Sporadic discussion

This quiz did fairly well – I am from the south, though not from "the midlands".

So I'm several pages into Against the Day. And I've discovered the Pychon Wiki and the Chumps of Choice weblog – these appear to be good resources… The moniker "Chumps of Choice" being some deformation of "Chums of Chance", I suppose.

My reading begins shortly after a second reading of Mason and Dixon (I first read M&D in 1999, I believe). And I now wish I had taken notes, or at least scribbled thoughts during that second reading. So I'm hoping to do better with AtD.

Somehow I've missed most of the reviews. I read one in the Boston Globe perhaps in November – it was alright but seemed to me to overplay the identification of Pynchon with some sort of "sixties-ness"; that identification seems to trivialize matters, and it grates on me. I enjoyed the review by Michael Moorcock that I just found – linked by a poster to the Chumps' blog. That review appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and in part MM writes:

Against the Day is a fine example of successful marriage between the popular and the intellectual, between fiction and science. … Aldiss, Burroughs, Ballard and Vonnegut predicted, long ago in the 60s, that the arts and sciences would be reunited in speculative fiction, that the novel would not die if it could rediscover vulgarity.

Gloriously, demandingly, daringly Pynchon has rediscovered vulgarity…

I just finished reading the book: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, by John M. Barry. The title more-or-less tells you what the book was about, of course. It was an interesting read; it discusses a number of – sometimes suprising – topics.

The greater-Boston area turns out to be a reasonable place to Diversions. On Sunday, I did a nice ride…

On the other hand, the street sign situation here is pretty frustrating: there seems to be a "New England custom" of not (always) regularly identifying main streets. Exaggerating a bit, I guess the thinking is: if you don't know the name of the street, you shouldn't be on it.

A year or so ago, I found some online discussion about this street-sign trouble, but now I can't locate the URLs. I did find the following related link, which illustrates related problems:

General problems with traffic signs –mostly in the Boston area

I liked this film quite a bit. You can read about it at IMDB.

This was one of the in-flight films on an Air France flight (Paris–>Boston) that I took recently. I'm not used to finding good films on airplanes, so I was quite surprised; it was enjoyable, thoughtful, and funny.

I note that there seems to have been a fairly large flame-fest in the "postings" at IMDB about this movie. So I suspect that some will not agree with my assessment.

I recently read several books etc. by Thomas Frank, including What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America (Metropolitan Books, 2004) and One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy (Doubleday, New York, 2000) I highly recommend both. While I'm being an advocate, let me point to Frank's web site, where you will find a variety of politically interesting links etc.

I'll also point to the very nice journal The Baffler for which Frank is an editor.

Frank wrote in "Le Monde Diplomatique" a quite prescient piece nine months or so before the last US presidential election, which may be found HERE

My mountain bike has met with some unfortunate fate, so I bought a used bike which is a single-speed, and will make a better commute bike. It is built up on an old Univega road-frame. It is fun to ride!

I loved this film! It is a documentary Tony Wilson and Factory Records, a Manchester UK record company that was formed during the "revolution" in popular music begun by the Sex Pistols in Britain. Joy Division and later New Order recorded for this label. I think this film fascinates me because I never understood as an adolescent how it was that bands with a punk origin started making what is essentially dance music; somehow this bugged the 18 year old version of me, but doesn't seem to bother me at all

I received a big pile of books for christmas, and was so excited I seem to have begun three of them more-or-less at once – I seem to be saving the fiction for later. I'm reading:

• Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus
• Imagining Numbers by Barry Mazur

  and I just finished

• Mathematics and the roots of postmodern thought by Tasic.

It is worth pointing out that I was reminded to read Lipstick Traces by the (fun!) review of Tasic's book by Michael Harris in the Notices of the American Math Society; this review can be found here: Postmodern at an Early Age.