Wired notes the upsurge in weblogging:

“…For example, Memepool recently provided

links to sites for creating your own Old

Testament adventure, bubblewrap

lingerie, and entomophagy.

At the same time, Yahoo’s What’s New

linked to Philip Morris, Quaker Oatmeal,

and Clover Stornetta Farms.

Barger says in these days of

commerce-driven portals, weblogs are by

far the best way to explore the Net. So

efficient is the weblog circuit, Barger

estimates that anything new on the Web

will filter through the system within a

month.”

“You’re probably wondering why I allowed you to

bang on my car, why I didn’t simply drive

away and leave you sputtering in my rear-view. So let me tell you: I was

considering the possibility of opening my glove compartment, pulling out the

handgun I keep there, and sticking that gun into your mouth until you forked

over whatever money you keep in your expensive-looking riding suit. I battled

the temptation. You gambled on a stranger’s decency, and this time you won.” [via World New York]

I’ve been pretty shaken since I learned last night about the death of a friend of mine, Phil Aranow. Phil was a beloved, deep, psychotherapist in Cambridge who wrote and taught about the integration of Buddhist theory into Western psychotherapy practice. I’d known Phil for almost thirty years since his younger brother and I became fast friends, and later roommates, the first day of college. His brother’s violent murder several years after college took me down for a closer look with Phil. Although we were in and out of each other’s lives, his marriage a decade later to one of my colleagues and friends at the hospital, and the birth of their first son around the same time my wife and I had our son, kept us pleasantly intertwined in spirit. I, who had found and lost my way with Buddhist teachings, was drawn to his even and mindful integration of Buddhist practice into this life. He was at the core of a group of psychotherapists, all practitioners of meditation, with whom my paths have crossed professionally in various ways in succeeding years. In recent times, as my work took me away from Cambridge and we were both busy with our families, we never got around to continuing to have lunch together as we had been doing. Phil and his family were driving to the airport last Friday night in Florida, returning from a working vacation and giving a workshop, when they were apparently hit head-on by a pickup truck. Thankfully, their two young boys are intact, but Phil succombed and his wife’s condition is uncertain after surgery today. I’ll be praying for her, for their children, and for the tragedy-stricken Aranow family. Phil, you’ll remain on my heart….

Calligraphy: Heaven and Earth by Daigu Ryokan (1757-1831)

Why I won’t be reading Dave Eggers: I caught Christopher Lydon on NPR’s The Connection talking today to this 24 year-old new literary darling and author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (for those of you that are not yet aware of the buzz, yes, that’s the title, not my blurb). He also edits the literary quarterly, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and its net-spinoff, Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies. One caller to the radio talk show, fawning all over Eggers, made it sound as if his writing has single-handedly taken us past postmodernism and out the other side “to something clear and simple,” or something to that effect (it turns out the caller was part of Eggers’ little literary clique and a contributor to his magazine). To judge from his interview, simple at least is right! Lydon quickly realized that he wasn’t going to get any scintillating answers to his questions, beyond repetitious echolalia, so he began to lead Eggers around by the nose affirming points that Lydon wanted to make in the interview. Is this what they mean by the self-referentiality they apply to his work?? (I thought I liked self-referentiality ’til now…) It was uncomfortable to see Lydon squirm to maintain the obligatory stance that his current guest was the best thing since sliced bread, and to see Eggers eating it up, despite the fact that it was probably the least self-reflective interview I’ve heard in a long while. Not a literary movement I’ll be following, or a bestselling buzzbook I’ll be buying, I’m afraid. And if another nail was needed in the coffinlid, Eggers is equated as wunderkind with NPR’s This American Life host Ira Glass, to whose show he has apparently contributed. Glass is a smug self-satisfied commentator whose profundity I can’t see impressing anyone more than himself. Someone has described This American Life as driveway radio — you sit in your driveway when you arrive home, unable to bear shutting the car off ’til it’s over; but, even as an inveterate NPR listener, I scramble to turn the radio off when Ira Glass comes on. (And I’ve written to my local NPR station saying I won’t contribute to them anymore as long as they use Ira Glass’ demeaning and smarmy spots, based on gleefully shaming hapless non-contributing listeners, in their fund drives.) Maybe I’m just too old for these Gen-X’ers who think they’ve seen and realized it all. Listening to the interview with Eggers, it seemed he emoted mostly angst about having to live up to the adulation. It was hard to see what he’d ever have to offer in the way of a second book, unless it was something spun off of that angst…(And in case you were wondering, I don’t feel particularly ashamed in admitting that I don’t feel particularly awful about generating a diatribe like this without reading the book.)

