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Maternity Leave

You know how sometimes you can't tell how wonderful an audio component is until after you've removed it from your system?

Same thing with managing editors.

Ours has gone on that weird thing called "maternity leave." Personally, I don't get it. I spoke with Elizabeth on the phone today, and she sounds totally fine. What's up with this? If I were her, I'd get my ass in the office¹.

And you know she was sneaky about that sex stuff. She planned the birth to coincide perfectly with our biggest, most arduous, issue of the year. Fancy that. Nice move, E., leaving me here…

Haden Plus

I’ve been cramming to make a deadline all week, much of it spent out of town reporting, but here’s a quick preview of bloggings to come:

First, those in the NYC area should make it to the Blue Note at least one night this coming week, as Charlie Haden plays duets with various pianists: Kenny Barron on Tuesday, Ethan Iverson (of The Bad Plus) on Wednesday, Paul Bley on Thursday, and Brad Mehldau from Friday through Sunday. Haden, of course, was the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet and has ever since been spinning that “harmolodic” magic whereby a musician plays around the…

World Clock

Click on the "year" button to indicate the data from the beginning of this year.
Click on the "month" button to indicate the data from the beginning of this month.
Click on the "day" button to indicate the data for today.
The "now" button shows data from a standing start.

Hat tip to JA

The Sun in Motion

Gary Palmer shows us the Sun as we have never seen it before.

Probing Suspension Dynamics

Aka the physics of beer bubbles.

Is Time Travel Possible?

"Much of the science being done today in many fields will turn out to be wrong. Being wrong is an essential part of investigating the universe."

The Apprentice

S. L. Price writes about his initiation into the newspaper business. "I was, as everybody there can attest, an instant master—at overwriting, at missing deadlines, at trying to invest my stories with an importance they didn’t deserve. But with another daily paper in town, I had to hustle or lose, and fear of humiliation was only one reason I got better. The fact is, battling on a beat is one of life’s few, clear-cut, post-athletic competitive venues. Each morning, readers open up a newspaper to see who won the game. Each morning, sportswriters open up a newspaper to see which writers won the…

Casting a Genetic Shadow

Mitochondrial DNA research reveals some interesting facts about the Black Death.

Free Molly Dowd

The New York Times is ending its TimesSelect program, which charged subscribers $50/year for access to "premium" content, meaning most of their regular columnists. We're going to hear a lot of piffle about how the Times only had about 250,000 subscribers because the content was so widely pirated, but I think that's horse-hockey.

By putting Dowd, Brooks, Rich et al behind a pay portal, the Times effectively reduced their impact on public discourse. The rise of awareness of Salon and Slate in the same period wasn't simply because they were publishing good work (although in the case of Slate…

Laziness Toppled Sense

It's stupid because I stood there looking at the subwoofer, thinking to myself, "Now, how should I get this thing out of the box?"

I knew what needed to be done, but, in the end, laziness toppled sense and I proceeded to (very carefully) disregard everything I know about lifting things: Bend your knees, keep your back straight, etc.

I didn't feel a thing when it happened. In fact, I thought to myself, "Hey, this is easier than I imagined."

It wasn't until I had the PSB SubSeries 5i out of its box and on the floor in front of me that, with an "Aw crap" and an "Oh that…