Thursday, May 20, 2004
Haberdashery continued:
Recently [1999] in the magazine Nature, we proposed a mathematical model to calculate and classify all possible tie knots. Of the 85 found, we duly predicted the four knots in widespread use (see below) and further introduced nine new aesthetic ones.I must say, I have nothing but love and admiration for my incomparable British colleagues (and Nature for publishing them); I hope one day I can do something this this lovely, yet practical. Long live Science!
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Some happy folks... good for them.
And what's the matter with these people? They don't like other people being in love & happy?
More photos here and here.
And what's the matter with these people? They don't like other people being in love & happy?
More photos here and here.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
While I am still somewhat obsessed over clothing, shoes, &c., here is a helpful site about lacing shoes. Also, anyone have strong feelings, one way or another, about shoe trees?
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
To continue on theme of killing & eating animals: what is the bloody point here? Why kill an animal if you don't plan to eat it or put it to use somehow? My friend Ben, now in Iraq as an National Guard specialist, used to say this of trophy hunters: "It is like going to the Louvre and shoot a painting for fun; why would you do something asinine like that?"
On a related note, John McPhee has a sharp word or two about the supposedly more "humane" activity of catch-and-release fishing in The Founding Fish. It turns out that in Germany, catch-and-release fishing is outlawed as senseless and cruel, which it is.
On a related note, John McPhee has a sharp word or two about the supposedly more "humane" activity of catch-and-release fishing in The Founding Fish. It turns out that in Germany, catch-and-release fishing is outlawed as senseless and cruel, which it is.
Labels: eating animals
Went to N. Michigan Avenue on saturday, with Miriam along for advice, and bought myself a suit. An attractive black, three-button number from Kenneth Cole, close-fitted and clean-cut; the lingo for the cut is "modern European". We went through about a dozen stores, but only two had jackets small enough for me (size 36). Kenneth Cole was the first store we went into, and if only so the day won't be a total wash, we returned there; the suit was actually the very first one I had tried on that day.
Not as unpleasant an experience as it may sound; it was a nice, comfortable day, I had company, the limited choices made for a fairly simple decision, and the suit was very nice and ran under $600.
The other store was Nordstrom. The salesman first had me try on two $700 Hugo Boss numbers, which though nice enough, weren't particularly catchy. The third suit though, was very nice indeed, with slightly shiny fabric that draped well. It turned out to be a $1400 Armani. I politely declined to consider the suit further, and we slipped out of the store soon after.
The shocking thing here is not some suit costs $1400, but that differences, even this high up on the price range, are so noticeable. It just goes to show if you think you won't be able to tell between a $1400 Armani and a $700 Boss, you have never been in an Armani. Or, people who wonder about how the rich can spend all that money have never been rich.
It feels rather indecent though, to wear a suit that costs as much as many people take home in a month; though a suit that is as much as many people take home in two weeks is pretty bad too. I don't think hedonism, or pleasure for pleasure's sake, is wrong (at most it is a minor sin), provided one can legitimately afford it. I don't spend much for clothing particularly, but I do usually dish out extra for fancier food: it makes me happy when the sorpessa is from Venetia, the coffee is certified Kona, the balsamic vinegar is aged 10 years, &c.; I can't think that something that makes me so happy, and for the enjoyment which I am not hurting any one, can be wrong. I don't perhaps feel so embarrassed about spending $20 on a bit of salame; but I do, some, for when I spend $600 on a to be rarely used suit; and I can't imagine, even if I am one day able to, buying and wearing a diamond encrusted Bvlgari watch. There is not fundamental difference between them, only a matter of cost & degree. I know they are not wrong, but somehow, more or less, they don't feel right. Go figure.
As for the shoes? $120 pair of Kenneth Cole lace-up ankle boots, black, shiny, but not too ostentatious; looks just like a pair of oxfords below the hem, except for the 1.5" heels.
Not as unpleasant an experience as it may sound; it was a nice, comfortable day, I had company, the limited choices made for a fairly simple decision, and the suit was very nice and ran under $600.
The other store was Nordstrom. The salesman first had me try on two $700 Hugo Boss numbers, which though nice enough, weren't particularly catchy. The third suit though, was very nice indeed, with slightly shiny fabric that draped well. It turned out to be a $1400 Armani. I politely declined to consider the suit further, and we slipped out of the store soon after.
The shocking thing here is not some suit costs $1400, but that differences, even this high up on the price range, are so noticeable. It just goes to show if you think you won't be able to tell between a $1400 Armani and a $700 Boss, you have never been in an Armani. Or, people who wonder about how the rich can spend all that money have never been rich.
