http://www.kottke.org/08/11/nabokov-on-video

Watch as Vladimir Nabokov reads the first paragraph of Lolita in English & Russian, shares his favorite books, and lists a bunch of things that he doesn't like.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

I'm about due for a reread.

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/farewell-yugo

Until last week, Yugos were still in production in Serbia. The factory will be retooled to produce Fiats for its new owner.

How do you make a Yugo go fast? Push it off a cliff.

What do you call the passengers in a Yugo? Shock absorbers.

Why do Yugos have heated rear windows? To keep your hands warm while you push it.

Ha ha. Yugo jokes were popular in my family during one particular Christmas...the year before it was dead baby jokes.

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/jurassic-park-not-so-far-fetched

Scientists are saying that we can make ourselves a whoolly mammoth for as little as $10 million. All it takes is a mammoth genome, a lot of painstaking work, and much computing power.

If the genome of an extinct species can be reconstructed, biologists can work out the exact DNA differences with the genome of its nearest living relative. There are talks on how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother, and mammoths might once again roam the Siberian steppes.

The article also notes that if this works for the mammoth, it might also be possible to do the same for a Neanderthal. What an age we live in.

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/intrepid-museum-open-again

Hey, the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier and museum, is back in her old spot on the west side of Manhattan. The Intrepid somewhat famously didn't want to leave her berth in 2006 for refurbishment in New Jersey.

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Book #51
Book Title: Beach Girls
Author: Luanne Rice
Category: fiction; romance; chick lit
# of pages: 428
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: C+
Short description/summary of the book: (taken from amazon.com):Like a milder Northern cousin of Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, Rice's latest (following Dance with Me) celebrates the near mystical persistence of female bonds. While summering in the seaside town of Hubbard's Point, Conn., Emma Lincoln, Stevie Moore and Maddie Kilvert, the titular beach girls, were inseparable, but as adults, they've drifted apart. Stevie lives like a hermit in Hubbard's Point, unaware that her old friend Emma died in a car crash, leaving behind a husband, a child and secrets. When widower Jack brings his daughter, Nell, to the Point, Nell searches out her last link to her mother: Stevie. A bestselling children's author, Stevie is drawn to Nell and her attractive dad, but the protagonists must struggle with doubts and fears before they can consider a future together. This book is more sentimental and less suspenseful than Rice's previous novels, and fans of her earlier book, The Perfect Summer, may find the premise—a spouse who dies suddenly, with secrets that leave family in disarray—overly familiar. Fortunately, Rice's gorgeous descriptions and sensitive characterizations compensate for those flaws. Few writers evoke summer's translucent days so effortlessly, or better capture the bittersweet ties of family love.

My Thoughts: This was not one of my favorite Luanne Rice books. The storyline was ok but the book seemed to drag on quite a bit. I think if it had been a shorter book it could have honestly been better and I would have given it a higher grade.

Books read this year: 51/50.


Next read(s): I just started reading Sea Glass by Anita Shreve.

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/anatomy-of-a-flop

Peter Holsapple explains how a pretty good song turns into a flop.

Once upon a time, though, I think I wrote a hit. It was called "Love is for Lovers" and the dB's recorded it for an album called "Like This" in 1984. It had (and has, I believe) an undeniable hook, the kind you'd find yourself singing in the shower or pounding along to on your steering wheel while driving. The performance, produced by Chris Butler at the old Bearsville Studio in upstate New York, has all the power of the best kind of rock: slamming drums, inventive bass, a solid riff and a fantastic solo.

This song is ripe for a contemporary cover.

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/painted-hands

Photographs of a series of elaborate hand paintings. (via yokiddo)

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/nyc-then-and-now-comparison-photos

The NY Times has photographer David Dunlap running around NYC taking updated versions of the photos he took of the city for Paul Goldberger's 1978 guidebook to Manhattan, The City Observed: New York. Recent Now/Then comparisons include Grand Central Terminal, the corner of 59th St and 5th Ave (where the Apple Store is), and, perhaps the most striking pair of photos, the Hudson River shoreline.

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http://www.kottke.org/08/11/obama-elected-by-rich-loamy-soils-of-cretaceous-seas

The 2008 election voting patterns in the southern United States followed the big cotton production areas in 1860 which in turn followed the shoreline of the shallow tropical seas that covered the southern part of the US 85 million years ago.

This is not a political blog. However, this is a story I couldn't pass up: the story of how voting patterns in the 2008 election were essentially determined 85 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. It's also a story about how soil science relates to political science, by way of historical chance.

Headline I'd like to see in 96 pt. type in the NY Times: Obama Elected By Rich Loamy Soils of Cretaceous Seas.

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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/anatomy-of-a-flop

Peter Holsapple explains how a pretty good song turns into a flop.

