Ooh, that's handsome. If I could change one thing, it'd be to move the lower area to the right-hand side, as I tend to work with material to the right.
You should save some pics for the archives. Mid century style indeed.
Looks nice. But sharp edges and corners could clash with my knees.
I can't take anything seriously as an antique that's younger than me.
Quite a nice desk, but.
3: If you ever do find you're taking a desk too seriously, you can remind yourself that one of the words for "desk" in Spanish is pupitre.
Chris y is so midcentury modern.
Reminds me of a sculpture in Beetlejuice
It appears to be two entirely unrelated desks stuck together. I feelike I would like either one separately, but not together.
OTOH, the desk I'm sitting at now is ugly as sin.
looks like all the old shit we had in our basement when i was a kid. better construction, probably tho.
If heebie had a nickel for every time one of her posts has entertained one of us, she could have like thirty goddamned desks.
That desk has nice lines, visually, but I'd definitely be banging my knees against the drawers to the left (plus some other reservations about it, matters of personal taste, overall not a big fan).
It's funny, I figured I'd try to find a desk I do adore, and checked out the Arts & Crafts subcategory of desks on eBay (I like the Arts & Crafts style usually! I figured) ... hm, some of those are handsome, but I can't see myself actually using them.
I'm thinking now that desks present a troublesome design issue: you'd love a beautiful piece, but you're going to be using thing this, a lot, and I myself do not desire extraneous bits of wood under my feet/legs.
Also, just noting that I tend to cross my legs under a desk, and anything with a central drawer (or other down-hanging thing atop my knees) under the top surface is going to be a problem.
That desk has nice lines, visually,
That desk looks like one piece of furniture involuntarily grafted onto another. It is the Human Centipede of desks.
Table-style desks (with curvy legs, maybe) for the win, then! A pull-out/roll-out file drawer to one side may be acceptable, but only if the desk is fairly long to begin with, to prevent the banging of the knees. No central drawer above the knees.
I'm thinking that "antique" desks may not be able to fit this bill, since they date from a time before people spent as much time at their desks, pre-internet and pre-piles of paper which must be accommodated. Then again, people did once write an awful lot of letters -- at writing desks.
We don't have any design fans here? My own knowledge of these things is lacking. It is Saturday night, I realize.
12.1: Yup. I like a desk to be just a table at the right height to sit and put a laptop and a notebook on. Simple and useful.
haterz be trippin. damn right it hasn't met it's reserve, which is...1800? I'd say, min. fuck, no, gottabe more.
I got obsessed with mid-century desks before I came to my senses and realized there isn't space for a desk in my apartment. I liked the style that seems to be called floating-top and of course the classic Heywood Wakefield kneehole desk. One day, in a larger apartment...
I have a gorgeous mid-century teak writing desk, tiny, with three drawers on one side and just pencil legs on the other, in my store. come to Narnia.
I can't sleep.
Many desks are too small for me.
I actually quite liked the cubicle desks we had at the stock brokerage. Obviously, they weren't much to look at, but they were very functional and ergonomic.
Currently, I have been bumping my knee, which I injured a few weeks ago by falling -- Kerplop! -- in Uptown, on desks and things like that. It really, really hurts.
That is all I have to say on this topic.
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Some messed up crashes on the Tour today. Worst had three riders out with various bones broken (at least one went down an embankment), but the most infuriating for the riders was when one of the cars which was alongside the 5-man breakaway on a very narrow road swerved right to avoid a tree and put one ride on the road which forced another into a barbed-wire fence.
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14: Well, ...
This is the sort of desk I typically lust after, or perhaps this. I'm sure, however, that those would be horribly impractical (or so I console myself), so I would cheerfully settle for this or even this simple but elegant creature.
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And US women score 80 seconds in against Brazil.
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19 - it's been a crazy week all round, I don't understand why. I missed this afternoon's crash though as had to go out, got back and C told me. We almost cried on Friday when Brad went out.
Hope Solo is such a great name for a goalie.
Is this the open thread?
I report from the Sunday talking head shows that the amount and degree of lazy, irresponsible talk perpetuated thereon actually stunned me. They're usually a little more conscientious (at least nodding toward fact-based discussion) than this, they really usually are.
Commentators kept referring to the "tax increases" Democrats are insisting upon, and then arguing heatedly about whether these "tax hikes" can possibly be acceptable in a down economy, blah blah.
Except, well, no, in reality, people, no increases in the tax rate are proposed, but rather revenue increases generated by eliminating some tax loopholes. As they know perfectly well. Whence the lazy formulation which undoubtedly leads quite a few listeners to believe that tax rate increases are being contemplated?
