Although plaintiff's body ignited into a fire-ball, he miraculously survived the incident.Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Read more...
...yes. He is absolutely too cool 4 school.
The best thing is how his helmet makes him look like a small--but rad--alien.
The Dumbest Woman On The Highway - Watch more Funny Videos
I still don't know how to react to this headline:
Tycoon who took over Segway firm dies in freak accident after riding one of the machines off hillside and into a river
Read more:here.
For now, I intend to assuage my grief by watching youtube videos of segway crashes.
"Do not put false fingernails on an opossum. I cannot emphasize this enough."
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I experienced something strange while reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Raymond Carver's style has been copied by so many mediocre writers that my initial reaction to the stories in this collection was slightly dismissive. How many slice-of-life stories have been written about despairing blue-collar alcoholics enduring relationship problems? Answer: too many.
What sets Carver's writing apart from his emulators is the absolute precision of his writing. There are no superfluous sentences. There is no pretense in his style. Much like Earnest Hemingway, Carver has a knack for meaning more than what he says. Something as simple as a yard-sale or a trout pond embodies some great existential dilemma.
For the most part, the stories are bleak. Carver's vision of the world is not a particularly uplifting one. Nevertheless, Raymond Carver is a true master of the short story.
View all my reviews >>
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This novel got a lot of positive publicity and favorable reviews, winning the National Book Award and nominated as a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Unfortunately, the book didn't have the same impact for me as it apparently did for the judges of these prizes.
The novel takes place during the Vietnam War, over the course of several years and with several point-of-view characters. Due to this organizational structure, the novel jumps around a lot from one character (and storyline) to another. Some characters disappear from the narrative for long stretches of time, before suddenly re-emerging, as if from the jungles of Vietnam. Every time I started getting interested in a character, the novel jumped to whatever character I happened to be least interested in. It was sort of amazing how this worked. At the end of each chapter, I could predict who I would read about next by asking myself who I least wanted to read about.
While there are some moments of great suspense and intrigue, on the whole, the book falls slightly flat. My score of two stars is probably a little bit harsh, but I had high expectations for this book, due to the acclaim that it has received, and I ultimately did not feel particularly impressed with the novel.
View all my reviews >>
For the rare individuals out there who find themselves lamenting the fact that Pink Floyd isn't weird enough for their tastes, I have good news for you! Some one with entirely too much free time has re-created the entire Dark Side Of The Moon album on an 8-bit synthesizer (the same technology that gave us the incredible music of the original Nintendo games). The results are pretty amazing. I have embedded the videos for your convenience, but for uninterrupted listening, visit the YouTube page and turn on the play-list feature.
So, I recently completed a minor redesign of the blog (removed left-side column Twitter-feed, changed header, etc.), but apparently, my efforts didn't go nearly far enough. I submit, for your consideration the following online conversation that I had with Rochelle.
Rochelle: I really think you should ask mary to design something for you
me: maybe i will ask mary to redesign my blog.
do you not like the design it has now?
Rochelle: it's okay, but i think you should hear her out. it kind of looks like an old man blog now
who's out of touch with reality
me: WHAT?!
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!
Rochelle: that's my honest opinion
me: OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY?!?!?
What does that mean?
like a guy who doesn't know how to use a cell phone?
Rochelle: kind of
me: ouch
Rochelle: plus all the book reviews...
me: I am posting everything you say on my blog
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
How much money do drug dealers really earn? Does your first name affect your employment prospects? Does your real estate agent really care about how much money your house sells for? When are sumo wrestlers most likely to lose a match on purpose? If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions, then Freakonomics is right for you! Even if you've never asked yourself these questions, it's still probably worth reading.
Each chapter of the book examines a different question of this nature, basing the examination on the premise that conventional wisdom might not always be supported by the data. Several months after reading this book, you will probably forget most of the details and most of the specific case studies; however, the core ideas - that conventional wisdom is not always correct and that it is difficult to predict all of the effects that a certain action will cause - are interesting, although hardly ground-breaking.
