Solar eclipse pic from Mir

An extremely nifty picture of the recent solar eclipse as seen from Mir. Wow.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Since it's considered one of the first English novels, Daniel Defoe can be forgiven for just kinda trailing off at the end of Robinson Crusoe. Even so, I found it hard to like, this book that everyone from Karl Marx to Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Edgar Allan Poe seems to adore. Defoe's basic storytelling of how Crusoe survived on the island is wonderfully imaginative, but the segues into religion and the underlying classism & racism were a bit too much for my contemporary mind to handle.

For instance, after years alone on the island, Crusoe rescues a native, names him Friday, and makes him his servant even though Friday is his only companion, the first person he's talked to in over 20 years. For awhile, the book is all Friday-this and Friday-that and then a European shows up (followed by more Europeans) and, poof!, Friday is pretty much forgotten by Crusoe and Defoe, except for running errands and fetching things.

This is pretty much par-for-the-course thinking for 1719 (when the book was published) or the mid-1600s (when the book takes place), but I can't understand how Defoe can write about Crusoe's humble experiences on the island (i.e. all shipwrecked and stranded men are equally screwed) and then think that the natural thing to do with a fellow traveller in peril is relegate him to the role of servant because he's not European. Somehow Crusoe is a lot less humbled by his solitude than one would expect, and Defoe's failure to connect the dots between Crusoe's situation and the larger issue of equality was disappointing to me.

Note: Since Robinson Crusoe was first published in the 1700s, it's well out of copyright and available online in its entirety. As is Mary Godolphin's version of it written with one-syllable words.

The secret train platform beneath the Waldorf=Astoria

Gothamist has a collection of photos of the abandoned train platform underneath the Waldorf=Astoria.

Over the weekend we had a chance to visit the long-abandoned Waldorf-Astoria train platform, which allowed VIPs to enter the hotel in a more private manner -- most famously it was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, possibly to hide the fact that he was in a wheelchair suffering from polio. The mysterious track, known as Track 61, still houses the train car and private elevator, which were both large enough for FDR's armor-plated Pierce Arrow car. Legend has it that the car would drive off the train, onto the platform and straight into the elevator, which would lead to the hotel's garage.

Photos by Sam Horine.

Imaginary GOOP

From Vanity Fair, an imagined GOOP newsletter from Gwyneth Paltrow.

What is it about books that make them so truly great to read? I think it's the way the words are printed on every page, the right way up and in just the right order.

This means you can start reading on the first page and then continue reading through the middle pages all the way to the last page.

Here are some of my absolute favorite books. War, by Leo Tolstoy. A great read. Bonus: You can get it as part of a two-volume edition which includes Peace by the same great author.

Shakespeare, by Shakespeare. He has so many great lines. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "I am the Walrus." "My heart will go on." They're part of the language.

Next week, we learn to peel a banana with a world-expert fruit psychologist.

Compare with the real thing:

As I write this, I am finishing the amazing three-week-long "Clean" detox program detailed below. Designed by New York cardiologist and detoxification specialist Dr. Alejandro Junger, this program allowed me to work and exercise regularly, something I cannot do if I am on a liquid-only detox. I followed it to the letter and I can report that it worked wonders. I feel pure and happy and much lighter (I dropped the extra pounds that I had gained during a majorly fun and delicious "relax and enjoy life phase" about a month ago). I also really enjoyed learning about the incredible health benefits of resting your digestive system, etc. This thing is amazing. And don't forget to ask your doctor if a cleanse is right for you.

Cleanses, "relax and enjoy life phase", resting your digestive system...I don't know where to begin. (thx, dj jacobs)

I, Cheeseburger

In thinking about making meals completely from scratch, Waldo Jaquith realizes that making a simple cheeseburger would have been nearly impossible before the twentieth century.

Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in in the fall. Mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive-requiring a trio of cows-and demand many acres of land. There's just no sense in it.

A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors-in all likelihood, a couple of dozen-and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh.

(via stellar)

Why you should care about cricket

Knowing nothing about cricket, ESPN.com writer Wright Thompson heads for India to watch the 2011 Cricket World Cup and discovers he's a fan but that India's relationship with the sport is changing.