This is thoroughly disgusting. It got so bad on the few minutes of Fox News Sunday that I watched that Juan Williams was arguing with that jackass Brit Hume's statement that 'Obama agreed in December to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone, so what happened to his policy between then and now, and why is he reversing course now?' WTF? (Juan does not seem very bright, and did not reply to this obfuscation appropriately, but rather seemed to grant the premise that tax hikes are on the table. Mara Liasson, for what it's worth, was over to one side going, "Hold on, now hold on, wait a minute," but Juan and Brit were on a roll.)
But of course that's Fox News. This kind of unclarity and misrepresentation was present on the other shows as well. I really found it baffling and angry-making.
Very questionable call on re-taking that PK. Plus US playing now with 10--I guess the red was appropriate, although it was a bit close as well (no dispute on it being a penalty).
Oh, also everyone kept saying "Everyone agrees that the deficit is a serious problem for our economy" and "Everyone knows that entitlements have to be addressed" and "Nobody thinks that our level of debt isn't a huge problem" and so on.
Fuckin' A.
I imagine I should have previewed to see that the topic is sports. Don't mind me.
This is annoying officiating. Marta and Solo are both fun to watch.
We have a secretary/desk very similar to this. One of our few actual nice pieces of furniture, but it gets used very rarely; almost all actual work takes place on a bi-fold closet door that I laid across an old breakfast table as a temporary measure 15 years ago*. I blame computers.
*Heebie should not come to our house, we also have kid art on the walls that we've never gotten around to taking down and other eccentric decorating items of personal significance. Because we don't care.
30: Dude, I have two (2) driftwood lamps. They're technically my housemate's, but actually, I rather like them. There is also a piece of driftwood hanging on the living room wall. It's the natural look, you see.
She uses this 5 piece 3-ton industrial sheet metal thingy with attached sideboards and printer well and included filing cabinets and god knows what-all. She also has a simpler thing, just boards, for laptop and monitor. Very nice leather highback swivel chairs sidearms
I use a big piece of plywood on top of two large cans and an old kitchen or folding chair, surrounded by walls of electronics, books, papers, discs. I move down to floor sometimes.
I have never understood why people want or like pretty and nice things. Just flawed human nature, I suppose. Umm, them, not me.
Still means it is a tie and we go to kicks.
29: It reminded me of wrestling, or at least what Barthes had to say about that.
Is it just me, or is the Google+ interface kind of weird and hard to get started with?
And there was no doubt about it ...
Heebie should not come to our house, we also have kid art on the walls that we've never gotten around to taking down and other eccentric decorating items of personal significance. Because we don't care.
Wait, what? Dude, you have serious misconceptions about design.
I'm not sure what specifically the "wait, what?" is responding to so am not sure where to look for my misconceptions.
28: Marta and Solo are both fun to watch.
Not at all tough to look at either.
The only people who don't like kid art and eccentric items of personal significance are the people peddling in McMansions.
I once had an interior architect/designer, who actually knew me rather well, suggest that in my ur-home I should have a giant antique rocking chair. Why and whence, I have no idea. The point being that eccentric personal items are de rigeur in design, even if you have to import them specially.
a bi-fold closet door that I laid across an old breakfast table as a temporary measure 15 years ago*.
We have a regular door resting on two two-drawer filing cabinets. We replaced it with a nice, inherited desk for a few years, but I always saved the door, and now the nice desk is dismantled in the basement.
The door-desk is bigger and more stable, and the filing cabinets supply a lot of handy storage. And now it has the hutch from the nice desk on top of it.
45: Flip, that is a link to the Weekly Standard? Do I want to go there?
48: Yes, but pre-George W. Bush and all that ensued, so one can read it through a haze of nostalgia for the trivia of the late '90s.
44: Hmm, I probably misinterpreted, Anyway, dear design websites: DIY shit usually looks like DIY shit. Sorry about that. and Not everything becomes art just because you hang it on a wall.
I wonder what Barthes had to say about wrestling.
Barthes said the ur-home wrestles an antique rocking chair as Jacob the angel.
DIY shit is shit like: Take two dozen clothespins, and clip them around a picture frame! Take an old vest, and pin it to a wall, and stick a bunch of pins in it, and use it to hang your jewelry!
It's these afternoon-art-projects for adults, which sometimes works, but mostly doesn't.
Anyway, I'm mildly offended.
