Today we saw a) at least ten grey whales, going south and b) five or six killer whales going north.
I think I will never forget seeing the dorsal fins of the killer whales, looking like tiny black rose thorns on a table covered in wrinkled blue velvet.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Also also wik
T and I have been reading together, and we just finished The Nine Tailors, one of Dorothy L. Sayer's best mystery novels. All of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels are good, but The Nine Tailors is--h'm. Probably second-best. (Gaudy Night is best, and Busman's Honeymoon is a great favorite of mine too.) There are a handful of really great things about the book that are unique. For one, the evocation of the Fen Country as a place, and its inhabitants as a people, are really, really strong. Other LPW novels are situated in very distinctive settings (Five Red Herrings in Scotland, for example), but Sayers is from East Anglia and her attention to the place as a physical setting--its flatness, emptiness, bleakness, the constant attention to the management of water and the constant risk of flooding--really give the book a vivid physical setting.
Also very interesting is her use of campanology--the study of bells, or in her words, the "peculiarly English art of change-ringing"<--possibly paraphrased. The great church bells of Fenchurch St. Paul, where the story takes place, are characters in their own right. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Taylor Paul--especially the last two--are important characters throughout, and play a central role (and in surprising ways) in the plot.
The book is short on Lord Peter's characteristic humor, which isn't particularly a drawback but does make it rather non-characteristic. Overall, it's a great favorite, and highly recommended to anyone in the market for a mystery.
Also very interesting is her use of campanology--the study of bells, or in her words, the "peculiarly English art of change-ringing"<--possibly paraphrased. The great church bells of Fenchurch St. Paul, where the story takes place, are characters in their own right. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Taylor Paul--especially the last two--are important characters throughout, and play a central role (and in surprising ways) in the plot.
The book is short on Lord Peter's characteristic humor, which isn't particularly a drawback but does make it rather non-characteristic. Overall, it's a great favorite, and highly recommended to anyone in the market for a mystery.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Books of the Week
This House of Sky, Ivan Doig: For the Sibling Book Group. It reminds me a little of All the Strange Hours, tho' much more conventional in structure. Well-written. I enjoyed it.
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, Lu Xun: 400 pages of short stories from an early modern (written 1905-1925) Chinese author. Pretty interesting. More allusive and less plot-driven than most Western stories, which I gather is a feature of Eastern storytelling (at least Chinese and Japanese). Ah Q, the Real Story was the best, I thought, largely because the deliberately folksy tone came through so well. The translator's notes make it abundantly clear that translating even modern vernacular Chinese into English must be mind-bendingly difficult. Working with ideograms must just be a whole different ball of wax.
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, Lu Xun: 400 pages of short stories from an early modern (written 1905-1925) Chinese author. Pretty interesting. More allusive and less plot-driven than most Western stories, which I gather is a feature of Eastern storytelling (at least Chinese and Japanese). Ah Q, the Real Story was the best, I thought, largely because the deliberately folksy tone came through so well. The translator's notes make it abundantly clear that translating even modern vernacular Chinese into English must be mind-bendingly difficult. Working with ideograms must just be a whole different ball of wax.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Things of dubious utility which I would nevertheless like to own:
In order of decreasing utility:
1) Prescription sunglasses
2) Another laptop
3) A katana
4) A Tesla roadster
5) An electromagnetic can crusher
1) Prescription sunglasses
2) Another laptop
3) A katana
4) A Tesla roadster
5) An electromagnetic can crusher
Thursday, October 14, 2010
It's that time of year again!!!
DAVID BOWIE TIME!
A brief precis of his film career has thoughtfully been provided by Slate. (Vampire video not recommended. I'm sorry I watched it, myself. o_o) And the man himself features in Before and After: the Rock Star Game, over at verbaldoodles.
A brief precis of his film career has thoughtfully been provided by Slate. (Vampire video not recommended. I'm sorry I watched it, myself. o_o) And the man himself features in Before and After: the Rock Star Game, over at verbaldoodles.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Un angel cayo', un angel se fue
When the angels weep
It rains on the city and on the fields
Because someone has died...
An angel fell, an angel died, an angel left us,
Flying into the morning.
It rains on the city and on the fields
Because someone has died...
An angel fell, an angel died, an angel left us,
Flying into the morning.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The World Cup is over. *tear*
Of course, it has been ending for a long time, in the context of the cup itself. Once you get past the quarterfinals and the games are no longer played every day, the best part is already over. The more so as the semi-finals and finals are often very tentative, at least for a while--the games mean so much that the teams are often playing not to lose rather than to win.
Which is why the 3rd place game is usually one of the best of the tournament. Certainly it was this year. After the departure of the United States from the tournament I pinned my hopes on Uruguay, and they did well--not well enough to beat the Netherlands in the semi-finals, nor Germany in the third place game, but well enough to challenge both. Not bad for a country only a little bigger than Utah in its population. Their star player Diego Forlan is my new favorite player (non-Arsenal division), and deservedly carried off the Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament's best player. From what I hear through the Internets, he is also a really good guy. Here is a little back-story on him.