"The aggression, the brashness," says Bhattacharya, the cricket writer turned novelist. "It's now something which Indians see that this is what we have to do to assert our place in the world. We've been f---ed over for thousands of years. Everyone has conquered us. Now we're finding our voice. We're the fastest-growing economy in the world. We are going to buy your companies. Our cricket team is like going to f---ing abuse you back, and we're going to win and we're going to shout in your face after we win. People love that."

See also How To Explain the Rules of Cricket.

Job board

Every week, I get 3 or 4 inquiries from people looking for jobs in the web design/technology area or for employees (happily, it's more the latter than the former these days). When I hear about someone who needs some work done and I have a friend or friend of a friend who's available, I'm glad to make the connection. For the past couple of years, I've wanted to build a job board for kottke.org to make more of these connections possible, but I never got around to it. So when Jason Fried asked me if I wanted to put a link to the simple, focused 37signals Job Board on kottke.org (you'll find it on every page of the site, below The Deck ad), that seemed to be the next best thing to building my own. I've been referring people there anyway, so a stronger connection makes sense.

Historiography is the study of the practice

Historiography is the study of the practice of history. "When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians."

David Mamet's guidelines for screenwriting

In a memo to the writers of The Unit, David Mamet (the show's executive producer) provides a short but master class in writing for television.

THINK LIKE A FILMMAKER RATHER THAN A FUNCTIONARY, BECAUSE, IN TRUTH, YOU ARE MAKING THE FILM. WHAT YOU WRITE, THEY WILL SHOOT.

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER "AS YOU KNOW", THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

(thx, mark)

17,000 people trying to out-joke each other about

17,000 people trying to out-joke each other about pancakes...what does that sound like?.

Jane Jacobs Way

The block of Hudson St between Perry and W 11th will be co-named "Jane Jacobs Way" in honor of the influential urban thinker.

GVSHP first proposed the street co-naming in 2006 shortly after Jacobs' death; the proposal was approved by the local community board and the City Council, and then sat in limbo for 2 1/2 years.

Also, the townhouse that Jacobs lived in on the street is for sale. (thx, meg)

Elusive movie objects

Sixteen elusive movie object of desire, including White Castle burgers in Harold & Kumar, the Ark of the Convenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the One Ring from the LOTR trilogy.

The business of parenting

Salon had an interview with Pamela Paul the other day, author of Parenting, Inc., a book about the business of parenting. Paul starts out by disparging the $800 stroller phenomenon. Ollie's stroller was somewhat expensive (not $800 but not $100 either) but it's well built, flexible in use, nicely designed (functionally speaking), and was far and away the best one for our needs. We didn't feel good about spending so much money, but the eventual cost-per-use will be in the range of cents, so we're really happy with our choice so far. Some parents buy expensive strollers more as a fashion statement, so I can see where Paul is coming from on this one.

I thought the rest of the interview was quite good. We're still new to this parenting thing, but Paul seems to be on the right track. Here's her take on the best toys for kids:

When you think back to the '60s and '70s, all the right-thinking progressive parents thought toys should be natural and open-ended. Crayola and Kinder Blocks and Lego were considered raise-your-kid-smart toys. Then, all this data that came out which said that kids need to be stimulated. They need sound! They need multi-sensory experiences! Now, the more bells and whistles a toy has, the supposedly better it is.

Our parents' generation actually had it right. The less the toy does, the better. Everyone thinks: "Toys need to be interactive." No, toys don't need to be interactive. Children need to interact with toys. The best toys are 90 percent kid, 10 percent toy, the kind of thing that you can use 20 different ways, not because it has 20 different buttons to press, but because the kid, when they're 6 months old is going to chew on it, and toss it, but when they're a year they're going to start stacking it.

And then later:

At the most basic level reuse, recycle, repurpose. The average American child gets 70 new toys a year. That is just so far beyond what is necessary. Most child gear, toys, books are a lot cheaper, relatively speaking, than they were decades ago. In the aggregate it ends up being a lot more expensive, because we're buying a lot more of it, but kids just don't need that many toys. Kids lose out when things become less special.