It feels rather indecent though, to wear a suit that costs as much as many people take home in a month; though a suit that is as much as many people take home in two weeks is pretty bad too. I don't think hedonism, or pleasure for pleasure's sake, is wrong (at most it is a minor sin), provided one can legitimately afford it. I don't spend much for clothing particularly, but I do usually dish out extra for fancier food: it makes me happy when the sorpessa is from Venetia, the coffee is certified Kona, the balsamic vinegar is aged 10 years, &c.; I can't think that something that makes me so happy, and for the enjoyment which I am not hurting any one, can be wrong. I don't perhaps feel so embarrassed about spending $20 on a bit of salame; but I do, some, for when I spend $600 on a to be rarely used suit; and I can't imagine, even if I am one day able to, buying and wearing a diamond encrusted Bvlgari watch. There is not fundamental difference between them, only a matter of cost & degree. I know they are not wrong, but somehow, more or less, they don't feel right. Go figure.
As for the shoes? $120 pair of Kenneth Cole lace-up ankle boots, black, shiny, but not too ostentatious; looks just like a pair of oxfords below the hem, except for the 1.5" heels.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Will have to buy my first suit/dress shoes soon; the second hand corduroy blazer just won't cut it anymore. Vaguely I have in mind: single-breasted; 3 button, 2 button if the lapel is relatively short; navy or textured black; close-fitted & clean-cut; absolutely no more than $1000, ideally less than $600; lace-up ankle-high dress boots, black. I know, I know, this sounds awfully yuppie. I am embarrassed.
Ideas, comments, suggestions?
Ideas, comments, suggestions?
Monday, May 03, 2004
Bibliographic acquisitions for May:
Goudy said of the Bodoni typeface in The alphabet and elements of lettering: "a brilliance which is almost blinding". This is less apparent on the computer screen than on paper, but which is quite true. Modern phototypesetting in particular, accentuates the lucidity and sharpness of the Modern Romans; it would be nice to see more of it being typeset.
The alphabet and elements of lettering, by Frederick W. Goudy. Dorset Press reprint, hardcover.Geoges Cuvier is notable for being set in two typefaces. Rudwick's commentary & analysis, as well as the historical & biographical background, are set in Granjon, a classic French Roman related to Garamond. Translations of Cuvier are set in Didot (or Bodoni, I couldn't tell the difference without side-by-side specimens), a famous French typeface, which is the prototypical member of the entire Modern Roman family; it was a very popular typeface during Cuvier's day. A remarkably thoughtful choice of typefaces here.
The Cambridge companion to Brahms, edited by Michael Musgrave. Softcover.
Mechanics, by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. Softcover.
I have landed, by Stephen Jay Gould. Hardcover.
Age of iron, by J. M. Coetzee. Hardcover.
Georges Cuvier, fossil bones, and geological catastrophes, by Martin Rudwick. University of Chicago Press, hardcover.
Goudy said of the Bodoni typeface in The alphabet and elements of lettering: "a brilliance which is almost blinding". This is less apparent on the computer screen than on paper, but which is quite true. Modern phototypesetting in particular, accentuates the lucidity and sharpness of the Modern Romans; it would be nice to see more of it being typeset.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of eight ABC affiliate, has decided to block Friday's episode of Nightline, "The Fallen", where Ted Koppel intended to present the names of all US military casualties from Iraq. This comes a week after Tami Silicio was fired by her employer for taking photographs, subsequently published in the press, of the coffins coming back from Iraq.
Behind the exhortation to "support our troops" and the expressed concern for the families' privacy, appears to be a hesitation here to acknowledge the dead, killed in the course of duty to their own country, as individual human beings as opposed to some number, which though growing by day, is nonetheless small when referred to wars in the past. The daily loss of life, one or two or three, or on bad days, a dozen or so, are dutifully reported by the press and government; but the names and images, that which renders the head count into their individual human realities and implications, is suppressed, or if not amenable to suppression, reported with an uncomfortable gingerliness.
