The Two-Disc Special Edition and Blu-Ray Edition of The Dark Knight ships with a digital AVI copy of the movie; if you buy it on Amazon, you can stream it right away as an Unbox video-on-demand.
Explain to me again why Amazon couldn’t make the same model work for books?
Sin against the Holy Spirit: I’m debating buying a fast sheet-fed scanner and cutting up my library so I can have it with me all the time as PDFs.
Insane? Genius? Should I just get a Kindle instead?
We did Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, because we went shopping on Monday and couldn’t wait. (It also worked out better with our work schedules.) We opted to try Mark Bittman’s 45-minute roast turkey, with the following results:
Rachel Leow with a letter to a young historian:
Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately… Don’t presume too much to know what’s important and what isn’t. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it’s just one line saying “Never read this again”…
I’ve got two fun US transit infrastructure data visualizations for you.
(Beat.)
OK, everyone that’s still here, check this out: a highway system map done in the style of a subway system map (from mathowie) | a hypothetical high-speed rail map with transit time estimates.
Amardeep Singh on teaching James Joyce’s Ulysses:
The encyclopedic quality of Joyce
Thanks to a timely permalinking intervention, I caught a NYTmag story from the 16th that I would have missed, about Lewis Hyde and crafting a new notion of copyright. Half-profile, half-summary, it wanders a lot over its five pages, but has great paragraphs like this one:
Thinker-politicians like Jefferson, Adams and Madison were just as familiar as we are with the metaphor that likens created work to physical property, especially to a landed estate. But they thought of that landed estate in a new way
Speaking of Kevin Kelly, I had basically taken for granted that one of us had already posted his call for more visions of the near future, given our recent spate of near-futurism. It appears no one had. Well, that’s fixed.
I’ll definitely back up Robin; check out NYTMag’s Screens issue. (Is there no way to permalink whole issues? Blerg.)
My favorite story, though, is Ross Simonini’s “The Sitcom Digresses,” which traces the genealogy of the digression/flashback in TV comedies from The Simpsons to 30 Rock and ultimately to the postmodern novel. So:
Tristram Shandy ->
Gravity’s Rainbow ->
The Simpsons ->
Family Guy ->
Scrubs ->
Arrested Development ->
30 Rock
This reminded me that while we generally have a pretty good sense of developments in technique and changes in style in movies and literature, TV history is driven almost entirely by content. The sense of form is much looser — I know that Malcolm in the Middle or Bernie Mac are single-camera shows, and look different from Seinfeld or I Love Lucy — but what was the first single-camera sitcom? Who first added a phony laugh track? When did that get discredited?
Who are the great television directors? If we really are becoming people of the screen, we ought to know.
Dating Advice From Obama Campaigners:
Norah, 26
Field organizer for the Democratic primary in Las Vegas, NV and Flagstaff, AZ
What’s the best way to pick up an Obama campaigner?
Volunteer. Campaigners never have time to date anyone they don’t see in the office. Bonus if you shower and dress in clean clothes. No one in the office has time to do that.
What has working on a campaign taught you about relationships?
For one thing, you can’t date someone who doesn’t understand campaigning. But in the real world, it taught me that there are a lot of men in their mid-to-late twenties who are very driven and motivated to succeed. Eighteen months ago, I thought they were all jerks.
The guy I’ve been seeing for a few weeks hasn’t replied to my last email, but has updated his Facebook status since then. Should I be worried?
Yes. Working on campaigns taught me that when you really want something, the best way to get it is to continually call until you get it, whether it’s an endorsement or a date.
Sadly, the rest of the article is kind of a disappointment — nothing you wouldn’t find from a random sampling of twentysomethings.
