Category: Arts and Letters

Half- and Half-Man Marathons.


To follow up on items mentioned here:

  • Two weeks ago, I did in fact finish the Baltimore Half-Marathon: Total running time was 2 hours, 3 minutes, 35 seconds, so I clocked in at just under nine and a half minute miles. I’m totally fine with that, especially given that I only got in six weekend-warriorish weeks of training beforehand. And, other than not being able to walk so well for a day or two afterwards, no serious damage done – I may be up for another long race as early as December. (This is quite a contrast with my failed attempt to run the DC Cherry Blossom ten-miler earlier this year: Then, my feet fell apart. I’m now an enthusiastic convert to the Vibram toe-shoes.)

  • Also, after a slog through A Feast of Crows in particular, I am now totally caught up with George R.R. Martin on A Song of Ice and Fire. And, well, there is a definite drop in quality after the first three books: Four and five are far more meandering (Martells and Tyrells? 1100 pages and Tyrion still hasn’t met up with Dany?) and repetitive (drink every time somebody says “words are wind“) than they need to be. Still, I’ve read worse: Count me in for Winds of Winter, if and when it ever drops. In the meantime, I’ll be ensconced in Steve Erikson’s ten-tome Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Take Oasis, Karl Hungus Bathing.


“‘In the movie, they play it like it’s a drama,’ said Forkan…’There’s no mugging for the camera. Everything has this level of seriousness. In the “Oath of the Horatii” they’re talking about the future of Rome. In the film they’re talking about a rug that got peed on, but they’re as serious about that as the characters in the painting were. I liked that level of drama in these images that were also loaded with humor.’“

Hey, I know that guy – he’s a nihilist. From the Twitter archives, artist Joe Forkan discusses his Lebowski cycle with the LA Times. (A gallery is available here.)

Act I: Farewell. Act II: Arrival.


“We decided to walk around and for a moment we were like, ‘Are we in Toronto?’ We covered most of downtown in an hour. But as the days went on, we realized that there is great food, it’s very eclectic, and the vibe is quite funky.“

Picking up the baton from the NYT, who covered their imminent departure back in August, New Zealand’s Dominion Post checks in with Gill and Ethan on their new (zealand) digs. “Murphy’s family visited New Zealand a few years ago and were charmed by it another factor in the couple choosing to come. They had serious talks about it, though ‘and thought’, says Murphy, ‘about how we felt, individually and together, professionally and personally. A big driver is that it’s a naturally beautiful country, and then coming here and seeing the potential of dance.‘”

That’s No Moon.


“[T]he detail is stunning in his original high-res version. You can see craters on Tethys, and the thick atmosphere enshrouding Titan (including the north polar haze cap). The image is very close to natural color, so this is approximately what you would see if you were there (shortly before freezing and asphyxiating, but what a way to go).“

Propaganda or no, a fully-armed and operational battle station would seem to be approaching Saturn’s moon of Titan in this breathtaking image by Gordan Ugarkovic, taken from data by the Cassini spacecraft. “Spacecraft and observatories store their images on hard drives, and anyone with access and the knowledge of how to process that data — no simple task, I assure you! — can use it to do their own work.“

Craft of the Python.


“All you lazy people out there who want to get maximum effect from minimum work, I want you to meet the arch-idler of all time, Terry “Python” Gilliam!” Via the Twitter machine, Terry Gilliam, circa 1974, explains the craft of cut-out animation. “The problem when you’re doing cutouts is to be totally aware of the limitations…I’m always accused of doing violent things, well, it’s because of the nature of cut-outs.“

Yossarian Begins.


“He told one British journalist that ‘conversations with two friends…influenced me. Each of them had been wounded in the war, one of them very seriously The first one told some very funny stories about his war experiences, but the second one was unable to understand how any humour could be associated with the horror of war. They didn’t know each other and I tried to explain the first one’s point of view to the second. He recognized that traditionally there had been lots of graveyard humour, but he could not reconcile it with what he had seen of war. It was after that discussion that the opening of Catch-22 and many incidents in it came to me.‘”

By way of Ed Champion at Reluctant Habits, Joseph Heller biographer Tracy Daugherty recounts the origins of Catch-22 in Vanity Fair. “I’ve got the perfect number. Twenty-two, it’s funnier than eighteen.“

25 Faces of Clarence.


With that (methoughts) a legion of foul fiends environed me, and howled in mine ears: By way of The Daily What, witness a rather amazing impressionist — Jim Meskimen — deliver Clarence’s monologue from Richard III using 24 different celebrity voices, including Morgan Freeman, George Clooney, Richard Burton, and Woody Allen. I linked to Kevin Spacey doing impressions the other day on Twitter, but this fellow blows him out of the water.

And Thanks For All the Fish.


“At first, divers will play back one of eight “words” coined by the team to mean “seaweed” or “bow wave ride”, for example. The software will listen to see if the dolphins mimic them. Once the system can recognise these mimicked words, the idea is to use it to crack a much harder problem: listening to natural dolphin sounds and pulling out salient features that may be the ‘fundamental units’ of dolphin communication.“

As it happens, the iPad wasn’t the only modern technology predicted by Douglas Adams. Researchers at Georgia Tech and the Wild Dolphin Project develop a machine that will (hopefully) speak dolphin — or at least speak at dolphins. Says a skeptic: “‘Imagine if an alien species landed on Earth wearing elaborate spacesuits and walked through Manhattan speaking random lines from The Godfather to passers-by.’”