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Taylor Dinerman offers an appreciation of Heinlein on the occasion of his centenary. Of course, he conveniently skips over that embarrassing incest novel Time Enough for Love, but I've always marveled that that one raised eyebrows at all. After all, the heroes of "All You Zombies" (considered by some to be the best time travel story ever—although I confess to being thoroughly creeped out by it) and "By His Bootstraps" go considerably further than traveling back in time to seduce their mothers.
Peeved at Clippy the annoying talking paperclip in MS Word? If you're rude to him, he'll tell you how to turn him off. Programmers call this unhappy user detection.
Hat tip to Language Log.
Why does a hive's queen act so, um, unladylike? It turns out that's an interesting question—and not the only one.
"my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai"
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai"
My first entry in this blog, six weeks ago to the day, was a news flash that Sonny Rollins, the greatest living improviser in jazz, will play at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 18 in a trio with the monumental drummer Roy Haynes and the agile bassist Christian McBride—a one-night stand that no jazz fan could stand missing.
I now hear that the tickets will go on sale this Monday, at Carnegie’s website, over the phone (212-247-7800), or at its box office (57th St. & 7th Avenue). They are likely to sell out quickly.
I have a story in the Arts & Leisure section of today’s New York Sunday Times about Charles Mingus and Art Pepper—specifically about the happy accident that these two famously self-absorbed jazz legends married women who became equally absorbed in preserving their legacies.
The article is pegged to three new CDs of previously unreleased concerts—Mingus at Cornell in 1964, Pepper at Abashiri, Japan, in ’81, and at the Kool Jazz Festival in D.C. (the last performance of his life) in ’82. My article is more a profile of their flame-keeping widows—Sue Mingus and Laurie Pepper—than a…