We've been avoiding toys that make noise and light up. Half of his toys are garbage -- old toilet paper rolls, bags that our coffee pods come in, 20oz soda bottles filled with colored water or split peas, scraps of fabric, etc. -- or not even toys at all -- pots and pans, measuring spoons, etc. It seems like the right approach for us; Paul's "90 percent kid, 10 percent toy" really resonates.

Paul also talks about not overstimulating kids. When I get up in the morning or come home from the office, it's hard not to scoop Ollie up and give him constant attention until he goes to bed or down for a nap. Instead, I've been trying to leave him alone to play and explore by himself. He's getting old enough that when he wants me involved, he'll come to me. In this way, parenting is like employee management; give people the resources they need and then let them do their jobs.

This last bit reminded me of our trip to Buy Buy Baby (subtle!!) to procure baby proofing supplies. They totally had a Wall of Death designed to entice parents to coat their entire house in cheap white plastic.

The baby-proofing industry completely preys on parents' worst anxieties and fears. It really doesn't take a brain surgeon to baby-proof a house, and every store has the "Wall of Death" with like 10,000 products in it that you can affix to any potentially sharp surface in your house, if you choose to go that route.

It's difficult not to feel incredibly manipulated by the Wall of Death. You know deep down that it's ridiculous; your parents didn't have any of this crap and you turned out fine. But then the what-ifs start gnawing away at your still-shaky confidence as a new parent. Our encounter with the Wall paralyzed us, and with the exception of those plastic wall outlet plugs, we've punted on baby proofing for now. We're letting Ollie show us where all the problem areas are before committing to any white plastic solutions.

The genetics that create tightly-coupled beehives and

The genetics that create tightly-coupled beehives and ant nests can also form lazy anarchies.

Pluto not a planet anymore

Boo, astronomers, boo!!!

Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet. About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly. Astronomers rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club. Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

Screw this, what about all of Pluto's mindshare? Now we're going to need a new mnemonic device.

Update: Meg and I came up with a mnew mnemonic device in protest of the Pluto decision:

Man, very erroneous! Moronic jerks shouldn't uninclude neat Pluto.

And you know what that means! Mnemonic device contest! Send in your best mnew mnemonic device for remembering the planets (either for the old 9 planets or the new 8 planets) and you'll be entered to win an as-yet-unspecified prize. All entries must be sent with the subject line "Pluto mnemonic device contest" and must be received by 5pm ET today. I'll publish the winners sometime soon. Contest update: Ok, pencils down, it's 5pm and the contest has concluded. Judging will take place soon and the still-as-yet-unspecified prize will be awarded directly following.

Web magazines

Before weblogs ruled the realm, a typical way to publish content online was in a Web magazine format. Suck, Feed, Netly News, Smug, Stating the Obvious, etc. Sites like Salon, The New Yorker, Slate, and even most online newspapers publish in the magazine format, but sites like The Morning News and McSweeney's Internet Tendency are more culturally similar to those early Web magazines (in sensibility and because there's no offline component). Are there any other sites that you read that are still publishing regularly in this format?

Updates on previous entries for Mar 11, 2011*

Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Japanese earthquake orig. from Mar 11, 2011

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

London wins right to host 2012 Olympic Games

London wins right to host 2012 Olympic Games.

Airplane hacks

Airplane hacks. Flight attendant fixes bad plane odor by wiping coffee scent everywhere.

William Safire, who now does the On

William Safire, who now does the On Language column for the NY Times, wrote a speech for President Nixon in 1969 in the event that something happened during the Apollo 11 mission to strand the astronauts on the moon.

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

(via cyn-c)

Fictional Iron Chef match-up between Thomas Keller

Fictional Iron Chef match-up between Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck. Arguing over food science has never been so interesting.

The totem fridge

For creator Stefan Buchberger, a design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, the idea grew out of a semester-long theme about keeping personal space clean and tidy. "I decided to create Flatshare fridge because there is nothing more disgusting than a dirty fridge in a shared flat," he says. "At the time, I was living in such a flat!"