The architects and supporters of the Iraq war clearly believe the action to be right, worthwhile, and can be defended and advocated on honorable grounds, in public; I am not persuaded that they are wrong. Their hesitation to attach human faces and realities to governmental policy is therefore short-sighted and self-defeating, but perhaps not surprising. Governments, everywhere, in every era, have attempted to hide the fact their policies, no matter how abstractly sounded, or how remotely aimed, ultimately exacts consequences upon real, individual persons. It is a credit to human beings, whatever faults they posses, they are not fundamentally bloodthirsty as individuals; almost everyone will hesitate to physically hurt or kill another person, and those who do not are universally condemned. Thus more often than not, the Government, or the People, or the Party, or some such organised authority made up of humans but certainly not human-like itself, can only carry out its policies, in particular policies enabled by violence and coercion, if the human consequences of these policies is sufficiently obscured from the authority's human constituents. This is not necessarily because governments feel obligated to the people they govern; even such malignant organisms as the Nazis and the Communists always hid their bloody deeds behind euphemisms and bureaucratese, for the simple reason it lubricates the bureaucracy by anesthetizing the conscience of the bureaucrat and the populace. When governments want to mount crusades against unbelievers, burn heretics, liquidate counter-revolutionaries, combat terrorists, but without the inconvenience of having to constantly explain themselves, they claim whatever is that they want to do, it is only against unbelievers, heretics, counter-revolutionaries, terrorists — faceless icons, more or less, only incidentally human beings and really, it is best not to dwell upon that little fact all that much...
What has always moved me about the Vietnam War Memorial was its restraint and its anti-monumental humanism. Instead of nameless iconography, the Memorial presents sixty thousand named individual facts and the infinite implications that emanate from them, until at last the full weight of what has lost, of what could have been had the facts been but slightly different, implicates the viewer. The cause for which those facts come to be is still subject to discussion and debate, but surely it is possible to advocate and argue about that, or about the war in Iraq, without resorting to lies and obfuscations, without dehumanising our opponents and ourselves. To give into the inhuman logic of the machine within which we are embedded, for however righteous and just a cause, poison and destroy the very same which we intend to defend, and reduce ourselves to an unthinking, mechanical intellectual slavery.
Behind the exhortation to "support our troops" and the expressed concern for the families' privacy, appears to be a hesitation here to acknowledge the dead, killed in the course of duty to their own country, as individual human beings as opposed to some number, which though growing by day, is nonetheless small when referred to wars in the past. The daily loss of life, one or two or three, or on bad days, a dozen or so, are dutifully reported by the press and government; but the names and images, that which renders the head count into their individual human realities and implications, is suppressed, or if not amenable to suppression, reported with an uncomfortable gingerliness.
The architects and supporters of the Iraq war clearly believe the action to be right, worthwhile, and can be defended and advocated on honorable grounds, in public; I am not persuaded that they are wrong. Their hesitation to attach human faces and realities to governmental policy is therefore short-sighted and self-defeating, but perhaps not surprising. Governments, everywhere, in every era, have attempted to hide the fact their policies, no matter how abstractly sounded, or how remotely aimed, ultimately exacts consequences upon real, individual persons. It is a credit to human beings, whatever faults they posses, they are not fundamentally bloodthirsty as individuals; almost everyone will hesitate to physically hurt or kill another person, and those who do not are universally condemned. Thus more often than not, the Government, or the People, or the Party, or some such organised authority made up of humans but certainly not human-like itself, can only carry out its policies, in particular policies enabled by violence and coercion, if the human consequences of these policies is sufficiently obscured from the authority's human constituents. This is not necessarily because governments feel obligated to the people they govern; even such malignant organisms as the Nazis and the Communists always hid their bloody deeds behind euphemisms and bureaucratese, for the simple reason it lubricates the bureaucracy by anesthetizing the conscience of the bureaucrat and the populace. When governments want to mount crusades against unbelievers, burn heretics, liquidate counter-revolutionaries, combat terrorists, but without the inconvenience of having to constantly explain themselves, they claim whatever is that they want to do, it is only against unbelievers, heretics, counter-revolutionaries, terrorists — faceless icons, more or less, only incidentally human beings and really, it is best not to dwell upon that little fact all that much...
What has always moved me about the Vietnam War Memorial was its restraint and its anti-monumental humanism. Instead of nameless iconography, the Memorial presents sixty thousand named individual facts and the infinite implications that emanate from them, until at last the full weight of what has lost, of what could have been had the facts been but slightly different, implicates the viewer. The cause for which those facts come to be is still subject to discussion and debate, but surely it is possible to advocate and argue about that, or about the war in Iraq, without resorting to lies and obfuscations, without dehumanising our opponents and ourselves. To give into the inhuman logic of the machine within which we are embedded, for however righteous and just a cause, poison and destroy the very same which we intend to defend, and reduce ourselves to an unthinking, mechanical intellectual slavery.