Year: 2016
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Big Returns: How Fantasy Football is Like Stock Market Investing
This is a guest post by my friend and fantasy football foe Brian Waters. By Brian Waters, CFP® Note: Nothing mentioned in this article is meant to be a recommendation for your investment portfolio. The rapid increase in popularity of daily fantasy football leagues like DraftKings and FanDuel has triggered a debate over whether these games constitute gambling. One…
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DDC 450-499: A grossly unfair linguistic ellipses
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: 450 Italian, Romanian & related languages 460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician 470 Latin & Italic languages 480 Classical & modern Greek languages 490 Other languages Here’s the deal: I started trying to find books in each of the above 10-spots but was having trouble…
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Tom, John, Abby & George
The fourth episode of the John Adams miniseries (“Reunion”) contains two of the best scenes in the show. The first is John hanging with Abigail and Thomas Jefferson in Paris. It’s fun to consider now how these titans of American history would have interacted in their time, before they achieved titan status: The second is…
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But What If We’re Wrong?
I read Chuck Klosterman’s Eating the Dinosaur a few years back and remember liking it, but also don’t remember much about it. So when I saw he had a new one out called But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking about the Present As If It Were the Past, I jumped at the chance to read…
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Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
Finished Lindy West’s Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman in a single evening, not just because it’s a short and fast read, but because I couldn’t stop reading. I heard Lindy for the first time on This American Life: first her story on confronting her troll and then about “coming out” as fat. As in those stories, in Shrill she’s hilarious,…
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Everybody Wants Some!!
With its likable cast, meandering dialogue, and lived-in plotless feel, Everybody Wants Some!! is more than just a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused. It’s the middle sibling between that film and Linklater’s Before series, all of which seem to take place in the same film universe where everyone’s a peripatetic philosopher and life happens in the ordinary moments between…
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Norway, July 2016
This is part 3 of pictures from my summer trip to Scandinavia (previously: Finland and Sweden). I posted pics on Instagram throughout, but these are my favorites from Norway.
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Sweden, July 2016
This is part 2 of pictures from my summer trip to Scandinavia (pics from Finland here). I posted pics on Instagram throughout, but these are my favorites from Stockholm and greater Sweden:
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Helsinki, July 2016
Just got back from a two-week trip to Scandinavia, through Finland, Sweden, and Norway. I posted pics on Instagram throughout, but first up here are my favorites from Finland:
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Who Tells This Story
I remember reading the Hamilton-Burr chapter of Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis at least ten years ago and thinking, How is this not a movie yet? The inherent drama of the story, a true one at that, begs for one. I didn’t expect at the time that story would find its (gargantuan) acclaim ten years later as a musical…
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One Wild Life’s Too Short
I’ve learned that when I encounter two different works of art saying the same thing at basically the same time, I should probably listen. This is what happened when I recently came across references to this query in two different places: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and…
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Track Changes
A good argument could be made for several different technologies being the ideal tool for writers. Pen and paper have proved durable and flexible but aren’t easily manipulated. Typewriters provide an attractive single-purpose distraction-free environment but don’t allow for easy duplication. Modern computers are powerful and multi-purpose, but easily distract. We all are fortunate to…
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Looking for a Mind at Housework
The other day I cleaned the bathroom, swept the porch, kitchen, and living room, washed and dried my clothes, and washed the dishes. There was plenty more I could have done. But I knew I’d be doing those chores again eventually, some sooner and some later, and would have to do others at some point as well. What…
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Each’s Owned
Pictured is the haul ($8 total) from a recent afternoon browsing used bookstores, which I do once in a while, when my time is open and therefore my self-discipline is weak. But I didn’t feel bad about getting more Stuff this time, because I’m coming to something approaching terms with it. I love books, movies,…
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Captain America: Civil War
Spoilers, natch. Finally, a Spider-Man who actually looks like he’s in high school! That, along with ever more compelling character studies of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, made this latest episode of The Marvel Cinematic Universe Show worth watching. Captain America and Iron Man are by far my favorite Marvel characters thus far, and the Avengers I find…
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Man Bookers
This New York Times story about all-male book clubs was not as inflammatory as I knew it would be taken in certain spheres. It turns out (wait for it…) some men are in book clubs just for men. The reaction from one of the groups to the NYT story is worth reading for important context that didn’t get into…
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Lest We Forget
Daniel Larison at The American Conservative remembers what we ought never forget: People that now panic about incipient caudillismo and the dangers of a nationalist demagogue didn’t care when Bush expanded the security state, trampled on the Constitution, or launched an unnecessary war of aggression, and people that yawned at the steady expansion of government and creation…
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Recent Views
More photography here. Flying above Idaho, returning from Portland. I usually don’t take pictures from airplanes, but I’m a sucker for mountains, especially ones as pretty as these. They sparkled: Chicago at sunset, as lonesome and resolute as the celestial orb overlooking it: William Fitzsimmons concert. I liked the natural quadrants that formed outward from the violinist,…