The fridge consists of a base station and up to four stackable modules. The modules allow each individual user to have his or her own refrigerator space and can be customized with various colorful skins as well as with add-ons like a bottle opener or a whiteboard.

The Flatshare refrigerator has the perhaps unfortunate side effect of reinforcing which household members hold lower positions on the metaphorical totem pole and therefore always need to bend down to access their unit while higher-status members can easily get at their fruit and veg without genuflection. (via cribcandy)

BBC to Church: 'Where are the ... media-savvy performers?'

BBC to Church: 'Where are the ... media-savvy performers?'. Warning: Be more interesting than gardeners, or lose your airtime.

The Pioneer Anomaly

The Pioneer Anomaly. Something appears to be slowing the Pioneer spacecraft down, but no one knows what it is yet.

I will be posting your

I will be posting your E-Quill feedback on kottke.org (see below) in the next couple of days. Keep it coming. For now, here's one of my favorites so far.

The mystery of Tobias Wong's death

Artist and designer Tobias Wong killed himself last month. Or did he? Sleep can be a dangerous thing.

NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman

NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman wrote a paper when he was an assistant professor in 1978 called The Theory of Interstellar Trade. Here's the abstract:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the good than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

When Obama wins...

According to the latest polls, we might be close to finding out what happens When Obama Wins...

New York destroyed in movies

Scenes from several movies that depict New York being destroyed (Day After Tomorrow, Ghostbusters, Independence Day, etc.) accompanied by George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which famously accompanies a similar but less violent montage at the beginning of Woody Allen's Manhattan.

Or...

Watch New York get fucking destroyed in the movies!!!

Kernin' in the boys room

Kernin' in the boys room. Someone wrote "bitch" on the wall of a men's bathroom at Parsons and someone else corrected their kerning.

Aerial map of NYC from 1924

The interactive map on the NYC govt site has hi-resolution aerial photos from 1924 (click the camera and move the slider to 1924). Check out all the piers, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the old baseball stadiums, the LES (and everywhere else they built housing projects), Penn Station, and the skyscraperless Midtown. This is hours of fun.

Update: The NYC Oasis map features a satellite view from 1996 and an imagined sat view from 1609. (thx, steve)

The winners of the 5K

The winners of the 5K Award have been announced. Interestingly, an ecommerce site won top honors. My favorite entry, The Logical Fallacy of Being, did not make the cut in any of the categories.

Don Draper pitches Facebook Timeline

This is just flat-out fantastic.

(via ★interesting)

"If you could cause one invention from

"If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?" Nuclear weapons? Land mines? Internal combustion engine?

Another photo analogy

Inspired by the photo I posted the other day about the state of the Web, a reader sent me this photo summing up how he currently feels about software development as an industry.

Malcolm Gladwell took a break from his

Malcolm Gladwell took a break from his day job to write another book and has returned to shorter form writing with a short blog post and a New Yorker article on criminal profiling.

A profile isn't a test, where you pass if you get most of the answers right. It's a portrait, and all the details have to cohere in some way if the image is to be helpful. In the mid-nineties, the British Home Office analyzed a hundred and eighty-four crimes, to see how many times profiles led to the arrest of a criminal. The profile worked in five of those cases. That's just 2.7 per cent, which makes sense if you consider the position of the detective on the receiving end of a profiler's list of conjectures.

The identity of anyone with information on Gladwell's new book will be treated with the greatest of discretion...hit me on my burner.

Today is a day of

Today is a day of small offerings. Right now, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is playing in my headphones....it's one of my favorite musical selections.

ATB's Movin' Melodies, while different from the ol' Ludwig Van, is also good, albeit for different reasons. Mad props (is that how the kids are saying it these days?) to Bryan for turning me onto them.

Mission Impossible 2 has lots of good action and very little else that's interesting. I was entertained.

Screw the t-shirts and watches,

Screw the t-shirts and watches, I want an actual Pets.com sock puppet. If you could find me one....well, "I kiss you."

Where to vote

Curious as to where you might vote today? Find your fucking polling location. Pairs well with What the fuck has Obama done so far?

