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Not Insignificant

I'm pretty happy with the way yesterday's entry came out, but it didn't go the way I meant it to.

Jon Iverson and I were standing in the parking lot of the Amerisuites Hotel, loading the trunk of his rental car, and saying goodbye.

"Do you need any food?" he asked, offering me a bag of pretzels and some delicious chocolate truffles. "These are good for you when you're sick."

"Thanks Jon." I was happy to take them. They did make me feel better.

I can't remember Jon's exact words after that, but they were something like, "You must be tired of all of us…

More Literary Fakes

Already tired of the James Frey and JT LeRoy scandals? Actually, that sounds like a Jeopardy question: Two writers Wes never heard of before they got outed as fakes.

Encyclopedia Hansiana has a list of other writers who have been "less than completely honest about themselves."

Any additions?

Andy Ward's Classic Album Tributes

I like Andy Ward's illustration style, especially some of these recreations of classic album covers. Of course, in his "Fantasy League Allstars 1," he does have Hendrix playing guitar right-handed, but maybe in his fantasy Jimi plays rightside up.

Real Food; Real 'Ritin'

The best food writing isn't about snooty reactions to snooty cooking, but is like a personal conversation with someone you care about. A.J. Liebling's Between Meqls: An appetite For Paris, Jim Harrison's The Raw and the Cooked, and just about anything by Ruth Reichl all come to mind. And then there's The Great British Crisp Challenge, which is lively and entertaining as all get out.

Sample sentence: "The British passion for the crisp is due in part to an apparent genetic weakness for anything involving the potato."

The Virtual Museum of Toilet Paper

A subject I'd just as soon put behind me.

I remember being interviewed by a couple when I was looking for a house share back in college. The woman of the house asked, "Over or under?" Wondering if I had wandered into a den of inequity beyond my understanding, I glibly responded, "Huh?"

"Toilet paper," she said impatiently,"do you hang it over or under?" That should have warned me away, but I rented the place anyway.

World's Best Concise Quotes

As my readers have probably sussed out, I love to quote. What's not to love? As Mark Twain said (probably—most really good quotes seem to be attributed to Twain, The Bible, Shakespeare, or Casablance), "I get paid the same word rate for quotes as I get paid to make things up."

This list has a twist: State the knowledge in under 10 words. I'd add a few, of course.

Sharp acids corrode their own containers. Albanian Proverb
80% of success is showing up. Woody Allen
More will mean worse. Kingsley Amiss
Nature uses as little as possible of anything. Thomas Kepler
Don't be…

The Death of a Cliché

You know that old bromide about science not being able to explain how a bumblebee flies? It's dead—they did it. As to how bumblebees manage to carry heavy loads, they apparently increase wing stroke amplitude without adjusting frequency, which is already high at 230bps—just like JA's beloved F1 race cars employ high revolution engines to power them to their mind boggling speeds.

This article has video, too.

In Addition to Drugs and Rock & Roll, We Also Discussed Sex

Rushing to get the last bits of the March issue out the door, with just "Letters to the Editor" left to proof, and:

"John," cries Elizabeth, "I can't believe you're publishing that letter from the guy who says there's a huge population of women who'd rather drink water than have sex!"

"What's wrong with that?"

"I just don't think it's true!"

"Well," John replies, "You'll have to write a letter to the editor explaining just how much you do like sex, and stating exactly why you don't like water."

Some Reflections on the Sociology of Anonymity

An interesting treatise on anonymity in the Internet age. How much surveillance is too much? How much freedom from it is excessive? If we don't think these questions through for ourselves, somebody else might come up with answers that aren't palatable.

Those Little Gray Cells

Qwan Wen and Dmitri B. Chklovski, two theoretical physicists, have constructed a model that explains why vertebrate brains typically contain both gray matter and white matter. The gray contains local networks of neurons, wired by dendrites and mostly nonmyelinated local axons, while the white contains long-range axons that implement global communication via often myelinated axons.

So what? In this study, Wen and Chklovski postulate that brain functionality benefits from high synaptic connectivity and short conduction delays—the time required for a signal from one neuron soma to reach…