Is this my first Shoot Me of the year? If so, it’s mighty late in coming. Though this one’s joyous, even funny: I am head over heels with Adam Gopnik, with his piece on Dan Brown— and think no one need ever bother to write again. To wit—in every sense of the word—

The clichés line up outside the dust jacket and are whisked in pairs to a table down front …

Couldn’t you just die? Of course The New Yorker always did have the funniest writers around.  It’s just that Gopnik’s talent seems somehow … unnecessary. Do we really need such wit and seriousness and, above all, profligacy?

I hardly think so. Read the rest of this entry »

Birds on the Wires by Jarbas Agnelli.

I have wondered about this all of my life—and now here it is.

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Noam Chomsky: It is always well to keep in mind Adam Smith’s astute observation about policy formation in England. He recognized that the “principal architects” of policy—in his day the “merchants and manufacturers”—made sure that their own interests had “been most peculiarly attended to” however “grievous” the effect on others …

Honestly, am I just a Radical, to suppose things needn’t be this way? That glossy and fetching appearance, don’t you know, lies and corruptionalways pretty themselves up. Counting on people not noticing. Which of course works. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Morford has a column at sfgate.com—the online presence of The San Francisco Chronicle, which in the daily-delivered flesh is getting frighteningly anorexic—about your average Golden Gate Bridge jumper. A single 40-ish male, just like him. Mark always writes beautifully:

I do know that when I cross the GG Bridge these days, I tend to glance over at those guard rails and safety wires with a different sort of appreciation, awareness and sighing sense of wonder.

Read the rest of this entry »

I kinda think he’s back.

I kinda think I wouldn’t want the look trained on me. Oh no.

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Does the Universe Exist if We’re Not Looking? According to the rules of quantum mechanics, our observations influence the universe at the most fundamental levels.

To Wheeler [John Wheeler, scientist and dreamer, colleague of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, mentor to many of today's leading physicists, and the man who chose the name "black hole"] we are not simply bystanders on a cosmic stage; we are shapers and creators living in a participatory universe.

Wheeler’s hunch is that the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sylvia Paull: I might have to agree with my friend Andrew Keen‘s (“Cult of the Amateur“) assessment that the digital often abases rather than elevates what is best in humanity.

That would explain so much, including the fervor whipping itself into a froth even as we speak—oh, don’t worry if you miss it, there’ll be a new froth along any minute. Read the rest of this entry »

Chez Pazienza: What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It’s Been: If you weren’t able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn’t been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

So this guy writes a long, predictable rant in the HuffPo today, Will the boomers just fucking die and leave him alone—which we will, given time Read the rest of this entry »