The advantages of being in the weeds

eGullet recently interviewed author Michael Ruhlman and he had this to say about what he liked about working in a professional kitchen:

You can't lie in a kitchen -- that's what I like most about it. You're either ready or you're not, you're either clean or you're a mess. You're either good or you're bad. You can't lie. If you lie, it's obvious. If your food's not ready, then it's not ready. If you're in the weeds, its clear to everybody -- you can't say that you aren't. So I love that aspect of it. I love the immediacy of it, the vitality of it.

I've worked in a number of different places over the years and the ones I ended up liking the least were the places that allowed people (myself included) to hide. Some companies just have way too many people for the amount of available work. Other times, particular employees have a certain status within the organization that allows them to determine their own schedules and projects. Deadlines are often malleable, meaning that work can pushed off. Inexperienced or nontechnical managers might not have a clue how long a task should take a programmer...budgeting 2 weeks for a six-hour task that seems hard buys one a lot of blog-surfing time. Companies with coasting employees are everything a kitchen isn't; they just feel slow, wasteful, lifeless, and eventually they suck the life out of you too.

Powerpoint deck design

Powerpoint deck design.

Microsoft to buy Macromedia?

Microsoft to buy Macromedia?.

Patrick Naughton's Web site. If

Patrick Naughton's Web site. If you'll remember, he's the Infoseek exec that got nailed by the FBI for crossing state lines to have sex with a 12yo girl. Here is the FBI agent's affidavit recounting what happened with the case. Interesting, if somewhat disturbing.

The effects of whitespace and leading on

The effects of whitespace and leading on reading speed and comprehension.

Eyetrack 2004 Heatmap

Eyetrack 2004 Heatmap. Great way of showing how people look at news sites.

Jim Romenesko is running a Starbucks gossip weblog

Jim Romenesko is running a Starbucks gossip weblog. RSS feed comes in tall, grande, and vente sizes.

David Cross on the "hottest and newest" video games

David Cross on the "hottest and newest" video games.

Show your PPPPRIDE and buy yourself a

Show your PPPPRIDE and buy yourself a FFFFOUND! TTTT-SHIRT. [Ok, knock that off. -ed]

I love companies like Xootr.

I love companies like Xootr. Not only do they sell a superior scooter, they are really enthusiastic about it. Just check out their Web site; it's certainly not the prettiest site in the world, but read the copy on the front page and in some of the other sections. It's down-home, it's folksy; they're not talking down to anyone, they're genuinely excited about the great products they have, and they are certainly not talking about their company in some detached-yet-boastful tone that suggests there's really not all that much to talk about in the first place.

My favorite part of the site is the Why Buy Xootr section and the detailed discussion on wheels in particular. After 5 minutes of reading and not having ever looked around at any other scooter brands, I was hooked; if I ever buy a kick scooter, it's going to be a Xootr...and that's saying something because I'm most definitely a shop-around kinda guy.

There's also a really good article about Xootr I was going to point you to, but stupid Fast Company doesn't have it on their Web site.

Author (and reader) Nick Hornby on how

Author (and reader) Nick Hornby on how to read. "Please, if you're reading a book that's killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren't enjoying a television programme."

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross

Alex Ross is the music critic for the New Yorker and the author of a new book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, "a history of the twentieth century through its music". My interest in music skews toward the contemporary popular, so I recently took the opportunity to ask Ross a few questions about classical music from the novice-but-interested music listener's perspective.

Jason Kottke: I've enjoyed classical music whenever I've heard it, but I don't know too much about it. Where might I begin to explore further?

Alex Ross: My big thing is that classical music doesn't really exist. When you have a repertory that goes from Hildegard von Bingen's medieval chant to Vivaldi's bustling Baroque concertos to Wagner's five-hour music dramas to John Cage's chance-produced electronic noise to Steve Reich's West African-influenced "Drumming," you're not talking about a single sound. Whatever variety of noise you desire, we've got it at the classical emporium. I'd suggest plunging it at various ends of the spectrum - some Vivaldi or Bach, the Beethoven "Eroica" or some other big-shouldered nineteenth-century classic, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" (which foreshadows so much pop music to come), and Reich or Philip Glass. The idea is to get a feeling for what composers were trying to express at any given time, and, of course, deciding whether you want to follow them. There's no correct path through the labyrinth.