Galileo swoops by volcanic Io

“Jupiter’s strange moon Io is

literally bursting with volcanoes. Dozens of active

vents pepper the landscape, which also includes

gigantic frosty plains, towering mountains and

volcanic rings the size of California. The volcanoes

themselves are the hottest spots in the solar system

(not counting the sun) with temperatures exceeding

1800 K. The plumes, which rise 300 km into space, are so large that the Hubble

Space Telescope can see them from its low Earth orbit.”

I’ve been pretty shaken since I learned last night about the death of a friend of mine, Phil Aranow. Phil was a beloved, deep, psychotherapist in Cambridge who wrote and taught about the integration of Buddhist theory into Western psychotherapy practice. I’d known Phil for almost thirty years since his younger brother and I became fast friends, and later roommates, the first day of college. His brother’s violent murder several years after college took me down for a closer look with Phil. Although we were in and out of each other’s lives, his marriage a decade later to one of my colleagues and friends at the hospital, and the birth of their first son around the same time my wife and I had our son, kept us pleasantly intertwined in spirit. I, who had found and lost my way with Buddhist teachings, was drawn to his even and mindful integration of Buddhist practice into this life. He was at the core of a group of psychotherapists, all practitioners of meditation, with whom my paths have crossed professionally in various ways in succeeding years. In recent times, as my work took me away from Cambridge and we were both busy with our families, we never got around to continuing to have lunch together as we had been doing. Phil and his family were driving to the airport last Friday night in Florida, returning from a working vacation and giving a workshop, when they were apparently hit head-on by a pickup truck. Thankfully, their two young boys are intact, but Phil succombed and his wife’s condition is uncertain after surgery today. I’ll be praying for her, for their children, and for the tragedy-stricken Aranow family. Phil, you’ll remain on my heart….

Calligraphy: Heaven and Earth by Daigu Ryokan (1757-1831)

Why I won’t be reading Dave Eggers: I caught Christopher Lydon on NPR’s The Connection talking today to this 24 year-old new literary darling and author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (for those of you that are not yet aware of the buzz, yes, that’s the title, not my blurb). He also edits the literary quarterly, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and its net-spinoff, Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies. One caller to the radio talk show, fawning all over Eggers, made it sound as if his writing has single-handedly taken us past postmodernism and out the other side “to something clear and simple,” or something to that effect (it turns out the caller was part of Eggers’ little literary clique and a contributor to his magazine). To judge from his interview, simple at least is right! Lydon quickly realized that he wasn’t going to get any scintillating answers to his questions, beyond repetitious echolalia, so he began to lead Eggers around by the nose affirming points that Lydon wanted to make in the interview. Is this what they mean by the self-referentiality they apply to his work?? (I thought I liked self-referentiality ’til now…) It was uncomfortable to see Lydon squirm to maintain the obligatory stance that his current guest was the best thing since sliced bread, and to see Eggers eating it up, despite the fact that it was probably the least self-reflective interview I’ve heard in a long while. Not a literary movement I’ll be following, or a bestselling buzzbook I’ll be buying, I’m afraid. And if another nail was needed in the coffinlid, Eggers is equated as wunderkind with NPR’s This American Life host Ira Glass, to whose show he has apparently contributed. Glass is a smug self-satisfied commentator whose profundity I can’t see impressing anyone more than himself. Someone has described This American Life as driveway radio — you sit in your driveway when you arrive home, unable to bear shutting the car off ’til it’s over; but, even as an inveterate NPR listener, I scramble to turn the radio off when Ira Glass comes on. (And I’ve written to my local NPR station saying I won’t contribute to them anymore as long as they use Ira Glass’ demeaning and smarmy spots, based on gleefully shaming hapless non-contributing listeners, in their fund drives.) Maybe I’m just too old for these Gen-X’ers who think they’ve seen and realized it all. Listening to the interview with Eggers, it seemed he emoted mostly angst about having to live up to the adulation. It was hard to see what he’d ever have to offer in the way of a second book, unless it was something spun off of that angst…(And in case you were wondering, I don’t feel particularly ashamed in admitting that I don’t feel particularly awful about generating a diatribe like this without reading the book.)