July 2010
13 posts
Airport novel
General Heckler-Koch leans back on his chair. He knows it’s going to be bad news. Astrophysicists never come to the military unless they have bad news. The only people they contact when they have good news are scientific journals and other astrophysicists.
“How long before this…alien infection spreads?” he asks, rubbing his forehead with a hand marred by wars and torture...
Premise for a good action-adventure movie
But there is an upside to living with fire: vast reservoirs of underground water, heated by the earth’s core, can be harnessed to generate electricity.
Had to do a double-take when I thought it read
But there is an upside to living with fire: vast reservoirs of underground water, heated by the earth’s core, can be harassed to generate electricity.
Lingua franca
Found an article in the NYT about a generation of Indonesian kids who speak English better than they do Indonesian (I am party to this phenomenon, fortunately or unfortunately).
“They know they’re Indonesian,” Ms. Sugiarto, 34, said. “They love Indonesia. They just can’t speak Bahasa Indonesia. It’s tragic.”
Indonesia’s linguistic legacy is increasingly under threat as growing numbers of...
Airport novel
Detective Michael Harrigan steps into the crime scene, his tired eyes making an instinctive sweep around the area. Another day, another girl taken by the Sunshine Murderer. He sighs the heaviest, most distressed sigh of his career, clamping a cigarette haphazardly between his lips and beginning to light it when Vogel shuffles up next to him.
“Goddamn it, Harrigan,” Vogel snarls...
I know we've had this conversation before
1. APPEARANCES
“Wait, let me go fix my face.”
“Come on, you don’t need makeup. You look fine without it.”
“Uh, no I don’t.”
“Yeah you do. I think you look great right now.”
“That’s because I’m wearing makeup right now.”
“What? Really?”
2. FOOD
“So where do you want to go?”
“I...
Final football-related blip
“In the United States, transforming old English games into more rationalized New World variants—the innings short and clear, the territory gained and lost plain—was for much of our early history a key facet of inventing a new American identity. It’s no wonder that soccer has only recently gained a significant following and legitimate pro league in the U.S. One reason the game’s charms still...
Mountainous molehills
New rule: I’m not allowed to recover from the World Cup as long as I do not play it. Neither am I allowed to cite Recovery from the World Cup as an excuse to justify my flitting in and out of rotten moods. I’m not sure if my misery stems from the Netherlands’ failure to grab glory by the balls or from no longer having the ways and means to congregate around a TV with drunk...