51: And in case it is not clear, I do mean that the misinterpretation is likely to be all on my side. I don't always read closely enough. It is a bad habit, but I still do it.
Because I have strong opinions about what I'd want to see in my own house, but I love seeing what other people do in their own houses, and I almost always find it lovely and charming. And there's a ton of pretentiousness in the design world, but I really don't think I'm particularly pretentious, and that's basically what you were accusing me of being.
With the DIY shit, I didn't want to provide links because I didn't want to insult bloggers who I otherwise like. But not having tangible examples definitely made the post unclear.
Can we talk more about the Tour? Probably not, I know, but it seemed worth a try.
Off to go grocery shopping! I'm sure you think my witty banter outweighs my occasional pretentiousness, so comity.
Just in case, I want to register my love for Gilbert. Actually, I've loved him before now, but his performance in this year's Classics and now in this Tour has elevated his status to apple of my eye.
DIY shit is shit like: Take two dozen clothespins, and clip them around a picture frame! Take an old vest, and pin it to a wall, and stick a bunch of pins in it, and use it to hang your jewelry!
"Why don't you turn your child into an Infanta for a fancy-dress party? Why don't you wash your blond child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?"
[N.B. that Opinionated Diana Vreeland is already familiar with both the S.J. Perelman parody of the foregoing, thanks to literacy, and the "Put a bird on it!" thing from Portlandia, thanks to the Internet beating every moderately amusing thing in the world to death.]
55 before seeing 54. Sorry*, it's nothing that a big drink of water won't make better.
*And actually I did not mean to make that much about being an accusation of pretension. There are in fact reasons to conform with design and fashion norms (or not really "conform" but at least spend some time thinking about them, and in particular with regard to friends and family). Pure utility alone has its place, but there is a certain selfishness and asocial lack of consideration for visitors that my family's living space and style exhibit that is really not very commendable.
62.*: A little bit pretension accusation of course.
50: That is such a bizarre article. 'nuff said.
64: A lot of WS stuff that I have seen -- to be fair, not that much -- is like that: conclusions unuttered, whole libraries of argument packed into a sidelong adjective like "mendacious" or "corrupt," unsavory associations unacknowledged (praising proponents of Christian Reconstructionism, blaming the Catholic Church's sex scandals on, and I am not kidding, liberal Jesuits with "only single malt and sodomy for existential comfort," etc., etc.).
64, 65: But that one really is something. When one looks at wrestling's "progress" from the 1950s to the 1990s, one really has to be concerned about America's future. Where have you gone Bruno Sammartino? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
And I suspect he wrote the whole thing to justify using the last image: Perhaps, then, when we watch -- and enjoy -- the WWF and the WCW, we really are wrestling with the end of history. Whoa, dude!
As the Dallas-Miami series exhibited those who love to find and write about moral arcs in sport are the lowest form of life in the universe. And here we have it compounded with Buckleyism--doubleplus fatuous!
65, 66: I don't know what to say. I've never read the Weekly Standard, and the only representative of it I glimpse from time to time (as far as I know) is the supremely smarmy Bill Kristol, who pisses me off pretty much instantaneously.
Can we talk more about the Tour?
Sure. I am reminded of the Surfaris. And what's this about a cager running riders off the road? Bikes get enough of that in real life.
At work, I don't even have a desk--just filing cabinets with slabs of wood on it. Being short and having a laptop, this gave me bad tendonitis. I had to go to a doctor and fight to get a good chair, a footrest, keyboard and monitor.
58: I assume this will force some changes in what cars they allow to do what. Really nuts that a car would be alongside on that narrow of a road with trees on the berm. But then a lot of crazy team car and TV car/motorcycle driving so I guess it is inevitable something like this would occur. I was also struck by the enmity for Alexandre Vinokouro in some liveblogs I saw. He's out in his final tour with a possible broken pelvis and/or femur after the horrific descent crash and there is a lot of "good riddance." Drugs work and people are moralistic prigs with blinders it turns out.
65: Single malt and sodomy? Sign me up!
Just in case, I want to register my love for Gilbert. Actually, I've loved him before now, but his performance in this year's Classics and now in this Tour has elevated his status to apple of my eye.
I'm assuming you mean Gilbert Arenas.
Single malt and sodomy are for European sophisticates. In the heartland we prefer cheap beer and oral.
We prefer expressive beer, but never have the money. At least that's what we tell ourselves.
Thank heaven the oral is free.
I saw a "Food not Bombs" thing today. I'd probably have missed it if I hadn't heard of it here recently. They looked pretty much like the rest of the people sitting around except they had a pot, some plates, and a very poorly displayed sign.