Kottke: I just received a copy of your book in the mail, and it's got a "Suggested Listening" section following the endnotes with 10 recommended recordings and 20 more if you make it through those. How did you go about choosing those? Narrowing the 20th century musical landscape down to 30 recordings...that's pretty cheeky.

Ross: It's very hard, not to mention cheeky, picking recommended recordings, because so often it's a matter of personal taste, both in terms of what works really "matter" and also in terms of which recordings are best. The almighty "Rite of Spring" has received any number of brilliant recordings over the years. Having picked one of Stravinsky's own versions - he had such a great feeling for rhythm as a conductor - I immediately wondered whether I should have chosen the recent Esa-Pekka Salonen/LA Philharmonic version on DG, which is in gleaming modern sound and is as rock-solid as any "Rite" of modern times. So it's subjective and leads to endless argument. But I was simply recommending a bunch of starting points, not the be-all end-all ultimate Top 10 of all time. I favored recordings that were cheap, that covered a lot of ground in 60 or 70 minutes. People can listen to excerpts on iTunes and Amazon and see if they really want to plunk down the cash. One thing's for sure: you do need to own the "Rite," no matter what kind of music you love. It's the original sexy.

Kottke: Related to the first question, when I go to Amazon and search for "Beethoven", there are over 10,000 results just in the classical music category. There are even more results for Bach. Are there significant differences between all the different versions of their music? How does the bewildered beginner pick the "right" version of Bach's works to listen to? Should you look for brand names (e.g. Yo-Yo Ma), only buy music recorded by major symphonies or put out by certain record labels, or just get whatever is cheapest?

Ross: It's definitely overwhelming - a serious glut. I've been reviewing for fifteen years and in the last year or two I seem to be getting twice as many CDs as ever - not to mention all the MP3s that composers and ensembles have put up on the Internet. There are definitely some significant differences among recordings. You have a lot of expert but boring renditions and then you have the ones that touch perfection or posses exceptional emotional power. Listen to Lorrane Hunt Lieberson singing the Bach cantatas and everyone else will sound a little wan. Certain people are always reliable - Yo-Yo Ma is ever eloquent, Mitsuko Uchida is a great pianist, Claudio Abbado makes one great or near-great orchestral recording after another. You can tell from Amazon reviews when a recording has really knocked people sideways. But live concerts are always better! I'm sometimes more moved by a not great but heartfelt live performance than by a world-class recording. In the hall you feel the weight of the cellos, the resonances of tones in space, the response of the crowd, all those intangibles. Tickets are less expensive than you may think. Particularly if you're a student, you can get amazing deals - $12 tickets for the New York Philharmonic, for example.

Kottke: One of the things I've noticed about classical music recordings is how reasonably priced they are, particularly the pre-20th century music. Have you read any of Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen? In it, he suggests that to get the most value out of your music buying dollar, you should pay more attention to music that hasn't been recently released, the idea being that there are more gems to be found in the last 200 years of music than in this week's Billboard lists. I have a feeling you might agree with that view.

Ross: That's an interesting theory. If you buy Maria Callas's recording of "Tosca," chances are it's probably still going to deliver the goods twenty years from now, if CDs or MP3s still exist then. Fergie is maybe a riskier long-term bet. Also interesting is Chris Anderson's Long Tail concept, which suggests that there's more hidden commercial power in these thousands upon thousands of classical recordings than anyone suspected, even if they sell only a few times a year. The Naxos label says it gets 30-40% of total digital sales from albums that are downloaded 4 times a month or less. In any case, there's now a huge catalogue of classical CDs that go for $10 or less. The Tashi recording of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," one of my top 10 picks, goes for $8 on Amazon. The Amazon download site was for a while offering Wagner's entire sixteen-hour "Ring" cycle for $13.98. This turned out to be a clerical error, but enough classical-heads converged on the bargain that for a day or two Richard Wagner was the #1 downloaded artist on Amazon, beating out Kanye West. That amused me. Watch out for these classical guys - they start slow but beat you in the end.