Once upon a time, though, I think I wrote a hit. It was called "Love is for Lovers" and the dB's recorded it for an album called "Like This" in 1984. It had (and has, I believe) an undeniable hook, the kind you'd find yourself singing in the shower or pounding along to on your steering wheel while driving. The performance, produced by Chris Butler at the old Bearsville Studio in upstate New York, has all the power of the best kind of rock: slamming drums, inventive bass, a solid riff and a fantastic solo.

This song is ripe for a contemporary cover.

(link)

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/painted-hands

Photographs of a series of elaborate hand paintings. (via yokiddo)

(link)

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/nyc-then-and-now-comparison-photos

The NY Times has photographer David Dunlap running around NYC taking updated versions of the photos he took of the city for Paul Goldberger's 1978 guidebook to Manhattan, The City Observed: New York. Recent Now/Then comparisons include Grand Central Terminal, the corner of 59th St and 5th Ave (where the Apple Store is), and, perhaps the most striking pair of photos, the Hudson River shoreline.

(link)

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/obama-elected-by-rich-loamy-soils-of-cretaceous-seas

The 2008 election voting patterns in the southern United States followed the big cotton production areas in 1860 which in turn followed the shoreline of the shallow tropical seas that covered the southern part of the US 85 million years ago.

This is not a political blog. However, this is a story I couldn't pass up: the story of how voting patterns in the 2008 election were essentially determined 85 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. It's also a story about how soil science relates to political science, by way of historical chance.

Headline I'd like to see in 96 pt. type in the NY Times: Obama Elected By Rich Loamy Soils of Cretaceous Seas.

(link)

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/in-which-we-meet-the-emirati-winston-wolf

I've been reading this site called I Keep a Diary for I don't know how long, six years at least. The site is a hand-crafted throwback to an earlier web era, a series of annotated photo galleries that document the life, times, adventures, and friends of Brian Battjer Jr. Like its proprietor, the site is funny, enthusiastic, and good-natured, and that's what keeps me coming back for more. I even visit the splash page each time I go because I like the quote that appears on it so much:

i feel nostalgia for things i've never known

IKAD is one of my favorite things on the web and the most recent entry is so truly magical that I had to share. Brian is more than a year behind in documenting his adventures so he's just now getting around to telling the story of his July 2007 trip to Thailand and the United Arab Emirates with his girlfriend, Meredith. After telling his boss that he's taking a month off of work, subletting his apartment, and arranging to stay with a friend in Dubai, he and Meredith speed off to the airport.

At this point, I urge you to just go read the story -- it's great and Brian tells it *way* better than I could -- because I'm going to ruin a lot of it. If you need more convincing of this story's wonderfulness, read on.

Anyway, off they go to JFK for their flight to Dubai. The woman at the Emirates check-in desk has no record of their tickets...becaue they got to the airport a whole day late. After some nervous moments, the woman finds them some seats on the plane.

Fast forward 12 hours or so: they land and deplane. Meredith discovers that she lost her passport and she swears that the thing is still on the plane. Emirates won't let her get back on the plane to look for it but they send an employee to look for it. No dice. They then spent several hours trying to find somone to let them on the plane to search. No luck. Intense panic sets in; the plane is scheduled to leave for NYC in an hour or two.

At this point, Brian phones his friend in Dubai, Bernadette, whom he has never met in person, and explains to her the situation. She says, "I'm on the way to the airport now...I'll see what I can do." It turns out that Bernadette's boss is a sheikh, one of the richest men in the world, and one of the most powerful men in Dubai. Bernadette arrives and tells them that her boss has dispatched his "fixer", his Mr. Wolf. "You ain't got no problems, Brian. I'm on the motherfucker. Chill out and wait for Mahmoun, who should be comin' directly."

"Shit Negro, that's all you had to say."

Sure enough, about ten minutes later a very large, serious-looking Emirati man walked up to the armed guards at immigration and with a nod, they let the dude through! We were like "Whoa." Mahmoun came over to us, and asked us to tell him the problem (and he even whipped out a little pad to take notes just like Mr. Wolf!). After we'd finished explaining to him that we were almost 100% sure that the passport was still on the plane, he was like "Meredith you come with me. Bernadette and Brian, you wait here."

He came back like two minutes later with ten airline employees in tow and said something like "This airplane is supposed to fly back to New York in forty-five minutes, but it's not going anywhere until the passport that's on there is found. So let's go find it."

Did Meredith recover the passport? Does Mahmoun go medieval on anyone's ass? Oh, you'll have to find out for yourself.

http://www.kottke.org/08/11/the-uns-new-stalactite-painting

Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo spent more than a year painting the recently unveiled ceiling in the UN's Geneva offices. Check out the larger photos at Artdaily and USA Today. The painting isn't exactly aesthetically beautiful, but I love its scale and power. Wonderful.

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