Like all of what people sitting around where? What kind of ""Food not Bombs" thing"?
It was in front of the main Carnegie Library in Oakland. It was close to 90 today and the plaza was packed. I suppose they may have just been getting started, but they didn't have enough food for ten from what I could see.
If I remember the last mention of Food Not Bombs here, the point was made that their project is as much about visibility as it is about providing food.
Mildly OT: Today on the NPR show The Splendid Table, which I know Heebie hates, there was a brief interview with Anthony Bourdain in which he was invited to opine about Alice Waters. Verdict: wince. I was glad he went into specifics, mentioning that when Waters was asked how poor people might be able address the fact that all that terrific, healthy, organic and locally produced food is like three times more expensive than the non-organic, she (apparently) replied that they might want to dispense with a cell phone account or that second set of Nikes. Ouch.
Well, we've talked about that before.
If they wanted visibility, I think the sign shouldn't have been left flat on the ground. Maybe they didn't have a permit, so they wanted to be visible but not too visible.
Unwanted advice: I'm not sure why you think sounding like a meth addict will help you sell a house on Craigslist, but spending 3/4ths of the ad explaining why you want to sell while not mentioning how many bathrooms the house has is a very good start. Moving swiftly away from approximately standard punctuation and spelling after the first sentence is also great.
Only 11 minutes left on the desk! No bids.
Sadly, it's about 6" too wide for where it would go. I did go so far as to get a shipping quote from the seller.
Sadly, it's about 6" too wide for where it would go.
What if you put it in the other way?
Did anybody find out what the reserve was? Alameida said something upthread about $1800, but that sounded like a guess.
What's the functional difference between the minimum bid and the reserve?
we don't find out the reserve until, during the course of active bidding, the reserve is met, at which point the "the reserve has not yet been met" red sign disappears. I didn't check out all the specifics of the auction carefully enough at the start--they put "eames" as a general lure-people-in descriptor, and it's actually by john keal, but real. i'm surprised no one bid. partner's desk, finished on both sides...it's in hemet CA with $150 shipping. I still can't see the reserve being less than 1800. striped mahogany! I don't know, the business of mid-century furniture is obviously different in california, where supply is plentiful, than over here in good ol' ainraN. I could sell it here for close to 3,000 ainriaN dollars, prolly. I have a tiger mahogany desk for sale for 2800 right now, but a vast roll-top from 1910 with gorgeous paneling and an abundance of organizational niches. perfect for colonial administration.
it is astonishingly similar to this one, also shown in the adjacent photos in the photostream.
45: Classic article. "It was all fun and games when they were just whipping up good old-fashioned ethnic hatred, but now shit's gotten real!" I wonder what that guy made of The Rock and Goldberg.
80: Some commenter at Kissing Suzy Kolber compared Anthony Bourdain to Dr. Rockzo, the rock 'n' roll clown: "I do have done cocaine!" I didn't take him all that seriously before, but that pretty much killed it.
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Good morning, Gracie. Now it's time for morning maniac music.
We blew through the debt ceiling May 16th. Commenters:"The reason the markets aren't panicking is..."
Kevin Smith (yes Virginia, the markets are panicking)
5-yr indexed t-bills negative interest rates, cheaper than cash
Barry Rittholz Look out below Italy Edition see also:Krugman "Fall of Rome"
Conclusion: No matter what US does on debt ceiling, bond markets think the rest of the world is gonna fall harder, faster, farther
"Look what's happening out in the streets"
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I'm back in town, and have a handful of posts, but I have to re-overcome my suspicion that they're dumb.
Pfff. That's never stopped the people who write Two and Half Men
And they don't let that stop them. It's kind of inspiring.
92: if you look under "overcompensating" in the dictionary you will find a picture of Anthony Bourdain. He seems to be aware that he spends his working life wearing a ridiculous hat and worrying about herbs and sauces and desserts, and is compensating for this by trying to sound as much as he can like a cross between Red Adair and Iggy Pop.
98: ...a cross between Red Adair and Iggy Pop.
I'm not sure that combination would be feasible, even if Red were still with us, but I'd certainly watch at least the pilot of a reality show about it.
If I had a design-inspired website, I'd call it "The Designa Monologues".
I'm not sure how to spell Designa to make the joke most transparent, though.
I just got two new dry erase boards, possibly designed by John Keal.
Does somebody have a drill I could borrow?
