Also visit Fig Crumbs, some of my favorite poetry ever by Michael Crowe.

“Here’s a taxidermist’s,” Bill said. “Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?”

“Come on,” I said. “You’re pie-eyed.”

“Pretty nice stuffed dogs,” Bill said. “Certainly brighten up your flat.”

“Come on.”

“Just one stuffed dog. I can take ‘em or leave ‘em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.”

“Come on.”

“Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.”

“We’ll get one on the way back.”

“All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

We went on.

The Sun Also Rises

If you were in Key West, Florida, I hope you had a chance to stop by the Sloppy Joe’s Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, now in it’s 28th year.

The place where one gains early experience.

e.g. As the story goes, John Boultbee Brooks bought a bicycle in 1865. He found the wooden saddle to be fantastically uncomfortable, but fortunately he had cut his teeth in his father’s workshop of leather horse saddles and started making suitable bicycle saddles from leather. Today, Brooks England LTD still produces classic and highly sought-after leather bicycle saddles and cycling accouterments.

It starts with basics: the difference between glyphs, graphemes, sorts, and characters, to list a few closely-related concepts. Then come the broad classifications, with a bit of required history, and an awesome portmanteau (inelegantly referred to as a “mash-up”), “Garalde”—Claude Garamond + Aldus Manutius. Trivia nerds will find the conclusion, containing the origins of “uppercase,” “lowercase,” and “mind your p’s and q’s”, most rewarding.

When you affect change, your action alters pre-existing change. When you effect change, you create it; change is the effect of your action.

McSweeney’s - an indie publishing house - has a list of great lists.

While you’re browsing, consider buying some of their stuff to help dig them out of a financial rut!

(Thanks, Peter!)

Here’s a YouTube demonstration of the technology and here’s the Dasher website, which offers a test drive of the program. (via GUUUI)

I recently watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s a film based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was the editor-in-chief of Elle. He had suffered a massive stroke in 1995 that left his mind in tact, but his body was completely paralyzed except for one eye and eyelid. Needless to say, he could not speak. Speech therapists devised a method of cycling through the alphabet, whose order was based on frequency of use and he would blink at the letter he wanted to use.

Dasher paired with eye tracking systems is a beautiful way for disabled people to communicate.

Beat up, but upbeat

I’m really positive that one day, soon, very soon,
I’ll find something to be optimistic about.

…but I’m compelled to point out page 34 of the manual, which explicitly lists the items that are forbidden by the FDA to use in conjunction with this product, and look here, what does it say right here in the top spot?” And I say: “I don’t know how to read.” And she says: “It says extra-virgin olive oil.” And she just looks at me.

The Harness, by Joshua Allen.

There’s lots more fantastic stuff over at Fireland.

Every line in the talk is worth quoting, but this gets the point across:

Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they will have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong. I’m not saying that being wrong is the same as creativity. What we do know is if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. By the time they come to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. We run our companies this way … and we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

In 20 minutes, Robinson provides a concise case for nurturing creativity in schools.

via swissmiss

There are words galore at wordsmith.org

Image from 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, a high-quality new book in it’s own right, independent of novelty architecture contained therein.

For those looking to break into this Longaberger thing, you should probably read this first: Is it Really a Longaberger?.

And one more thing, to add to the rather scatter-brainèdness of this post, a tidbit from the small-associative-leap-of-the-week department: the first result when Googling “identifying a”.

THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES
—Mr. President! Did you hear about Woodstock?
—Woo—Woodstock? What in God’s name is that?
—Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it.
—Oh, my God. They must really be serious about this whole thing.

The Wisdom of Children, by Simon Rich

An MIT student wearing what turned out to be a fake bomb was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and later claimed it was artwork, officials said. [Emphases added. -c]

You really have to read the whole article. I appreciate journalistic care that must be used when describing crimes—actions are “alleged” until proven guilty—but the diction and charges greatly imply there was intent on the student’s part to deceive with the device.

The battery-powered rectangular device had nine flashing lights, and Simpson had Play-Doh in her hands.

You’d think a legit bomber might be able to reduce the number of flashing lights to three or four. You know, for stealthiness.

AP article on MIT student’s “hoax bomb” via schneier

Update

How should the lede have read? Maybe something like this:

An MIT student wearing what authorities believed to be a bomb was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and when questioned asserted it was artwork.