Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
I t’s only a 3-minute train ride from Brighton to Hove, so it seems kind of pointless, but actually it’s the cheapest way by public transport: £2.20 round trip rather than £3.00 on the slower, less nice bus. I took it today because it was the inaugural return to Bikram Yoga class. I was a little anxious about how difficult it would be. But yes, while it is difficult, I know the routine, and there were moments in there where I broke through the effort and sweat to feel a more simple and calm “Yes, this is just what’s needed.” Lying on my back halfway through, in the savassanah pose, the chatter of the mind seemed shrill and distant, while the systems of my body felt powerful and immediate. For a minute or so anyway.
The sauna seems to be losing that power. Currently I’m on a very early rising shtick, and come mid-to-late morning I’m taking a break from web development work begun early morning and going to the sauna for a refresher. But rather than reaching the heights, to exciting thoughts and pleasurable feelings, I tend increasingly to just sit and think about the work I’ve just done and the work I’m about to do after.
It reminds me of a friend who told me that now that he’s not smoking a lot of weed, after being a chronic smoker for years, he can see that it wasn’t the weed that was making him jumpy and twitchy; he is jumpy and twitchy anyway. We can forget that the final trigger is far smaller than the whole self. Similarly, when I was inspired in saunas, I was in business hotels in far-off Bangkok and Seoul. It wasn’t only the sauna, then: it was the mad randomness and foreignness and glamour of where I was. I’m pretty sure the ideas I had then wouldn’t have popped up without being in the sauna, but nor would they have popped up without everything immediately around and previous to the sauna.
It is a nice sauna here at Brighton’s Thistle Hotel; smells a bit, but this is England, not always the most hygenic of places, and whenever I go in I drop some Olbas on the coals. (Olbas = Swiss mix of eucalyptus and mint — the only essential oils you can get at Tesco’s Express.) Why nice? The back wall has two lamps on either side, so it’s a perfectly symmetrical classical shape to look at. And I’m usually the only one in there, so I can stand up and take in the view.
A new book arrived today from Amazon UK: The Now Habit. It’s been recommended by GTD acolytes, but now that I’ve started it I’m disappointed that it’s not up to David Allen’s standards. It’s full of “Dr Everett Scott of the University of Chicago suggests that perhaps“s. Listen, I don’t care about the sources; I care that you have spent much of your adult life formulating this quality-of-life saving system that will actually help me. I don’t need the authority of an academic. I’m reading your book because I believe you are the world’s foremost authority now on this problem. Well, as someone wrote on Amazon, whereas with David Allen there’s an idea to glean on every page, with Neil Fiore there’s one every chapter.
But I’ll press on; it looks like he has my number.
Previously
A Ride to Gatwick Airport
Nextly
A Drop in Time