In some ways, Freakonomics is a perfect example of the sort of book that you would expect to find written in the age of Twitter and YouTube. There is nothing in this book that will challenge you or take a great deal of effort to understand (both due to the clarity of the writing and the tremendous variety of subject material). It is a book that invites you to be entertained with facts and unfamiliar ideas. If it doesn't change your life, then it will at least entertain you for a few hours. If you are dying to learn about the nuts and bolts of economics, there are probably better books out there for you. For anyone else, I'd recommend Freakonomics
View all my reviews >>
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have put off writing a review of this novel for several months, in part because I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it. Perhaps my expectations had been shaped by seeing previews for the film (I haven't seen the actual movie), which made me think that I was about to read a gripping supernatural murder mystery. For the first fifty-or-so pages, that's what I got: a murder mystery narrated by the victim from her vantage point in the afterlife. The murder mystery gets wrapped up fairly quickly, and the bulk of the novel tells the story of the surviving family and the way that they deal with the grief of losing their daughter/sister/friend.
The characters were fairly believable and complex, but they also felt sort of anonymous. They could have been taken from the pages of any short story in The New Yorker, or Atlantic. Perhaps this is more indicative of my boredom with self-proclaimed 'literary fiction' than it is of the quality of the novel, but the only character who didn't seem like a ghost was the one who was actually dead! All of the others - the grandmother who drinks too much but is fiercely loyal to her family, the mother who feels stifled by her domesticity, the father who blames himself for the loss of his daughter, the creepy serial killer who builds doll houses - seemed like reflections of characters that I had encountered before.
The ending of the novel was satisfying, but somehow it didn't feel earned. It was like that author decided that the characters had suffered enough, so now it was time to balance out the karmic scale and make them happy again. The German philosopher Hegel is credit with saying: "To be free is nothing; to become free is everything." This concept might apply here as well. It is nice that the characters are able to recover from the emotional trauma of the loss of their daughter/sister/friend, but I guess I never felt like they did anything to earn their new happiness. I think that most people would accept the truism that 'Time heals all wounds.' I never doubted that eventually things would get better for the survivors, so it isn't very surprising when they eventually do. I don't know if bad things happen unexpectedly and it takes time to get over them is really an idea that demands a book to hash out.
Overall, you could do a lot worse than The Lovely Bones but I don't think it will be a book that you want to read over and over.
View all my reviews >>
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I read Cormac McCarthy's grim masterpiece, Blood Meridian, I thought that its depiction of violence and depravity during the raids against the Apache's was surely an overblown act of literary excess. Sadly, after reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee it became clear that in the fictional account by Cormac McCarthy, that the violence against the Indians had been toned down.
Each chapter of Dee Brown's book - told largely from the perspective of the Native Americans - takes place in a different region of the country. The Apache in Arizona, Texas, and Mexico; The Utes in Colorado and New Mexico; The Nez Perce in the Pacific Northwest; The Arapaho and Cheyenne of the Great Plains; The mighty Sioux, who, under the leadership of warriors like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, for thirty-five years waged a successful war against the United States Army until the Massacre at Wounded Knee broke their will to fight.
With each tribe and in each region of the country, the story is woefully familiar: It begins when valuable natural resources are discovered on Native American land and government agents are sent out to negotiate with the Indians for the rights to this land. They force the Indians to sign a treaty that guarantees that the Indians will be given land and supplies in exchange for their compliance. The supplies are never given, and soon, when the westward-bound Americans discover more wealth on the new Indian land, the Indians are forced (sometimes literally at gunpoint) to sign a new contract, ceding their new land and agreeing to relocate to ever smaller reservations. Eventually, in despair, the Indians fight back and attack the soldiers who have been sent to enforce the illegal treaties that the Chiefs have been forced to sign. In retaliation, US soldiers attack the Indian villages, burning houses, slaughtering ponies and livestock, murdering men, women, and children, and dismembering the corpses for souvenirs. This violence provokes further violence, until (as was the case with some of the Apache tribes) no restraint or clemency is shown by either side.
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is certainly not an cheery book; however, I think it is one that is worth reading. Looking back, it is easy to see who was in the wrong. We all know that, if we had lived in those times, we would respected the Indians, in the same way that we all know that we would not have had slaves in the antebellum south. Or the way that we would all have protested for civil rights if we had been old enough. This book reminds us of how easy it can be for people to let their own agendas, ambitions, and prejudices lead them down a cruel path.
View all my reviews >>
Here is a video of Lionel Messi scoring a hat-trick (and creating a fourth goal) for Barcelona. The skill involved in the second goal in particular is colossal, and his dribble into the box to win the penalty kick is sublime.
And if you weren't impressed by this hat-trick, you can always remember that he scored three goals in his last league game.
Anyone who says that Wayne Rooney or Cristiano Ronaldo is better is out of his mind!