Kottke: Let's say you're still around 80 years from now, writing a sequel to The Rest is Noise about music from 1980 to 2080. What contemporary music (circa 1980-2007) will still be important and relevant in 2080?

Ross: That's a tough question! Critics often turn out to be very wrong about what's truly important in their own time. George Bernard Shaw, for example, considered Hermann Goetz a great composer, a worthy successor to Beethoven. Though is "wrong" the right word? If Shaw had deep feelings about that music, he was, within his personal frame of reference, absolutely right. In classical music we maybe focus too much on the idea that the opinion of posterity is the only one that matters. In any case, here are twelve works that I believe will still matter to me, at least, if by some medical miracle I'm still around in 2080:

Steve Reich, Different Trains
John Adams, Nixon in China
Kaija Saariaho, L'Amour de loin
Sofia Gubaidulina, Offertorium
Gérard Grisey, Les Espaces acoustiques
Arvo Pärt, Da pacem domine
Louis Andriessen, De Stijl
Thomas Ades, Asyla
Georg Friedrich Haas, in vain
Michael Gordon, Decasia
Magnus Lindberg, Kraft
Osvaldo Golijov, St. Mark Passion

---

Thanks, Alex. We'll be checking back with you in 2080 to see how you fared. Ross has a piece out in the New Yorker this week about classical music and the internet that's related to our conversation above. He's also constructed a fantastic enhanced bibliography for the book that includes audio samples of some of the music written discussed in the book, presumably to reduce the dancing about architecture effect.

For real this time: Mythbusters will air

For real this time: Mythbusters will air their challenge of the airplane on a conveyor belt puzzle this Wednesday at 9pm ET. (thx, darin)

A new Chinese restaurant opens

A new Chinese restaurant opens today on the ground floor of the building I work in. The entire building now smells like, well, you can probably guess what it smells like. I'll give you a hint: it ain't roses. Anyway, it's making me hungry and nauseous all at the same time.

Michael "Moneyball" Lewis on the CA recall circus

Michael "Moneyball" Lewis on the CA recall circus.

2003 NYC Blackout

The power went out around 4:10pm or so as I sat in front of my computer. I don't know the exact time because most of the clocks in the office are electric. Wandered around the 15th floor for a bit, looking out the window at people in the building across the street looking over at our building and down to the street. Reports via cell phone that the power is out in Brooklyn as well.

I grabbed provisions from the dark fridge (a bottle of water) and set off from 45th Street across town and down 30 blocks to 14th Street and into the Village...after 15 flights of stairs. When I emerged from the building, people were everywhere. It's midtown, so people are usually everywhere, but this was that times ten. I waded through the crowd down 5th Avenue to 34th Street.

Nobody knows what's going on. A red emergency vehicle is parked, the driver has the passenger side door open with the radio blasting the news out to a crowd of people. Everyone stands listening, heads cocked to one side, looking at the ground, straining for details. I join them for a couple of minutes. The radio says that the power is out. Duh.

I pass a woman saying to another woman that Madison Square Garden is on fire. Two minutes later, I walk past a very intact and very much not burning Madison Square Garden. The crowd is so dense that we're all shuffling along, no one getting anywhere fast. Someone bumps into the person in front of me. "Hey, watch where the hell you're going." People are little scared and seem on edge. I don't hear the word terrorism, but the air is thick with the thought.

I reach 18th Street. Some shops are open, most are not. The ice cream shop is doing good business. The owner of a bodega has barricaded the door with shelves of food and stands watch with him employees.

A block from home, I see a couple sitting outside at a restaurant, sipping Coronas, watching the world go by.

And now, I leave for the airport. I have no idea if we'll get there in time.

Heading to the South Pole and back...on skis

Ben Saunders is a little bit crazy. He does stuff like ski solo from Russia to Canada via the North Pole just for the heck of it. When I was last in London, I called him up to make dinner plans and he apologized if he seemed a "little" tired because he'd been out for a "bit" of a run this morning. That short run turned out to be 20 miles. (At dinner that evening, Ben and his training partner, Tony, ate everything on the table short of the cutlery.)