Spain are champions, and deserved to be. Mostly. They are unusual--perhaps even anomalous--in their style of play, which has been described as "beautiful" by many. I think "hypnotic" might be a better word. If you like soccer you probably watched them and don't need a description, and if you don't it may be hard to get a mental picture just from a verbal description of what they do, but essentially their strategy is to pass the ball around among themselves until the other guy falls over from exhaustion and they can walk the ball into the back of the net. Their midfielders (Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Xabi Alonso) are from another planet in terms of their ability to maintain possession of the ball...a planet full of Catalonians playing keepy-uppy and drawing little triangles on the grass with their passes to each other.
But...and this is a big "but"...they had exactly one player (David Villa) who was willing to shoot the ball--an activity generally regarded as central, even crucial, to winning soccer games. Villa scored five goals. All other Spaniards scored three. Since they didn't benefit from any own goals, we can therefore conclude that Spain scored eight times in seven games. Under ordinary circumstances, one goal a game is not going to get it done for you. Spain, to their credit, got it done; and yet their style, despite its polish and technical brilliance, was curious soporific, as if they smothered each opponent with a silk pillow.
Holland, with whom they disputed the final, did not smother anyone with silk pillows. They kicked them into submission. Mark van Bommel should probably have been sent off in each and every game he played. Arjen Robben, Evil Genius, too, although for diving rather than for kicking people. Nigel de Jong should certainly have been sent off in the final for kicking Xabi Alonso in the chest; probably only an entirely understandable reluctance to see the Netherlands finish the first half with nine players kept the red cards in referee Howard Webb's pocket. Robben and Wesley Sneijder (one of the three to escape the opprobrium of a booking, and the scorer of five goals himself) are certainly geniuses with the ball, but Robben in particular tends to make his living by the dark arts.
The Germans, on the other hand, played beautifully, and that's a role reversal to raise anyone's eyebrows. The Germany-Spain semifinal was remarkable for its flowing play and general sportsmanship; there were fewer fouls (eight) in that game than yellow cards just for the Netherlands (nine, including Heitinga's second) in the final. Thomas Mueller, who is only 20 (I feel old!) won the Golden Boot as top goalscorer, and Germany's team, who are all very young, will certainly look to make their mark in Europe 2012.
So, in the end, alien metronomes seize low-scoring victory, the pantomime villains fall at the last hurdle, while the people's favorites scrum over the leftovers and go home reasonably well satisfied.
Which is why the 3rd place game is usually one of the best of the tournament. Certainly it was this year. After the departure of the United States from the tournament I pinned my hopes on Uruguay, and they did well--not well enough to beat the Netherlands in the semi-finals, nor Germany in the third place game, but well enough to challenge both. Not bad for a country only a little bigger than Utah in its population. Their star player Diego Forlan is my new favorite player (non-Arsenal division), and deservedly carried off the Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament's best player. From what I hear through the Internets, he is also a really good guy. Here is a little back-story on him.
Spain are champions, and deserved to be. Mostly. They are unusual--perhaps even anomalous--in their style of play, which has been described as "beautiful" by many. I think "hypnotic" might be a better word. If you like soccer you probably watched them and don't need a description, and if you don't it may be hard to get a mental picture just from a verbal description of what they do, but essentially their strategy is to pass the ball around among themselves until the other guy falls over from exhaustion and they can walk the ball into the back of the net. Their midfielders (Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Xabi Alonso) are from another planet in terms of their ability to maintain possession of the ball...a planet full of Catalonians playing keepy-uppy and drawing little triangles on the grass with their passes to each other.
But...and this is a big "but"...they had exactly one player (David Villa) who was willing to shoot the ball--an activity generally regarded as central, even crucial, to winning soccer games. Villa scored five goals. All other Spaniards scored three. Since they didn't benefit from any own goals, we can therefore conclude that Spain scored eight times in seven games. Under ordinary circumstances, one goal a game is not going to get it done for you. Spain, to their credit, got it done; and yet their style, despite its polish and technical brilliance, was curious soporific, as if they smothered each opponent with a silk pillow.
Holland, with whom they disputed the final, did not smother anyone with silk pillows. They kicked them into submission. Mark van Bommel should probably have been sent off in each and every game he played. Arjen Robben, Evil Genius, too, although for diving rather than for kicking people. Nigel de Jong should certainly have been sent off in the final for kicking Xabi Alonso in the chest; probably only an entirely understandable reluctance to see the Netherlands finish the first half with nine players kept the red cards in referee Howard Webb's pocket. Robben and Wesley Sneijder (one of the three to escape the opprobrium of a booking, and the scorer of five goals himself) are certainly geniuses with the ball, but Robben in particular tends to make his living by the dark arts.
The Germans, on the other hand, played beautifully, and that's a role reversal to raise anyone's eyebrows. The Germany-Spain semifinal was remarkable for its flowing play and general sportsmanship; there were fewer fouls (eight) in that game than yellow cards just for the Netherlands (nine, including Heitinga's second) in the final. Thomas Mueller, who is only 20 (I feel old!) won the Golden Boot as top goalscorer, and Germany's team, who are all very young, will certainly look to make their mark in Europe 2012.
So, in the end, alien metronomes seize low-scoring victory, the pantomime villains fall at the last hurdle, while the people's favorites scrum over the leftovers and go home reasonably well satisfied.
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