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A few years ago, I read Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and resolved after I'd turned the final page that I would not be reading any more of Kerouac's work. During the ensuing years, I remained curious about On The Road, a novel so steeped in folklore and so pervasive in our culture that I felt like by virtue of having not read the novel, I was somehow missing out on a part of my own country. So, finally, I broke down and decided to give On The Road a chance.
The plot of On The Road follows a young man, Sal Paradise, on his three journeys across America (and into Mexico on the third excursion). Along the way, he meets a wide array of people and friends, including the (in)famous Dean Moriarty, with whom he travels for a time before parting ways. Sal leaves his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his aunt, in pursuit of excitement and adventure in the American West. As Sal himself explains:
I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn...When he sets out, he is confident that he will find some transcendental experience. "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." After three journeys across the country, he has still not found this shimmering ideal that he hopes to find. In the end, Sal realizes that Dean Moriarty, the man he idolized for most of the book, is sort of a jerk, and that his search for a promised land is not going to bear fruit
In the course of the last twenty-four hours, I have received six direct messages on Twitter from people who I follow and personally know. The contents of these direct messages have been - to put it mildly - lurid.
The Winter Olympics are underway. Here's what I think about them:
Rhetorical question: Which is more fun, watching TV or reading about me watching TV? If you said that it was more fun to read about me watching TV, then you're in luck because that is exactly what this post is about - me watching TV! Let's break it down by show:
How I Met Your Mother: This show has become a venerable television institution. Currently in its fifth season, HIMYM has made me laugh for 102 episodes and has only disappointed me once (an episode in season 3 called 'The Yips,' which, for some reason, was not funny to me at all). For a while during this season, I have felt that the main story has sort of been derailed (Ted looking for the girl of his dreams) but the characters are all so funny and the minutae of their lives is so entertaining that I don't really care when (or if) they ever get back to the main story in earnest.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
A novel is like a chocolate souffle; it contains only a few ingredients but can be very difficult to make correctly. In the case of the chocolate souffle, the ingredients are sugar, eggs, and chocolate. For a novel, the ingredients are character, setting, and plot. Setting is important, but not vital. Conrad's Heart of Darkness was still good when it was translocated to Vietnam in Apocalypse Now and just about everything that Shakespeare ever wrote has been re-imagined in a different setting (Hamlet set in a pride of lions in Africa, Macbeth set in Feudal Japan, Romeo and Juliet as gangsters in Miami, and so on), usually with results that don't diverge too much from the original. You could even make the case that all a novel really needs are good characters, because in many cases (and in most good novels) the plots arise from the characters and their motivations. For example, if Odysseus had been happy to remain in Troy following the war, then the events recorded in The Odyssey would not have taken place. If Odysseus didn't want so badly to get home, then there would have been no plot and no story. So we have whittled it down to the bare essentials: A good novel has characters with desires and motivations. And unfortunately, even on this extremely generous criterion, The Fountainhead fails to deliver.
First, the writing is atrocious. I will share with you the following passage from the novel and then, will say no more on the matter because this passage speaks for itself. In this passage, Rand is describing a newspaper, published by the billionaire maverick (and self-made-man, who, according to the novel, never received a favor from anyone in his entire life! [I'm not making that up. Not one favor. Ever.:]).
It's enormous headlines, glaring pictures, and oversimplified text hit the senses and entered men's consciousness without any necessity for an intermediary process of reason, like food shot through the rectum, requiring no digestion.700 pages of this.
The Fountainhead p 395
Fact: they are not the same thing.
After always feeling confused when I wrote the word 'disc' or 'disk,' I finally decided to look it up. The results were educational.
A disc contains optical data, encoded in binary format on the surface of the disc as a series of non-reflective pits (0) and reflective lands (1). The information on a disc is retrieved when the disc is spun and illuminated with a laser diode. Examples include: CDs, laser discs (remember these?), DVDs, mini-discs (remember these?), and Blu-ray discs.
Lots of things to blog about. No time for full paragraphs. Let's get down to it:
Dear Internet,
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
We got this book to give as a gift, but a few unfortunate kitchen spills meant that I had to keep it. After reading this book, I think that the best way to describe its cumulative effect is to say that it's like eating at the Cheesecake Factory: it won't be the best food (or novel) you've ever experienced, but by virtue of having so much on the menu (this metaphor isn't going well) you're basically assured of finding at least something that you like.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Marry Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows, tells the story of a writer named Juliet Ashton who travels to the island of Guernsey in the wake of World War II to write a book about the Nazi occupation of the island and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which met in secret during the occupation. The novel is presented as a series of letters, telegrams, and other correspondences between Juliet Ashton and her various cohorts: the members of the GL&PPPS (I can't write out the whole name any more!), her publisher in London, her friend in Scotland, her boyfriend, etc.
