Month: October 2009
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Docbook, Pandoc, Rants and Some Decent Free Fonts
I’m working on a user manual and am in the process of discovering several tools to do the job. Here’s RSTA, an online restructured text editor which lets you output into HTML and PDF. This is mainly of interest to people in the plone and python world. Python programmer extraordinaire Mark Pilgrim explains why he…
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Literary Linkdump
D. G Myers argues that Toni Morrison’s Beloved is not a masterpiece: The truth is that the stream-of-racial-consciousness interlude is a display piece, a verbal stunt that is connected to the rest of the novel by the thinnest of fictions—and by the ambition to leave a monument to the suffering caused by black slavery. The…
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Funny TV Commercials
I love this comic TV commercial for a California county fair. Here’s a commercial for a totally bizarre board game called Ballbusters.
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Climate Change Linksdump
Erik Pooley eviscerates the Superfreakonomics book.Seth Borenstein reports statisticians who refute the “Earth is cooling” meme. Ken Caldeira talks about the possibilities of geoengineering (something hyped by Superfreakonomics). Kate Galbraith reports on how Texas is leading in terms of wind power development: Texas’s secret, besides strong winds and lots of land, is its lack of…
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A Secret Dream
I don’t how to explain this, but I just had a dream about Joyce Carol Oates! I had dined with her during a student function at Trinity University. I wasn’t the only student at the luncheon, but I certainly felt as though I talked to her the most (even though it wasn’t much). I remember…
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Misrepresenting Science
Liberal activists stage a fake press conference claiming to be the US Chamber of Commerce. One commenter said, “The official U.S. Chamber of Commerce position is that it is unacceptable to misrepresent the Chamber, but it is perfectly acceptable to misrepresent science.” In other news, 2 middlebrow social science writers who wrote a bestseller learn…
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How Not to Make a Marriage Proposal Video for Youtube
This wedding proposal video has so many things wrong with it I don’t know where to begin. Some lessons can be learned: Don’t call your video “Greatest Wedding Video of All Time.” Everyone says that. Don’t bring the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend along! And don’t let the ex suggest things to say! If you are videotaping, please…
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How to Make a Difference
A reader asks Alex Tabbarok how he could make the biggest positive impact on society. A commenter says: 1. Focus on preventing destructive people. In general it is easier for one person to destroy something than it is for one person to create something (e.g., it is easier to destroy the Mona Lisa rather than…
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Writing about other things
The handful of people who follow this blog might find infuriating my reluctance to post on a regular basis, but I do write a lot elsewhere and privately. Also, I have been busy with technical things. Here I ask a blogger about the Honduras coup why the person doesn’t identify himself. Lots of good replies.…
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Odds and Ends
How to get more bicyclists on the road: make them more friendly to female cyclists. Ferdinand Bardamu on the provincialism of American literature: The acquisition of publishing houses by larger media corporations has worked to kill innovation and make everything safe and marketable. Novelists themselves have to remain safe and marketable if they want to…
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Nobel Predictions
Nobel predictions: 1. Mario Vargas Llosa, 2. Milan Kundera, 3. Adonis, 4.Ngu~gi~ wa Thiong’o, 4. Umberto Eco, 5. Haruki Murakami. I think this year they will pick a well-known widely-selling novelist in an overlooked region. Personally, I would …love to see Kundera win (or if American), Joyce Carol Oates. I think this will start a…
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Sava’s Feet – Echelon System Warning
I served in Peace Corps Albania between 1995-7. Here is an essay I wrote in December 1997 about returning home to Houston after being evacuated from Albania. I also wrote an essay, The English Expert about a quirky professor of English, Abydyli Vasjari in Vlore.
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Robert Nagle’s Representatives
Egad, it is so annoying to keep looking up who my representative is. For this reason I have prepared this reference page. (The rest of humanity can ignore this page; google, pleas take note! If all goes well, after 3 or so days, I will merely need to type “Robert Nagle’s representatives” into google to…
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Catching up with Facebook
Some things I posted on facebook which I thought I’d share here. I’m also including a lot of other great stuff. Lack of health insurance raises your risk of dying by 40%. CBS/New York Times poll: 65% of Americans say they would favor "the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that…
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My backlog
I have been out of town for most of this week. I just wanted to say that I have a backlog of old blog posts to publish. Stay tuned!