99: I think it would work best as one of those 1990s natural-disaster films, like "Twister". In order to make it Oscar bait, he would probably have to fall into a drug-induced downward spiral in act 2, only to be saved and returned to sanity by the love of a good woman.
Pitch: it's "The Hurt Locker" meets "Walk the Line".
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Assuming that Harper One is Prime Minister of Canada, what happened to Harpers Two through Six?
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"Only one man can, shirtless, complain about Alice Waters and GQ's restaurant critic Alan Richman on a burning oil rig in the Bermuda Triangle.
"This summer, he's going Off the Menu."
You can just PayPal me the story fee.
88: What's the functional difference between the minimum bid and the reserve?
It might be too late to reply to this, but: I'm a little rusty on eBay, but basically the seller (if s/he chooses to have a reserve) sets an amount -- invisible to bidders -- below which no bid can actually win.
So it goes like this: bidder places bid of $449, and specifies that s/he is willing to go as high as, say, $800. (Actually the bidder places a max bid of $800, I believe, and this shows up as the minimum bid). If Bidder2 bids $500, Bidder1's bid (which can go up to $800) automatically goes to $500 + whatever the increment established for the auction is -- say $525. Bidder3 bids $550. Bidder1's bid then goes to $575.
Bidder1's bid keeps trumping the last bid by $25 increments until the bidding hits $800, at which point Bidder1 drops out after $800 (or else ups his/her max bid). If Bidder2 and Bidder3 have also specified maximum bids, the bidding can go up rapid-fire among all of them by $25 increments, until various of them drop out because their max has been met and exceeded.
But that has nothing to do with the reserve, because the reserve might be $1800, so the bidders have just been spinning their wheels: they've effectively been trying to find out what the hell the seller's seekrit reserve is. In a way, they're bidding against the reserve.
Some sellers will tell you (privately) what the reserve is if you ask. Some won't, because they want to generate bidding action. If a bidder knows the max s/he is willing to go to is $1000 and the reserve is $1800, s/he is just not going to bid to begin with, and the seller doesn't want that.
I'm dubious about Alameida's $1800 reserve estimate (whether or not the desk is actually worth that) just because it's 4 times higher than the starting bid: you're going to be annoying a lot of bidders if they keep upping their max bids and still don't hit the reserve; they're going to drop out in disgust. Also, since many eBay bidders don't start bidding until the very end of the auction's run-time, the clock may well just run out before the reserve is met -- I'd say it's generally not wise from the seller's perspective to have a reserve that much higher than the starting bid.
Holy crap, that was long. Sorry! Apologies also if any of it sounded like I was speaking to simpletons -- I was just typing as I thought it through.
Many of us are the first in their family to go to college.
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Sorry to hijack, but is Rauch's piece over at Sullivan's a parody? Is there backstory I don't know, like he was caught sockpuppeting and now he's permanently aggrieved about blogs? Did I just fall for the most basic taunting ever and I shouldn't waste any thought on it?
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Did I just fall for the most basic taunting ever
Mmmaybe. I don't know from Rauch, not to remember him, so maybe there's more to it than that. But it looks like trolling to me.
Well, if there is any crowd well-trained to ignore trolls, it should be us.
Interestingly, McMegan has a thing on the Rauch piece also.
111: Huh. Maybe Sullivan's blog needs page views now that it's moved to the Daily Beast.
What, precisely, is the value proposition, much less the appeal, of Andrew Sullivan's thinking writing typing? It seems outlandish that he is as prominent as Josh Marshall, or more so, among blog-types of similar vintage. He's so officious, disingenuous and transparently self-serving; he's the vanguard that Mc/Ardle follows, consciously or not.
116: It's an ongoing mystery. I note in passing that he was featured on the cover of a recent Harvard Magazine issue: I was a bit startled, amused, confused, say what? I haven't read it, but you know, there is that. Apparently.
Not that it necessarily has much to do with his blogging.
He did some outstanding work on, erm, a recent important series of events. I didn't follow it myself. On Egypt?
117: I never look at the cover. I throw the magazine out after confirming the unfamiliarity of the names in my class notes.
He's so officious, disingenuous and transparently self-serving the former editor of The New Republic, back from before there were blogs and before Josh Marshall was a writer at all. And Marshall has evolved into more of a a journalist or newsroom editor type (no books, other writers more prominent on his own blog), while Sullivan is free to write prose without the obligation to be informed.
89: "Eames" is an almost meaningless term on ebay. It means the item in question was made between 1930 and 1980, or was designed to look like it.
