I have never listened to an album by

28Feb09

I think of myself as someone who’s listened to a lot of records, at least within the segment of music I pay most attention to (1977-2000 Anglosphere indie.)  But there are some weird holes.  I have never listened to an album, all the way through, by: Radiohead Sonic Youth Neutral Milk Hotel The Fall These [...]

Filed under: lists, music   |  16 Comments
Tags: lacunae, neutral milk hotel, radiohead, sonic youth, the fall

2666

26Feb09

I read the bulk of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 in late December, the last time the stomach flu rampaged through my house.  It’s a very good book to read in the middle of the night when you’re not sure whether or not you’re going to throw up.  The landscapes in the book — like the bathroom [...]

Filed under: books, movies   |  6 Comments
Tags: 2666, bolano, david lynch, giant, lynch, roberto bolano

Revolution revisited

22Feb09

Update:  EMI had the song pulled from YouTube — sorry.  Hope you got to hear it! It’s almost forty years since the Beatles broke up, but they still have the power to surprise.  I never really understood what the straight pop song “Revolution” and the tape-loop breakdown of “Revolution #9″ had to do with each [...]

Filed under: music   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: beatles, revolution

She do the police in different voices

19Feb09

Whether Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse can be good surely depends, most of all, on whether Eliza Dushku is actor enough to convincingly portray a new character in the same body every week — or, if the arc of the show is as promised, each week a new character through which some slowly revealed constant [...]

Filed under: offhand   |  3 Comments
Tags: dollhouse, joss whedon, television, tv, urinal

My name is Blossom, I was raised in a lion’s den

18Feb09

Blossom Dearie is dead at 82. I am not the kind of person who has opinions about jazz.  But there are a few things I think I’ll never tire of hearing:  “Well You Needn’t,” “So What,” and just about anything sung and played by Blossom Dearie.  If it is possible at all to belt out [...]

Filed under: music   |  5 Comments
Tags: blossom dearie, jazz, obituary, rip

February linkdump

15Feb09

The Virginia Quarterly Review has made most of its archive freely available online.  Have a look at David Wyatt’s overthought yet strangely readable analysis of Star Wars mythology from 1982, post-Empire but pre-Jedi: “Star Wars is also a nearly apocalyptic summing up of the tradition of film; it gives us back the history of movies [...]

Filed under: harvard, lists, magazines, math, movies, music   |  1 Comment
Tags: record hospital, star wars, whrb, williams

In which I am away from my desk

14Feb09

Back late last night from a brief trip to Chicago, where I visited Steve and Monica at the AWP and worked out (I hope!) the last details on a project with Ben McReynolds.  I usually bring my laptop when I travel.  But just before leaving, it occurred to me that the amount of downtime on [...]

Filed under: computers, friends, offhand   |  3 Comments

Thurston on proof and progress in mathematics

08Feb09

I must have read Thurston’s excellent essay “On proof and progress in mathematics,” when it came out, but I don’t have any memory of it.  I re-encountered it the other day while playing with Springer’s eBook service, and flipping through the chapters of the recent collection 18 Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics. Thurston [...]

Filed under: academia, books, math   |  8 Comments
Tags: library, springer, theorems, thurston, topology

Sifting and winnowing

04Feb09

“Sifting and winnowing” is the UW term for the intellectual work we all do, which is supposed to be simultaneously in service to Truth and to The People Of Wisconsin.  Today we got a rare chance.  A guy called the math department in order to settle an argument with his girlfriend:  is zero an even [...]

Filed under: academia, math, offhand   |  2 Comments
Tags: argument, truth, uw, zero

Laza and Kuznetsov on cubic fourfolds

01Feb09

By chance, Wisconsin had two seminars about cubic fourfolds on consecutive days last week, by means of which I learned much more about cubic fourfolds than I had in my life up to now.  Summary follows — based on my understanding of what was said, so all mistakes belong to me and not the speakers. [...]

Filed under: math   |  4 Comments
Tags: algebraic geometry, birational, cubic fourfolds, derived categories, hassett, hodge theory, kuznetsov, laza, rationality