If you're in the mood for a story of courageous resistance to the Nazis, you can get it in this novel. If you're in the mood for a story of forbidden love, you can read about Elizabeth's romance with a Nazi officer. If you're in the mood for some comic relief there's Isola, a batty old woman who makes potions and casts hexes on people (and who lacks any and all social understanding. If you want to read about a woman who must choose between two suitors - one wealthy and flamboyant, the other humble and brooding - then you can read about Juliet. And so on. This book will probably please just about any one who reads it. Some of the characters are just cut-and-paste stereotypes, like the prudish and condescending neighbor, Adelaide Addison. Others are very compelling, like the deceased Elizabeth McKenna, whose influence over the island continues even after her death. Many of the others feel like mannequins - draped and spangled with eccentricities and personality quirks - but without any compelling motivations or desires. In some ways, this is a positive; anyone seeking to identify with a character will be able to do so, because the characters don't always go much deeper than their quirks. The downside is that the novel doesn't have any urgency, any sense that the things that are happening really matter to the characters.
My main complaint is that nothing in the novel feels very surprising at all. I was probably about 1/3 of the way through the novel when I saw how everything would end. SPOILER ALERT: periodically ask yourself 'what is the best (i.e. happiest) outcome possible?' and that is what happens. I like a story with a happy ending as much as the next, but there was never any suspense in this novel. In fact, I never really felt that the characters had anything to lose. Juliet, the main character, is a wealthy and successful writer with lots of good friends and a promising career. In other words, she has a good life. She never has to put it at stake, or take a major chance - she just goes to Guernsey and things get even better for her, almost by magic.
TGL&PPPS is a quick read, and a fairly enjoyable one. In fact, it occurs to me that my criticism of the book might be a little too harsh, but after reading the glowing reviews printed all over the cover (and the first few pages of the book) I had high hopes, which weren't quite met.
View all my reviews >>
Fans of Lost, take heed! Beginning on Tuesday, February 2nd, Lost will return to the airwaves for its final season. Fans across the country will be watching with great anticipation - wondering if, after five long years, their questions about the show will finally be answered.
According to the internet, this season is primed to make Lost fans even more obsessive than before. Check out this video, reporting on the upcoming pandemic of frame-by-frame video analysis, frantic wikipedia searches to investigate any in-show references, and ceaseless refreshing of the message-boards that Lost fans are sure to participate in.
Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever
Questions for Discussion:
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Let me begin by saying that a score of three out of five stars might be lower than Olive Kitteridge actually deserves, but as a winner of the Pulitzer, I might be holding it to a higher standard than I would most other books. The past few Pulitzer Prize-winners that I have read (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Known World, The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay, The Road and others) have all been excellent. Olive Kitteridge was, in my estimation, a cut below those others.
The "novel" is actually a series of stories involving the denizens of a small town in Maine. The main character, Olive Kitteridge, appears in each story. In some, she is the central character, in others, she appears only briefly, as is the case with "The Piano Player," in which she enters a restaurant, waves to the pianist, and then disappears from the story.
The writing is - as you would expect - excellent. The prose is clear and the details and observations are astute. The characters, likewise, are believable and expertly drawn.
Throughout the course of the novel, we see Olive suffer personal loss: a son who fails to meet her (unreasonable) expectations for him, a husband who she treats cruelly for decades only to realize how much she cares about him after he suffers a stroke which leaves him in a vegetative condition, as well as numerous personal feuds. She is sometimes petty, sometimes kind and noble-spirited. She is brutal in her honesty with others and in complete denial with herself. In fact, the picture painted is fairly bleak. In the final chapter, Olive seems to experience some sort of hope for the future; however, it is implied that she will die soon and will have, in the end, lived a largely joyless and petty life.
My problem with this novel is largely an ideological one. This novel seems to paint a picture of a world in which every smile is actually a mask to cover some unrelenting sadness and every promise is insincere. Literally every married couple in the novel is involved in an affair and every parent is a petty and manipulative puppet-master, pulling the strings of their children's lives. While I understand that these things happen and that every person alive experiences sorrow - it may even be the case that the sorrows outnumber the joys - the tone of this book amounts to little more than a bromide: bad things can happen to anyone at any time. To convince people that life is hard is a trivial task; everyone knows that this is the case. The central thematic idea of the novel is simply not one which merits a novel's-worth of exploration.