I'm not a good writer, so to be clear, I was trying to say I think Sullivan is a good writer and that's why he's popular, in addition to being a Villager in good standing.
The article in 45, if intended as a parody of both pompous moralistic sports writing and Buckley-ism, is truly a fabulous acheivement. Or what Stormcrow said.
Mumbling into your port about how the world has gone to seed ever since Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik retired really takes mumbling into your port to a new level.
Sullivan had to overcome the less than marvelous period of his tenure as editor of The New Republic, I think.
I've read some Sullivan posts that are really quite good. For every one of those, there's another that defies description, so I've never felt an urge to actually follow him.
118: I've been trying to figure out how to stop receiving the paper copy. Surely this should be possible: to switch to receiving the online/emailed version only. I really don't need or want a paper copy.
Holy shit, that wrestling piece was done by a professor of English at UVA. Surely at least one way to loosen up the academic job market would be to murder a few people with tenure, so why not start with that guy.
Holy shit, that wrestling piece was done by a professor of English at UVA. Surely at least one way to loosen up the academic job market would be to murder a few people with tenure, so why not start with that guy make candidates wrestle for tenure-track positions, with named chairs put up for grabs annually in special formats at an Academo-Wrestlemania: Cage, Hardcore, Iron Man, Tables Ladders and Chairs and, of course, for positions not less prestigious than that of Eliot Professor of Greek, Hell in a Cell.
Surely no one wants to see a bunch of greased up and half naked aspiring academics in a ring.
Or maybe someone does, but that's niche porn at the level of elbow-fetishists.
Not everyone, surely, but people who weren't necessarily interested in the wrestling itself or the greased half-nakedness ("Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness....") could be drawn in with backstage intrigues: Did the Citator plagiarize his job talk from a Festschrift edited by tag-team champions Race, Class and Gender? When will we see the brooding, tweedy Administrator's revenge?
125: I remember fondly when, in a cross-promotion, Mike Tyson was up for the Wykeham Professorship of Logic.
128: That ref was in on it.
For those wanting the joke explained:
At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson who was forcing himself upon the (then little-known) model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer said: "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world," to which Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, while Naomi Campbell slipped out.
He's so officious, disingenuous and transparently self-serving; he's the vanguard that Mc/Ardle follows, consciously or not.
I don't find him more disingenuous and self-serving than other pontificators. And unlike McArdle, he gives the impression that he'd genuinely like to understand how the world works, and that he's got some of the intellectual tools to work it out.
Sure, he'll never talk sensibly about The Bell Curve, but how many of us are able to face up to our intellectual failures?
He links some fun stuff, he makes some good observations, he's fairly unpredictable and he's willing to give opposing views a fair hearing.
Possibly most important for me, he's a conservative whose work I can tolerate reading regularly. I mean, hell, back in the pre-blogosphere days, I used to read George Will and Charles Krauthammer all the time.
116: He's a sufficiently good writer that when he writes about something where you already agree with him, it sounds good.
OT: Trimming nose hairs should be done either using a mirror or blunted scissors. Possibly both. That is all.
133: And definitely not on the bus, even if you say thanks afterward.
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Fuck, I was scared about this on the 1st of June when we hit 100 too early. (I know others are hot too.)
DFW starts heating up and drying out, the earth and concrete hold the heat, we get an inversion, a permanent high-pressure that just keeps getting bigger and stronger. So we were 101-105 this week, and forecast for up to 107-108 next week. Getting scarey.
And that high pressure circulation eventually draws moisture up from the Gulf and the humidity and dew point keep rising. Currently 65 degrees DP, which adds 2-5 heat index points. Heat Index gets 110+ and we are lucky if the HI ever gets below 90.
I remember 1980, when the temperature rarely dropped below 90 at dawn and the HI rarely under 100. Deadly and crazifying.
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Nobody is actually supposed to live in Dallas. It was built as a practical joke.
Surely McManus is consistent with the humor?
I don't find him more disingenuous and self-serving than other pontificators. And unlike McArdle, he gives the impression that he'd genuinely like to understand how the world works, and that he's got some of the intellectual tools to work it out.
Also unlike McArdle, he often follows up his mistakes and ridiculous overreactions to things by saying "Whoops, that was a mistake. I've changed my mind", instead of "What all of you who know way more than me about this didn't realize is, I was actually right, if you look really hard for a potential situation in which I might have been right".
138 gets it exactly right. Comparison with McMegan makes anyone look good, though, since she is the most annoying (n.b., not worst, just most annoying) person on the internet.
zunguzungu, which someone linked from here is interesting. rortybomb, causal inference, speigel's english feed, the awl.
