I knew that Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda had named his company Toyota, and have had the vague impression that he did so because he thought it sounded better.
Bill Poser elaborates on a nice BBC account of the story. Pretty interesting, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Covering Lolita: “Over 150 book and media covers from 33 countries and 54 years.”
This is my current copy, 1962 US Fawcett (Crest Books), Greenwich CT. There are some themes: movie stills, skin, Nabokov, plain brown wrappers.
Have a look. Fascinating.
Geoff Pullum. Perhaps you can resist reading the rest of his post.
Language Log asks you (don’t all shout at once)
… Yes, thickheads. I know they won’t like being called that; but hey, what do I care? I’ve shut off the comments area to new contributions now. Let them squirm and fume, with the smoke coming [...]
On NPR this morning, of President Obama in advance of tonight’s SOTU: “the tide is running against him”.
This is one of those metaphors that most listeners, if pressed, could explain. I think. While it’s dead, it’s not yet returned to dust. But how many of us have any experience of a “running tide”? We in [...]
Not long ago, Sister Juliann called my attention to this line, attributed to William James:
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
The attribution is all over the web, but with no source, and it doesn’t really sound like him, does it? Hard to prove the negative, but you’d [...]
Read James Wolcott’s review of the new movie first; the correction second.
Via Jorn Barger yet again. Makes you want to go home and watch movies.
You Missed It: Most Unfairly Overlooked Movies Of The Decade
… These are the other guys, the great films you missed through circumstance or stupidity, through studio stumbling or simply bad timing. The best movies don’t always get seen, the best movies don’t [...]
I’m always up for listening to Nicholson Baker, and his recent appearance on Open Source was rewarding. Give it a listen.
As for Shakespeare—Baker has an idea, put into the pen of his character Paul Chowder, that iambic pentameter is basically a waltz, the five beats being supplemented by a rest at the end of a [...]
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of A Fraction of the Whole, with the intention of posting something about it when I’m done. However, it’s 25+ hours long (good!), and I’m not going to finish it for a while yet. And I found a review, Sue Arnold’s in The Guardian, that says it better than [...]
I need to post this before I completely forget that it was Andrew Brown who pointed the way. He calls it an “Anglican blog”. I dunno; maybe. They have an Archdruid (or is there more than one? again, I dunno).
Anyway, meet the Folk, via the 5 statements of Beaker Belief.
Brokenness
Beautiful World
True liberalism oppresses
Knowing God means [...]
(I’ve flagged this post Local Interest (for the Minneapolis/St Paul area) and Arts for the obvious reason.)
I’m packing to go home after a week in the Twin Cities area. Like California (and no doubt lots of other places), Minnesota has some great craft breweries. The big one is Summit, and I’m always happy to resample [...]
So, it’s Hallowe’en (and Samhain). Let’s give Andrew Brown the floor.
The Queen of Fairies caught me
Halloween was once a night of real fright, when the dead and the fairies walked close to us. How did that work?
And pleasant is the fairy land,
But, an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years,
We pay a [...]
NY Magazine is having fun with Dan Brown’s latest masterpiece. It’s a respectable lineup, and while one expects fine stuff from Geoff Pullum, I was waiting for Matt Taibbi, who comes into the game in the late innings. Mr T does not disappoint.
Vulture Reading Room
The funny thing about this whole Dan Brown exercise for me [...]
I loved Errol Morris’s 1981 56-minute documentary when I saw it all those years ago. Finally, I see, it’s available on DVD. I thought you might like to know. Amazon tells me it’s been out since 2005…
Here’s Netflix’s blurb. I’m not sure why I’m quoting it, since it doesn’t really come close to capturing what [...]
In my last post I quoted Robert Hass’s Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry, but no Hass. So here’s a bit of Hass himself. I love this paragraph, especially the last sentence, which I’m still puzzling over.
Now, I think, free verse has lost its edge, become neutral, the given instrument. An analogy occurs to me. [...]
I’ve been reading Robert Hass’s Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry. I’m mostly out of my depth, but it’s rewarding nonetheless.
Hass gives us a poem from Nils Petersen. Let me remind you of the Herrick first, a fine, sly piece of work.
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of [...]
Dinosaur Comics are my favorite comics. Today, anyway. If you’re not familiar with the DC conventions, go browse a few dozen; you won’t regret it.
Tomorrow my favorite may be Red Meat; it was, back on October 27, 1977, and it could be again. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
(If you want to see the reference [...]
District Nine tells the all too familiar story of discrimination and oppression by the majority in an near-future human/alien (as in extraterrestrial aliens) context, set in Johannesburg it so happens. For fear of spoiling it I’ll just say it’s the best movie I’ve seen in recent memory, with cautionary note that it isn’t for the [...]
Current events bring to mind, as they must from time to the, the words of the immortal Lord Buckley. Mr Gates has been at Harvard far too long to be hip, of course (what’s too long? Buying a ticket for Cambridge?), but surely there was a time when he would have remembered Buckley’s critical piece [...]
Three Vanity Fair editors have marked up Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. Here’s the first page of eleven.
Editors are your friend.
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