I read 66 books this year. I set a goal of 52, or a book per week; obviously I did more than that, but still a lot less than last year. That was a deliberate decision. By the end of last year, reading started to feel competitive (even though I was not actually competing with …
Category: 2013
Recommendation for December 31, 2013
This will be, obviously, my final set of recommendations for the year. I posted 42 sets of these in 2013. The idea was to do it once a week, and while I clearly missed that, I wasn’t too far off, all things considered. That includes 88 articles, all of which you can view/download as a …
Favorite Albums 2013
#agir Favorite Albums 2013 This list comes with the same caveat as my favorite songs: I’m not claiming they’re the “best,” just the ones that I enjoyed the most, that stuck with me, and that I listened to many times. Julia Kent: Character A former (?) member of Rasputina, Kent writes cello pieces that could …
Favorite Songs of 2013
I’m never really comfortable putting together a list of songs (or anything else) and calling it the “best” of the year— not because I don’t think it’s possible to make a reasonable stab at such a list, but because I think that in order to do so you really have to have heard a lot …
Movie Review: Wadjda
Wadjda, dir. Haifaa al-Mansour Saudi Arabia, 2013 Note: this review contains spoilers It is easy with a film that has a backstory like this one to let that backstory take precedence over the film itself. That it was shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, a country where film in general is only grudgingly permitted (and film …
Recommendations for December 15, 2013
Late yet again. It is the end of the semester, which means both that I had lots of grading to do and rapidly-declining will to do much of anything at all. But, still, I think this is a selection of things worth your time and attention. Video: “Inside the Secret Shipping Industry” TED Talk …
Recommendations for December 2, 2013
So, obviously I have not been keeping up with these very well. I’m going to go ahead with this week’s, and hopefully get back on schedule from here on out. Some of these are a bit older than usual because I chose them a couple of weeks ago, but hopefully they will still be new …
Recommendations for November 9, 2013
Quite a variety this time around. Let’s get started: Article: “The Decline of Wikipedia” by Tom Simonite Years ago, it was famously easy to edit a Wikipedia article— that was one of the things that made it so unreliable as a source of information. The people who run Wikipedia responded to that problem by making …
Recommendations for November 2, 2013
I’m starting this week off with something upsetting, so I’ll follow it up with a couple of related recommendations that are much more fun, and a new song to round things off. Article: ” Ring of Fire: Why Our Army’s Toxic Burn Pits Are Making Soldiers Sick” by Katie Drummond This story will probably …
Recommendations for October 25, 2013
Looks like mostly text this time around. I will try to come up with some music for next week, but for now, here are some things worth reading: Article: “The Brave New World of Biohacking” by Jessica Firger Am I surprised, really, that there are groups of people who spend time building electronic or computerized …