I've been looking for good writing about North Africa and the rest of the arab world; has anyone found interesting sources? French OK.
lw, you looking for stuff with broader import or pleasant travelogues? I enjoyed a couple Yemen travelogues, but wouldn't say they went deeper than that. Lemmeno if you want names.
Oh, and those were, like, books. Not blogs.
140: Aqoul is good, although they don't seem to be updating very frequently these days.
re: Ayer. I was in the dank sekrit dungeons under the [place that I work], just a few days ago, with some colleagues. And I found* Ayer's papers/letters/manuscripts. Which meant I had to tell my colleagues the Ayer/Tyson story. Turns out Ayer had really really tiny handwriting.
Also, fighting for academic jobs? I could go for that. Fucking right.
* not that they are lost, I just didn't expect them to be on the shelf next to the thing we were looking for.
Also, fighting for academic jobs? I could go for that. Fucking right.
Yes, well, you have significantly more martial arts training than the average academic, so you're presumably at a considerable advantage under a fighting-for-jobs system.
re: 145
Heh. Although I did used to know a couple of philosophy grad students who boxed at a fairly serious amateur level. But I'd guess I'd have more chance of making it to the short-list under a system of academic blood-tanistry than I do now under a system that favours a combination of hard-work, luck, and networking/nepotism.
Actually, gloomily, it'd make no difference. Younger, better, more ambitious people would still get it. Still, one can pretend.
I know! People always say things like "violence isn't the solution", but I'm pretty sure it is a solution that gives me better odds than a solution based on effort. Are you sure we can't settle this by fighting? Why do people keep insisting on reasoning and merit and laws?
148: Violence never solves anything, but an ashtray to the head will rid one of certain graduate students.
144: I hope the sekrit dungeons aren't really dank, ttaM. Because that's just no good, you know.
Re 151
Heh. No, they are quite airy, and not even that dark. Fancy meters for humidity and the like, too. They are underground, though, and there are cages for particularly precious things.
They've been doing this for a while, to be fair.
[T]here are cages for particularly ... precious things.
Said the College Keeper, a sepulchral mourn from the eyeless void within his hood, and drew down his sleeves once more over his slack and livid talons.
I know. I was just amused by the "dank".
What happens to things like Ayer's papers? Are they eventually scanned and archived or something? Are they just being stored for safekeeping? Or -- are they available for scholars to consult. Perhaps the last. Or all three.
I'm at loose ends; it's quite hot here. I've just finished making a green bean salad which has to chill and marinate for a bit. Tomorrow is due to be approximately 100 degrees F. It's a little grim.
It's hot, and I got a horrible cold. That made me tired which makes me feel even stupider than normal.
156: You think you have it bad -- one of the tomato plants in the garden fell over and is crushing the swiss chard.
!!
It is, however, too hot for me to be willing to do anything about it until at least tomorrow evening (when it will be hotter). My housemate may be mad if I let the chard be killed.
Hark! Thunder.
It makes sense that air conditioners would be more likely to fail on the hottest days, and that the consequent peak in service calls would overburden the repair services so that it might take them 16 hours, for example, to respond, but THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY COOLER.
It's very nice here after the storm blew through.
159: I hope it helped. As I thought about it a bit more, the weird thing about the automatic upping of bids for bidders who have placed max bid amounts is that you don't necessarily see the action registered in the bidding history -- the bidding history can look mysteriously strange. But that's tangential to the business of the reserve.
161: Do you mind if a guy and two cats crash on your couch?
Re 108, I thought that if someone placed a bid higher than the reserve, the price automatically went up to the reserve, and the auction continued from there.
Also, I haven't read most of this thread (boy is is annoying when someone drops in and says that), but I see that no one has mentioned sniping. Use a sniping service, people! Don't run up the price for no good reason!
164.1: Yeah, I wasn't sure about that. I don't know. I'd think, yeah, it would. But I'm not sure.
I can't think of the last time I saw an auction in which the first bid placed was, say, $1800 instead of the starting bid of $449. So I don't know.
164: "First you gotta catch the snipe. Come back when you get one. We'll all wait here."
I'm not 100% sure either, because I only ever bid by snipe, and usually on things (used clothing) that wouldn't have a reserve. But I did win a bike for which I was the only bidder, and I got it for the reserve price, which was $150 lower than my willing-to-pay bid. For that auction I had read about how the reserve price works, and I think I'm remembering correctly.
It's like a trip to the beach for the cats.
