palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-fail-like-olympian.html
Sunday, February 28, 2010. How to fail like an olympian]. When you watch the Olympics, it can be easy to forget just how ridiculously good these people are at whatever bizarre thing it is they're doing. Take, for example, figure skating. Early in the evening of the ladies' long program, long before Kim Yu-Na and the other medal contenders took the ice, there was Tuğba Karademir, a Turkish skater who ultimately came in 24th. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Beatles and birth order].
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/04/lies-damn-lies-and-sound-effects.html
Tuesday, April 13, 2010. Lies, damn lies, and sound effects]. Like a lot of folks, I've been watching Life. The Discovery Channel series of nature documentaries in which photographers go to extraordinary lengths to bring back fascinating footage of fauna, which is then edited into anodyne snippets narrated by Oprah Winfrey, who seems to feel obligated to give clever line readings. The splishy whoosh of this or that fish darting out and eating its prey, or the burble and hiss of coral ejecting eggs. B...
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Friday, March 30, 2007. Sing along with buffy]. This time picking up on the Buffy Sing-A-Long. Each month at IFC, at which Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans get together and sing along with the musical episode, Once More, With Feeling. I am definitely in the Buffy. Fan camp, but I am currently working my way through the series and haven't yet seen the musical episode, which is two seasons ahead of me, so no spoilers please. Indeed, our most recent episode, Hush. Then they started getting blasphemous: COST S...
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/04/national-fears.html
Saturday, April 17, 2010. Because I know a little something about Korea, people often ask me about the Chinese government. I suppose Canadians probably get asked to explain America, so I kind of get it. In any case, a question that often comes up is why the Chinese government is so terrified of Falun Gong. I don't know from any detailed insider knowledge or anything, but my guess is that it has to do with a vast and little-known war called the Taiping Rebellion. In China, the haunting fear is of a differ...
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/04/pop-is-new-alternative.html
Sunday, April 18, 2010. Pop is the new alternative]. It's a truism that the millennial generation is a whole lot more earnest than the Gen-Xers who preceded them. Certainly they don't seem to be mired in the crippling irony that we all seemed to struggle against, and they don't have the combination of seething anger and helpless despair that fueled the whole alternative movement. And Three Men and a Baby. The other Gen-X artifact that I think of is the movie Slackers. What does it all mean?
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/04/our-pakistan-moment.html
Thursday, April 01, 2010. For years, Pakistan made a national security bargain. Seeing India as an existential threat, and believing that they couldn't match India's military strength directly, Pakistan's intelligence forces promoted a variety of Islamist terrorist organizations as proxy fighters in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Let's hope that we don't face another Oklahoma City, or another major assassination. Let's hope that the rhetoric can be brought down to a more responsible level before som...
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-it-all-mean.html
Sunday, April 18, 2010. What does it all mean? I don't know, but it's on every hip hop record, and apparently it's New York City Mayor Fiorello Laguardia. Explaining the moral of a Dick Tracy comic strip over the radio during a newspaper strike (the famous sample kicks in at about 1:27). The first use is almost certainly Double Dee and Steinski. Who included it in their Lesson 1: The Payoff Mix. From 1983, an astonishing sound collage. The more you know . Star! Lies, damn lies, and sound effects].
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2011/02/drop-red-lantern.html
Wednesday, February 02, 2011. Drop the red lantern]. I have just seen Raise the Red Lantern. Zhang Yimou's claustrophobic 1991 film about a woman who becomes "Mistress Four" in a wealthy Chinese household sometime in the early twentieth century. The film received a great many awards and is widely considered a classic. I hated it. Alas, we know too little of that outside world to imagine what she might fear in it. Everything is inward-focused, to the exclusion of reality itself. Also, it's boring. What do...
palaverist.blogspot.com
[the palaverist]
http://palaverist.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-not-to-apply-for-job.html
Thursday, January 27, 2011. How not to apply for a job]. The following is an opening paragraph that I won't be using for a cover letter (for an internal position, peeps I'm not leaving Google! I feel it’s important to write you and express my firm point of view that a sense of humor is not. Yes, snow does cause brain damage. Why do you ask? Pop is the new alternative]. What does it all mean? Lies, damn lies, and sound effects]. How to fail like an olympian]. Beatles and birth order].
