Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
Bad karma comes knocking.
This is Thailand’s worst flood in 50 years and, judging only by the music and, perhaps, the fact that people didn’t have to check Twitter feeds every minute or so throughout, the 1942 version (video link) looked like lots more fun.
4.30pm. Mon. 24 October 2011. Up to the minute report from inner-city Bangkok (Soi Ari–Saphan Kwai).
A trickle of water is emerging from a drain on Phaholyothin Road in … Read more
Leary here. Wherever that might be (not to mention when).
Current affairs written on the wind (“mere ephemera,” according to my editor, which I didn’t ask). Right now, many of you folk back in 2011 will be fretting about political events in Egypt. The papers should be full of it. (You could still read newspapers back then, and they were often full of it.) No doubt the TV networks will be talking it up like they discovered Egypt only last … Read more
I recently saw Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas doing a job of personifying greed for the first time since the first Wall Street, which won relatively more favorable critical notice, came out in 1987.
Critical opinion on Rotten Tomatoes seems about evenly divided. But I tend to be a-critical when I’m in the mood for escapism, and I reckon this film did the trick very nicely. I’d recommend it for fans and enemies … Read more
Excessive cogitation causes canary brains to explode, providing much entertainment for small children.
And so it goes. First it was African gray parrots demonstrating they were smarter than elephants.
(See video.)
Then it was crows and their ilk displaying foresight and tool-making skills. (Click on photo.)
Now we’ve got bait-fishing herons.
… Read moreFrom The Scientist
Bait use in birds
After reviewing the literature, researchers concluded bait fishing by certain species of herons is a real and distinct behavior. Bait
Consider the following.
Terrestrial umbilicals. Scuba divers, e.g., carry bottled atmosphere underwater, taking a bit of our terrestrial environment with us.
Marine umbilicals. Whether on land or under the sea, meanwhile, we always bring along some of the marine environment from which, about 375 million years ago, we vertebrate land-dwellers first emerged. That’s right. We veteran fish-out-of-water types have internalized the seawater that gave us life in the first place. Our blood now comprises part of what is essentially a … Read more
“‘Next,’ Guru Bigoati announced, ‘I want you to practice mindfulness of something else altogether. Wait, not yet! Aw, damn.'”
The fishermen downstream were happy. The fish hadn’t been biting, and curried goat made a nice change.
That’s my caption (though it’s possible I’m channeling Gary Larsen). Hypothesis II: This wasn’t a class in mindfulness meditation; instead, these European ibex commonly graze moss, lichen, and salt on the Cingino dam in Italy.… Read more
Writers look for budget accommodation (Bangkok, 2027)
Here are some things that didn’t fit on the graph in my “Things fall apart redux” post.
The price of fish in Villa Supermarket is soaring, the Gulf of Thailand is getting fished out, China is behaving more aggressively as the superpower-in-waiting, I’ve lost my mother’s copy of Ben’s secret recipe for Montreal smoked meat and I now learn Ben’s deli closed two years ago. It’s as likely I’ll get to … Read more
Some years ago, while exploring caves in the southern Thai province of Trang, I came across stalagmites that grew on larger stalagmites like thick boar’s bristles, extending this way and that with apparent disregard for gravity, as though maybe seeking the exit. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how these things had formed.
Back in my hotel that evening, parked in front of the TV, I’m gazing in wonder, caveman-wise, at the moving picures. (I didn’t have a … Read more
I wouldn’t normally bother commenting on this sort of thing, besides which I gather lots of other people have already expressed horror for a variety of reasons. (Though plenty of others applauded it, and that’s what alarms me.)
I believe exploding people can be funny; and, given the popular taste for gory entertainment, it’s hard to take offense merely on that score. What I do find disquieting is the blithe assumption, at least implicitly, that we’re all on the … Read more
I sit in my office sweating.
The 27-inch iMac gazes blankly at me from inside its raincoat, the pair of us waiting for the air-conditioner repairmen to arrive. It all started when my old PC laptop clapped out, exposing me to attack by the consumerist virus waiting in ambush. Next thing I knew, I was the proudish owner of a nearly-new iMac super doodah. And now look. The world is disintegrating.
Long-slumbering volcano erupts in Sumatra. Floods in Pakistan, India … Read more