I don't have AC right now, and except for a welcome three-year stint recently, I haven't had AC in New York since 2000.
So: regular cold baths. As often as you like. It's not as though you're in the droughty West, so you might as well fill up that bathtub and soak. A half-hour in a tepid bath will really bring your temperature down.
Related: Ice in a washcloth. Apply particularly to the nape of the neck.
Shift locations, even though it hurts. The stoop may be cooler, may have a breeze! And of course, your public facilities (work, the library, malls) will have blasting AC. During the worst heat waves, look for evening hours. If you have roof access in your building, go up there.
Most important: those of us who live without AC learn to differentiate between hot days and horrible days. Today was and tomorrow is scheduled to be horrible. However! Wednesday is supposed to be much nicer: only 80-85. Surely we can hold out until then! See: endurance and fortitude (aka "talking yourself into a stiff upper lip") can see you through an AC-less summer!
I'm glad this place has air conditioning, but I wish my landlady (who lives in the house above where all the climate stuff is set) would run it a little lower.* I seem to get unusually cold when I sleep, and the result is that I'm sleeping in long-sleeves when it's 80-90 outside.
I've been to desert areas in the summer for hiking/backpacking where it was so hot that we moved only in the early morning or the evening, so this isn't the hottest weather I've ever been in by temp, but with the humidity it really is incredible, especially when I walk home around (just before/after) sunset and it doesn't feel like anything has let up. Moving from the climate control of libraries certainly increases the shock of stepping outside. I'm still enjoying the novelty of not always carrying some kind of warm clothing, though.
*I've been in colder/cool areas so long that I have to consciously not confuse turning the AC down with turning the heat up. The last month I was in Vancouver it was never above 70, down to the 50s at night and I never ran the heat. Of course being on the third floor instead of in a basement helps.
Apply particularly to the nape of the neck.
Inner wrists, too -- or run cold water over them from the tap. That's my favorite trick.
you all are making me happy I'm going to martha's vineyard, but sadder that I'm going to south carolina. oh well, not much worse than narnia and it's not as bad as central india or dfw.
169,171: Thanks! I've done this before for several summers, although not quite as bad as today.</whine>
I second JM's bath advice. I spent an August in Madrid (running joke: no one who lives in Madrid stays here in August) in AC-free student housing. My nightly sleeplessness was eventually calmed by spending an hour each night in a tepid bath with a book.
It certainly helped that there was good, strong coffee to be had in the morning.
I never had ac is West Africa, but a ceiling fan made all the difference in the world. During power outages, it was nearly impossible to fall asleep, no matter how many cool showers I got up to take. Plus the folks next door had a generator. So sometimes it would be just as bright as usual through the curtains, plus, the noise of the generator, plus their extra active goats.
re: 155
Things mostly just sit on shelves, but are available for consultation by academics and readers. There are lots of ongoing projects -- funded by donors, academic research councils, the state, or in some cases commercial companies -- to photograph and make available online various sets of material. However, the [place I work] suffers a bit from an embarrassment of riches. We have so much important stuff that only a small percentage of it is currently available in this way.
When you have 10,000* medieval manuscripts -- and where other world famous research institutions may have 50 -- it's not quite so easy to make them all available, and that goes double for more recent stuff (inc. private papers). I know, because I'm a very junior member of a committee overseeing a new joint project with the nacitaV, that other places with similarly large collections face a similar problem.
As it happens, I know (because, erm, I'm the one doing it) that some 20th c. stuff in that subject area may be subject to some funding bids to try and get it online, but there are lots of funding bids and only a minority of them get funded.
* I don't know the actual number, but it differs from other places by that sort of order of magnitude
Arrived in Cincinnati for a work meeting last night and the dewpoint was 80 degrees F which is pretty insane. Not that common even further south, but there was a pod of it yesterday along the lower Ohio Valley. A meteorologist from Louisville's explanation included a unique element which I'm not sure passes the smell test.
blame it on the corn. specifically the corn belt. This air mass developed over the weekend in the corn fields of Iowa and Kansas. When corn reaches its silking stage, the plants put out a huge amount of water vapor. Normally the atmosphere will disperse it, but when a huge ridge of high pressure forms that vapor is trapped and due to the high the air heats up. While we have corn in KY, the density of fields is much higher in the Plains hence the corn belt.Maybe, but does not seem it would involve enough moisture to be relevant. He also mentions the that in general it has been very wet here (and in the corn areas) with excess soil moisture, which certainly *can* be relevant, so once again, maybe. Intensive corn production, improving your life in so many ways.
