Responding to the first essay I ever turned into him, Dave started with the line, “There are a lot of interesting themes you’ve touched on ... but to discuss those themes would be like conversing about the weather over a bloody, mutilated corpse.” Over a few years, Dave learned not only some tact but also that not every person in the world was raised to diagram sentences as a child.

roustabout investment corner: buffett's blunder

Warren Buffett should do more research! From today's ny times:

Warren E. Buffett, the country’s most famous investor and one of the world’s richest men, announced on Tuesday that he would invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, the embattled Wall Street titan, in a move that could bolster confidence in the financial markets.

Berkshire Hathaway will receive perpetual preferred shares in Goldman, which will pay a 10 annual percent dividend.
[..]

If Buffet had looked into Golden instead of Goldman, he'd be getting a far better deal.

After last weeks' panic and subsequent armageddon in the markets- current price on the Oslo exchange for GOGL.OL reflects a dividend yield of 35 percent.

The yield was affirmed by the CEO on the last quarterly conference call, supported with long term contract coverage on the bulk of their bulk boats to 2010. If the world doesn't enter a full on global depression in 2011, call it a good deal.

things not taught in sex ed

A blackboard quote on family planning:

Sex is death's way of making more dead bodies.

(c.f. William Blake)

goldilocks unconscious

The unconscious is like goldilocks: she likes things to be Just Right.

(a passing thought this morning)

the genuine others

Things that justify living:

I realized that it was true that there were people greater and more genuine than others and that throughout the world they made an invisible [and visible --ed.] society that justified living.

-- Camus 

                   (from the notebooks)

a portrait of the artist & infinite jest

There is a passage from part III of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that recalls a few things in the Best Novel Ever Written:

...The preacher began to speak in a quiet friendly tone. His face was kind and he joined gently the fingers of each hand, forming a frail cage by the union of their tips.
[..]
Sin, remember, is a twofold enormity. It is a base consent to the promptings of our corrupt nature, to the lower instincts, to that which is gross and beastlike, and it is also a turning away from the counsel of our higher nature, from all that is pure and holy, from the Holy God Himself.

Infinite Jest readers who read closely will note the curious usage of 'cage' in the description of the preacher, and in the name 'Himself'.

Its been a week since David Foster Wallace killed himself.

Infinite Jest comes up in conversation with my Dad quite often.  We talk about certain chapters, gems, the possibility of Annular Fusion, etc. The game of Eschaton seems to come up a lot in particular. 

(requires a *lot* of tennis balls)

Before last week this sort of talk would lead to suspicions about what be in his next book; i.e:

me: "there was a mention in n+1 of a rumor that he was working on a book involving porn.."
him: "i bet it will involve a long list of avant-garde porn films embedded as a footnote. mark my words!"
[shared laughter]

(actually, i think this was Leonard's suspicion? but anyway)

I guess I'm just pissed that these conversations might be replaced by less happy, somewhat grim ones involving what he might have been writing about when he died.  

I don't really want to think about that.

ovine telephone

the curious marriage of william and catherine blake

The key to a happy marriage? pity and literacy (and printmaking)

In 1782, Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who was to become his wife. At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. Telling Catherine and her parents the story, she expressed her sympathy, whereupon Blake asked her, "Do you pity me?" To Catherine's affirmative response he responded, "Then I love you."

Blake married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. Later, in addition to teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver; throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aid to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.

(...)

latin-in-passing corner

Viz. - "that is to say" (abbr. for vildelicet)

videlicet /vəˈdeləˌset/ - “it is permitted to see”

scilicet /ˈsiləˌset/ - “namely”, “to wit”

the dark knight for dark times

There is an intellectual smarty pants critique of The Dark Knight up at N+1 - an excerpt:

The great scandal is that a common delusion persists over the seriousness of films like The Dark Knight, which is usually invoked in the same breath that someone will say, defensively, "Come on, it's only a comic book movie." This paradox gets at the heart of what is wrong with The Dark Knight, and films like it. Comic book films are not flexible adult forms, designed to provoke thought, but inflexible teenage forms, designed to elicit consent. Their fundamental constants—the crushing loneliness of feeling outcast, the performative fakery of adult life (cf. billionaire with busty ballerina)—serve to buffer every conceit that this childishly self-regarding nation has about its mission in the world.

book learnin' corner: miscellany from the past few days

I. Definitions

John Donne

• one of history's great hypochondriacs
  

Inns of Court

• where men go to learn with other men
  

"The Perfume"

• a great Donne poem
  

The Novel

1. legitimized solitude (yay)
   
2. introduced the idea of "a world of readers"
   

Your Life as a Project

• a bourgeois idea
  

Social Hypocrisy

• its tiring
• thus you need the following-

1. time to withdraw and be yourself.
   