So, read this book for the wonderfully-crafted characters and for the pitch-perfect prose. But thematically, expect to get hammered over the head with bad-things-happen-and-it-is-very-literary-when-they-do.
View all my reviews >>
Questions for Discussion:
From time to time, it is brought to my attention that the contents of my e-blog are not very personal. Rather than detailing the events of my life, I instead choose unleash upon the unwary internet a deluge of inane twaddle. So today, I've decided to get personal. I feel like I have reached a watershed moment in my life, a sign-post on the road to maturity and wisdom, a momentous point from which there is no return.
I have reached a point where I no longer pay for sandwiches.
This should not imply that I steal sandwiches, which I don't (besides, there isn't much of a market for stolen sandwiches so the resale value would be terrible), but rather that I try to avoid purchasing sandwiches in the first place.
The virtues of a sandwich - the reasons that they ever became popular in the first place - are:
The last time I purchased a sandwich, I began thinking about what I was actually getting for my $7.50 + tax. What was it that made that sandwich so much more valuable than the sandwiches I make at home? Was it the toasted bread? No. I can toast bread. Was it the pickle wedge served on the side? No. I have pickles in the refrigerator. Was it the deli paper? Maybe. I don't have deli paper at home, although I don't think I would be willing to pay $7.50 + tax just to have a sheet of deli paper wrapped around my turkey club. Then it hit me: I was not buying a sandwich; I was buying laziness. I was paying $7.50 + tax because I didn't want to 1) take two pieces of bread, 2) put stuff between them. And that was it for me. I turned the corner.
Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness by Tracy Kidder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Strength in What Remains tells the true story of a young man named Deo, who flees from his home country and tries to re-establish his life as a refugee in New York City. Burundi, a tiny African nation bordering Rwanda, was engulfed in violence in the 1990s when a Hutu politician was murdered by members of the Tutsi-controlled military, setting off a chain reaction of mob violence and brutal military crackdowns that eventually spilled over into Rwanda.
Deo was a medical student in Burundi's only medical school when the violence broke out. He traveled for weeks on foot with nothing to eat, while militias armed with machetes and hand-grenades massacred entire villages. When he finally escaped the country - with the help of a well-connected friend of Belgian descent - he found himself struggling to start a new life in which he was no longer a promising medical student, but instead, a homeless refugee who spoke no English and couldn't sleep for fear of the terrible dreams about what he had seen in Burundi and Rwanda.
Long story short: things turn out all right for Deo. He ends up getting an education and returning to Burundi to try to make the war-torn nation a better place. Hurray!
I thought that the portions of the book that took place in New York City were substantially better than the portions that took place in Burundi. I can't put my finger on exactly why this is the case, but the portions that occur in Burundi - the portions that are supposed to be the most riveting and the most disturbing, don't really come across that way. While the causes of the genocide are interesting, the question that most interested me was: how can a person continue to live a normal life after witnessing such atrocities? Whether it's the tribal massacres in Burundi and Rwanda, the mass executions in Cambodia or in the Soviet Union, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, or the gas chambers of Bergen-Belsen - how can a person witness these things and feel anything but bitterness and rage? How could anyone live through these things and still believe that human beings are good and worth trusting? These are the questions that arise after Deo has escaped the genocide, as he tries to adjust to a new culture, a new language, and a new life in which he must accommodate the memory of the things he has seen.
Deo's story turns out far better than those of most of his compatriots. Nevertheless, it isn't exactly a happy ending; the fact that he managed to salvage a life from the wreckage of the genocide is tempered by the fact that the genocide occurred at all. Strength in What Remains is equally the inspirational story of man who overcomes tremendous odds and the tragic story of what could have been - for Deo and for Burundi - if the violence had never occurred.
View all my review
Questions for Discussion:
The beginning of a new year is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past year in order to evaluate what you have accomplished and what you would like to improve about yourself. Often, in an effort to make the coming year better than the previous, we make New Year's Resolutions - goals and objectives which will help transform us into the people that we want to be.
This year, I have come up with many New Year's Resolutions. Two of them apply to me, and the rest are resolutions that I have for other people - things which I believe will make 2010 the best year yet. So, without any further delay, here are my New Year's Resolutions:
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