“A Subset of All Human Culture”
For Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary, The Atlantic asked leading thinkers to contribute their thoughts about the site and its importance over the past decade. I personally enjoyed Alan Jacobs’ contribution, which considers Wikipedia’s own sense of its history:
No one understands the true genius of Wikipedia if they look only at the current version of any given page. James Bridle makes this clear when he explains why he decided to record the Wikipedia debate about how to recount the story of the Iraq war: “Wikipedia is a useful subset of the entire Internet, and as such a subset of all human culture. It’s not only a resource for collating all human knowledge, but a framework for understanding how that knowledge came to be and to be understood; what was allowed to stand and what was not; what we agree on, and what we cannot.” (The books are cool, but they are frozen in time: who knows how Wikipedia’s account of the war may change in the coming years or even decades?)
This extraordinary temporal inclusiveness does not just dramatically increase the usefulness of Wikipedia as a “resource for collating” and a “framework for understanding;” it also means that Wikipedia contains, within itself, the tools for its own evaluation. We don’t just have to assert that the whole project is on an endless upward trajectory, or, conversely, that it’s always regressing towards the mediocre mean: by studying the history, we can go a hell of a long way towards finding out.
In a way, it helps to think of Wikipedia — and by extension, the internet itself – as an ongoing conversation.
Theophilus London
I’m losing my stuff over this guy right now. Thanks to a mix from Henry. Also, I keep thinking of Mike Dresser seeing this guy walking around the neighborhood in the Trinidadian Calypso record shop on the corner. Cool.
Townes Van Zandt – Tecumseh Valley
Rediscovered: Homer and Jethro
(Thanks to my friend Paul B. for this.) Like Roger Miller + Cole Porter + (like the man says) great rhythm guitar.
I had purt-well forgotten Homer and Jethro.
Ricky Cameron, you listening?
The Doll and His Toy
The little imp has arrived. Bearing a toy lion and the ghost of a sock monkey’s smile.
Gastric Bypass Kit Available at Amazon.com
Hi I’m Ross
Tom Waits – Potter’s Field
Joan Silber’s The Art of Time in Fiction — Recommended
The Art of series, published by Graywolf Press and edited by Charles Baxter, is a line of books aimed at “reinvigorating the practice of craft and criticism” in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each book is brief and concerns a particular aspect of craft, such as The Art of Description (Mark Doty), The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song (Ellen Bryant Voigt), The Art of Time in Memoir (Sven Birkerts), and so on.
The Art of Time in Fiction is certainly not a “how-to” book; Silber’s concern seems to be one of providing an overview of the way time works in particular kinds of fiction. After a fine introduction she presents chapters that deal with Classic Time, Long Time, Switchback Time, Fabulous Time, and Time as Subject. It’s her ability to point to revealing examples that really makes this approach work well. Her lovely sentences bring complex concepts to readers’ minds in a quiet and compelling way. I would like to see her write a longer book of this sort–one that gets down into the nuts and bolts a bit more–but this brief book is just the sort needed to push writers and readers of fiction to ask the right questions about the formative nature of time in such realms.
The Singularity
The Internet has concentrated once widely dispersed aspects of a human life into one and the same little machine: work, friendship, commerce, creativity, eros. As someone sharply put it a few years ago in an article in Slate or something like that: our work machines and our porn machines are now the same machines. This is, in short, an exceptional moment in history, next to which 19th-century anxieties about the railroad or the automated loom seem frivolous. Looms and cotton gins and similar apparatuses each only did one thing; the Internet does everything.
— Justin E.H. Smith, On the Internet
Sedan, Kansas
I’m assuming that the truck was painted to match the house!
In a hypnagogic state,
I summed up the night’s dreaming by saying to myself, “This shall live in The Lay of the Leavings of Leacock.”
And no, I have no idea.
From the Comments
I remember that I had a theory as a youngster that men’s and women’s buttons were reversed to make it easier to disrobe members of the opposite sex. The button process will feel familiar if it’s reversed when facing you.
What Not
My friend Paul, who is (yes) a law librarian (in an academic law library) floated this inspired notion:
The Outlook calendar needs a feature to tell where NOT to be at certain times. Two weeks in a row I’ve mistakenly thought I had reference desk duty on Friday at 3:00, and gone out there. I don’t. I’m leaving it to all of you to remind me of this next week.
This idea has legs, don’t you think? I’m already contemplating my Not to Do List.
no, not the news network
The Genius of the Crowd
Odd attractions
I know we have discussed unlikely crushes in the past, but I’m curious about physical traits or features that we are inexplicably drawn to. For instance, I am enthralled by men with deep acne scars, especially if they also have dark skin. I could look at Wes Studi and Danny Trejo all day. It’s not so much physical attraction as an aesthetic sense, I think; I’m drawn to those faces in the same way I am drawn to certain works of art. Still, I have absolutely no idea of the origin of the appeal.
Do any of you have inexplicable attractions?
Dear Clusterflock
How many spaces do you use after a period (or other end punctuation)? I just realized I use two. And that it’s wrong, very wrong.
Overheard on the bus.
Lady 1 – “I have terrible bleeding haemorrhoids, I’ve been waiting for a year for them to be fixed.”
Lady 2 – “Ooooo, that must hurt.”
One was sat next to me. I almost thanked her for the information before I left.
No name
My spaghetti western self.
Arkansas Highway 23, Near St. Paul, AR 72760
I prefer matches
My buddy, Jeremy, understands why I love smoking so much:
I prefer matches; I understand the possibility of being extinguished. There’s something fundamental and human about turning a match just so to keep the flame from fading.
It appears, to those unfamiliar with cigarette-lighting etiquette, that match users are selfish or, simply, aren’t paying attention. In contrast to using a lighter, when using a match to light another’s cigarette, one lights his own first.
If I meet you on the sidewalk, or by the bus stop downtown, ask me for a light, and this is what I’ll do. I will, having by now placed a cigarette in my mouth, listen for wind (this may happen quickly so as to escape your notice). Then I will lean toward you, if slightly (and for my own sake), and strike a match savor the whetting even as it sparks. I will, as quickly as possible, pull the match close to my face and light my cigarette first. If you do not know about matches, then you will wonder at this apparent solipsism. What you wonder at, though, is how I love you—the tip of the match carries caustic elements, what might sear. I will go first, and so doing, draw in the bruise and burn
There are few better camaraderies between strangers.
First Aid Kit – Waltz For Richard
I still can’t get enough of them.
Overheard in the hospital cafeteria
I remember John Lennon.
You do? Wow, that is awesome.
quote out of context
“It shows that there really is no short cut to expertise,” says Bilalic.