2. novels.
   

The Opposite of Holden Caulfield

• Julian in The Red and the Black (he wants to be a phony)
  

The Red and the Black

• a very *very* good novel
• the one cause of the hell we're in: sartorial change in the 19th century
• a way to express this hell without making the reader bored: etc. etc. etc.

The Big Other

• a Lacanian term

Warm Peas and a Ginger Beer

• the saddest, loneliest meal in literature (cf. Joyce in Dubliners)

II. Moments in history

Kant upon finishing the Critique of Pure Reason

reading it is like walking into a well-lit room

^^^ actually probably Goethe on Kant, -ed.

Donne in old age, re his saucy poetry

publish it not, but burn it not

Hegel when asked his opinion about novels

they are the prose of the world

Stendahl upon finishing The Red and the Black

i will be happy if 30-40 people get this, ever.

III. Pronunciations

beourgeois: boosh-WAH

narrator: narr-AH-tor (also nurr-AH-tur)

purposive: pur-POH-sive

IV. Blackboard Quotes

The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others. To write a novel means to carry the incommensurable to extremes in the representation of human life.

^^^^^ Walter Benjamin

stray thoughts on an otherwise sunny morning

why nate runs 3 miles a day in the hbo series 'six feet under'

In one of the early episodes of Six Feet Under, Nate is diagnosed with some sort of brain tumor (google google ... probably this episode) and reacts with denial, saying Hey no way, I'm in great shape, I run 3 miles a day.  When I saw this episode several years ago, it seemed like running must have been the only area where Nate had any discipline.  

But actually, while 3 miles *sounds* like a lot of running, it only takes a half an hour.

And if you're running everyday, you're actually sort of slacking if you stop at 3 miles.  The military does 5 mile runs as a wake-up routine, made easy with a slew of running cadences.

Of course even the military has nothing on Haruki Murakami's definition of serious running: 6 miles, 6 times a week (!)

This bit about Nate's running shows he's actually still a slacker; its a great little detail.  And maybe it shows too that Nate is trying to get his shit together at that point in the story, running everyday but not *too* far, cause that, like, hurts.

(things-thought-over-while-waking-up corner)

slouching towards babylon

^^^ the small print notice near the bottom "ice shelf the size of Manhattan broke off from an Arctic island, a sign of polar warming trends" is the sort of thing one imagines finding washed up on shore once humanity has done themselves in.

That is to say, its the sort of news that doesn't make the front page, instead settling down near the second half of the news-in-brief. Only to be seen by close readers of the future, as they write academic papers about the fall of late capitalism..

initial public offering

It has been fun posting here mostly for my family (and the occasional Norwegian who happens to google for dry bulk shipping) - and it is probably even more fun to share stories with friends.

There is an intrusive feeling that goes along with sending an e-mail around about this blog, so in return i'll do what i can to make the posts here worthwhile.  Okay!

wind-up bird chronicling

I'm almost through with Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Its a book that seems to make people want to tell you what they thought of it; a women near the central park reservoir stopped pushing her stroller to say that Wind-up Bird was her favorite Murakami book, and started to act the way I'd probably act if I saw someone in the park reading Infinite Jest.  

One of the Dads in my building found Murakami's metaphors to be pretty obvious and nothing special.  

Its hard to please everybody..

I think part of liking or not liking Murakami is how you relate to stories.  If you like the feeling of being told a story from a distant uncle who never comes around very much, but when he does he has great stories, you'll probably be a fan of his work.  Murakami does a fair amount of repeating and reminding, just to be sure you don't miss anything important in the story.

Of course, not everyone wants this feeling.  

Maybe there is another kind of reader that instead likes the feeling of dad throwing them into the water to learn how to swim.  That is to say, maybe this reader doesn't want to just enjoy the story but wants to put in some heavy lifting, too.  The kind that might require an OED.

Or maybe lots of people swim between both of these camps.  Categories be damned!