Faber & Faber

Thanks (sic–ed.) to nutellaontoast over at Fire Megan McArdle (now there’s a blog to love…ed.) I clicked through to Will’s meditation (FSM, I hate it when you link through to the Post — ed.) on cosmic scales of space and matter-density…which led him somehow to solar system dynamics…which led him to the divinely ordered (sic) [...]

For reasons to uninterestingly tangled to explain, I recently found myself in the wee hours of the morning, reading Algernon Charles Swinburne’s biographical entry on Mary Queen of Scots in my copy of the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Swinburne was inordinately proud of this piece. The 11th Edition’s compilers appended a note in which [...]

Read this article in the New York Times.* Here’s the gist of what it’s talking about in this effort to piggy back on national technical intelligence gathering tools (satellites, remote sensing, etc.): The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified [...]

This seemed like a good way to start what promises to be a long strange year: (h/t a Balloon Juice comment I’ve now since lost to the surf. My apologies) And just in case that’s not absurd enough for you, let’s channel Hunter [Thompson] and admit that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro (the [...]

I swear I had nothing to do with Tess’s humiliation below: Proper blogging — snorts of derision in David Brooks’ direction is up next — to resume ASAP. In the mean time: Top of the year to everyone. I hope that 2010 is for all who tarry here a happy, healthy, and creatively effervescent twelvemonth. And now, given [...]

Just in case you are one of those who can’t resist having books read to you (my son, e.g.; me too), I just got word that Audible.com has included Newton and the Counterfeiter in a “buy bestsellers for cheap” promotion — my humble offering apparently being one of their better sellers in the physics category. So, [...]

I wish I’d had Aimai’s succinct wit on this story, but I didn’t, so go chuckle with her. Image: Priapus fresco at the Casa de Vetti, Pompeii.

Well, that was an annoying ride. I mean the seemingly endless saga of achieving the possibilty of Kindle/ebook sales for my poor but honest offering, Newton and the Counterfeiter. (Dead tree versions here: Amazon, Powells, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound and across the pond at Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, Blackwells, Borders, and John Smith & Son.) Loyal readers may recall that it took more than six or seven [...]

Alright. The title is, perhaps, a little hyperbolic. But, channeling my inner McArdle, such is blogging. This recent little gift from McArdle is not quite as disastrous as it could be, in fact…but I do want to pick up a little bit of the folly within because I think this post captures so much of what makes [...]

So, further to the piece begun below. There, we left matters at the problem of McArdle’s unwitting conflation of education provided to the military by for-profit and not-for-profit. (Part one of the piece here.) Next: McArdle says “the civil service system, the army, and various local departments like teachers, all automatically reward you with higher pay [...]