Ben's latest endeavor is his upcoming expedition across Antarctica to the South Pole, dubbed SOUTH:

Here's the plan. The first return journey to the South Pole on foot and the longest unsupported polar journey in history. In October next year, Tony Haile and I will set out from Scott's hut, on the shores of McMurdo Sound on a 1,800-mile, four-month round trip, from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back. No dogs, no vehicles, no kites, no resupplies. We're calling it SOUTH.

The great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen made the only return journey, using dogs, 93 years ago. His rival Captain Scott died on his return from the Pole just 11 miles from the relative safety of his largest depot. Since then every expedition has either been flown out from the Pole or used dogs, kites or vehicles. Many people have blamed Scott's failure on his reliance on human power, and many experts still believe an entirely human-powered journey of this magnitude to be impossible. We think otherwise.

Expeditions of this sort are generally funded by large corporations who give money in exchange for advertising and sponsorship opportunities. On his last expedition to the North Pole, Ben blogged (and photoblogged) daily using a PDA & satellite phone and was cheered along by the thousands who read and commented on the journey. So for SOUTH, Ben and Tony are doing something a little different...they are seeking financial support from private individuals (and companies/groups/etc.). For a donation of $100, you can "own a mile" of the expedition, which means you get a listing on the site, a listing on the front page when your mile of the expedition is completed, your name enscribed on one of the expedition sleds, and your name on a flag planted at the South Pole. Ben and Tony are great guys and I would love to see them succeed, so give them a hand if you can.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest once again proved finite, although it's taken me since August to get through it. This book was such a revelation the first time through that I was afraid of a reread letdown but I enjoyed it even more this time around...and got much more out of the experience too.

Right as I was finishing the book, I read a transcription of an interview with Wallace in which interviewer Michael Silverblatt asked him about the fractal-like structure of the novel:

MICHAEL SILVERBLATT: I don't know how, exactly, to talk about this book, so I'm going to be reliant upon you to kind of guide me. But something came into my head that may be entirely imaginary, which seemed to be that the book was written in fractals.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Expand on that.

MS: It occurred to me that the way in which the material is presented allows for a subject to be announced in a small form, then there seems to be a fan of subject matter, other subjects, and then it comes back in a second form containing the other subjects in small, and then comes back again as if what were being described were -- and I don't know this kind of science, but it just -- I said to myself this must be fractals.

DFW: It's -- I've heard you were an acute reader. That's one of the things, structurally, that's going on. It's actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket, which is a very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal, although what was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket was the first- was the draft that I delivered to Michael in '94, and it went through some I think 'mercy cuts', so it's probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now. But it's interesting, that's one of the structural ways that it's supposed to kind of come together.

MS: "Michael" is Michael Pietsche, the editor at Little, Brown. What is a Sierpinski Gasket?

DFW: It would be almost im- ... I would almost have to show you. It's kind of a design that a man named Sierpinski I believe developed -- it was quite a bit before the introduction of fractals and before any of the kind of technologies that fractals are a really useful metaphor for. But it looks basically like a pyramid on acid --

To answer Silverblatt's question, a Sierpinski Gasket is constructed by taking a triangle, removing a triangle-shaped piece out of the middle, then doing the same for the remaining pieces, and so on and so forth, like so:

The result is an object of infinite boundary and zero area -- almost literally everything and nothing at the same time. A Sierpinski Gasket is also self-similar...any smaller triangular portion is an exact replica of the whole gasket. You can see why Wallace would have wanted to structure his novel in this fashion.

You call that a record?

There's a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest time balancing on one leg. It's some insane amount of time like 39 hours. However, the person was allowed to take a five minute break every hour.

So really, the record was actually only an hour. That's not much of a record.

This photo of boxer Hasim

This photo of boxer Hasim Rahman lying on the canvas after being knocked out by Lennox Lewis is very cool. The king is dead; long live the king.

From the past weekend's box office: the

From the past weekend's box office: the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men took in $3.1 million on 148 screens while Tom Cruise's bombtacular Lions for Lambs took in $2.9 million on 2216 screens. Ouch.