He Met the Walrus
1969+clever teenager+John Lennon+reel-to-reel audio tape = Oscar nominated short film. Go to the Youtube site for a high-res version.
Archive for the ‘ideas’ Category
Unfamiliar does not equal Improbable
Kaplan has a worthy review of Donald Rumsfeld’s strategic legacy in the Atlantic. I’ll comment more on it later. But for now, a provocative point that Kaplan introduces in the piece’s lede: In 1962, a Harvard economics professor named Thomas C. Schelling wrote an introduction to Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. In a [...]
The Stroop Effect
Just learned about the Stroop effect. You can experience it for yourself using this quick test from the Stroop effect Wikipedia page: Say aloud the colors of each of these words, as fast as you can: Green Red Blue Yellow Blue Yellow Blue Yellow Red Green Yellow Green If naming the first group of colors [...]
The Awareness Test
Making the rounds online, for good reason. I’ll have more content up soon, I hope.
Enormous Changes, Last Minute: About Grace Paley
Grace Paley died two days ago. She was a sweet and humane poet and short story writer, one of those individuals for whom many will admit a familiarity with the name if not a specific knowledge of the work because some high school English teacher somewhere along the line (but a fan, truly) assigned a [...]
Read the Times, Save Dartmouth
Ran across an interesting ad on the New York Times‘s home page today: (Note, the image is a composite of two screenshots as my screen is quite small.) So. Save Dartmouth. I must have misunderstood that the ruckus over Dartmouth’s alumni constitution and its system of having alumni vote for half the Board of Trustees [...]
Carbon: Will That Be Credit or Debit?
Last week, the Guardian reported that the British government is creating a “radical plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions by rationing the carbon use of individuals.” The plan includes what sounds to be a debit card, in which every citizen is allocated an annual carbon allowance. Writes David Adam: …Points would be deducted at point [...]
