Monthly Archives: April 2005

Jason Harrod – Bright as You

April 28, 2005
With the release of “Bright as You,” his second solo effort, Jason Harrod has clearly come into his own as a songwriter and as a musician. The album is a sweeping landscape of shadows and light, with richly textured melodies … Continue reading →
Posted in music | 1 Comment

George W. Bush to Speak at Calvin College Commencement

April 21, 2005
I’m speechless. (official announcement)
Posted in society | 25 Comments

More on Freakonomics

April 16, 2005
Felix Salmon added an interesting comment to my recent entry, a review of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I thought I’d respond to it here, rather than in another commment. Here’s what he wrote…
Posted in society | Leave a comment

Take a Stanza – Proustian

April 15, 2005
It would have been too easy to choose the first stanza of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” for this month’s verse: “April is the cruellest month…” Instead, I give to you a few lines of a poem by Edward Hirsch…
Posted in language | 1 Comment

FREAKONOMICS

April 12, 2005
A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything – by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner It’s not too often that I read the introduction, preface, or acknowledgements of a book. Rarer still are the times that I find these introductory materials as finely written and intriguing as the book itself. In fact, the only book in the last few in which the introductory materials were even remotely interesting was Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. Until, that is, I read the Explanatory Note of Freakonomics. It took only the first few paragraphs to hook me. After that, my only concern was that the main part of the book would be a letdown. As it turns out, I had no need to worry.
Posted in society | 4 Comments

Signs and Wonders

April 9, 2005
“Signs” as in street signs or store signs; “Wonders” as in one wonders what the person who wrote that or painted that was thinking, or if the person was thinking at all…
Posted in photography | 5 Comments

Best Mixed Metaphor Ever

April 8, 2005
Tad Friend, in a recent New Yorker article titled “Secret Agent Man,” quotes Michael Ovitz, former Hollywood agent and head of Disney…
Posted in language | 1 Comment

Interesting Things – Virtual and Real

April 5, 2005
A friend recently asked how I find so many cool websites. I’d like to be able to take credit for sniffing them out myself, but almost all of them come from other bloggers who do all the legwork. I just track some of these blogs and keep an eye out for interesting things that they link to. So, here’s my latest installment, gathered from the four corners of the blogosphere…
Posted in miscellany | 2 Comments

Yale Student Contracts Extended Metaphor Disease

April 1, 2005
In what scientists are calling the first text-to-human transmission of a virus, a Yale University student who goes by the name “Anotmas” has contracted the deadly Extended Metaphor Disease (EMD). Doctors for the afflicted student first discovered his condition after concerned friends alerted New Haven police to his plaintive cry for help in an online poetry forum…
Posted in language | 3 Comments