A thought from J.R.R. Tolkien

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their bulding material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

Great point well made

From an article from the New York Times Magazine by Michael Lewis:

It is still O.K. for the analysts to lowball their estimates of corporate earnings and plug the stocks of the companies they take public so that they remain in the good graces of those companies. The S.E.C. would protest that the analysts don't actually own the stocks they plug, but that is a distinction without a difference: they profit mightily and directly from its rise.

Actually, the whole article is a great read, put it on your to-do list.

The names of the two kids in '28 Weeks Later' . . .

are Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots. No fooling.

Transformers is coming

"No one does car chases better than Michael [Bay]. But no one's ever seen a car chase where the car was literally transforming into a robot in the middle of the car chase"

-Alex Kurtzman, writer, Transformers

I am not a nostalgic person, and I disdain hype, but I refuse to strike a pose of detached disinterest and ignore the awesome potentiality that is this summer's Transformers movie.

Great Songs: "The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Listen to it at the band's MySpace page. I can be hung over and full of chocolate, you put me on a treadmill and play this song and by the time the first chorus kicks in I will be actively engaged in trying to make my heart explode, it's that rockin. A song about the neverending incremental change of life, the fact that a single continuous "I" that persists through time is really nothing more than a useful working model of what consciousness is. There's the boy with the shotgun shooting down honeybees that sting, but the boy could use a little sting, which is a perfect metaphor for resisting painful positive change, which seems to belong to the earlier, West Virginia part of the protagonist's life. Immediately after he's asking to go to a party, talking to someone who 'looks a bit like coffee'. I take this to mean that in New York the country boy has been exposed to people he never would have met back home.
All crappy analysis aside, this is a perfect song. All the more shocking is that a band which nearly always sounds like a cross between Pablo Honey-era Radiohead, The Violent Femmes and Rufus Wainright sould some up with something so perfectly perfect.

Once - The dogs have quit their barking

"Son," - my neighbor said to me."

Know the emptiness of talking blue

the same old shoe.

"Run - I'll do no more this walking

Haunted by a past I just can't see

Anymore

Anymore

But let me tell you I have never planned

To let go of the hand that has been

Clinging by its thick country skin

To my yellow country teeth

Far - Far away from West Virginia

I - Will try on New York City

Explaining that the sky holds the

Wind the sun rushes in and a child

With a shotgun can shoot down

Honeybees that sting

BUT THIS BOY COULD USE A LITTLE STING!

Who - Will get me to a party?

Who - Do I have yet to meet?

You - You look a bit like coffee

And you taste a bit like me

How - Can I keep me from moving?

Now - I need a change of scenery

Just listen to me I won't pretend to

Understand the movement of the wind

Or the waves out in the ocean or how

Like the hours I change softly slowly

Plainly blindly oh me oh my!

This ain't your grandaddy's egg/public radio!

I would like to take a moment out of my rainy Saturday morning to hep you to one of my favorite public radio shows. It's not exactly This American Life, in fact it's probably the real future of NPR and PRI.
Fair Game with Faith Salie is basically a radio version of the Daily Show, complete with interviewers asking regular people ridiculous questions, generally high quality comedy news segments like a recent one satirizing the Iraq War by discussing the decision to set a timetable for the show Lost, and interesting and insightful interviews on a variety of topics, some funnier than others. They also feature really impressive musical guests that you may be hearing for the first time. Definitely worth a listen, especially if you are a master commuter and podcast aficionado like myself.

The world is full of absolutely fantastic things