stevenberlinjohnson.com

Very cool -- Malcolm has a blog. This should be fun:

In the past year I have often been asked why I don't have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don't have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I've now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker.

Maybe Lost could start its own little book club:

Seen briefly on the ABC hit series "Lost," a surreal comic novel by an Irish author who died 40 years ago has been rescued from obscurity, Reuters reported. The novel, "The Third Policeman," was written by Flann O'Brien (1911-66), who was influenced by James Joyce, and fans of "Lost" are apparently scouring it for clues to the mysterious island where passengers from a downed airliner are marooned. Craig Wright, a supervising producer and scriptwriter for "Lost," said the book, seen on an episode first broadcast in the United States in October, was chosen "very specifically for a reason." Within two days of the broadcast, 10,000 copies were sold.

Funny. I just noticed that Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death-- which Everything Bad was something of a response to -- has just been reissued with a bright red jacket featuring people with televisions on their heads. I wonder if it's a deliberate nod to Everything Bad, or it just happened unconsciously. Both published by Penguin, so I suppose I could find out easily...

Somehow I missed this study:

From the 1966 Coleman Report, the landmark study of educational opportunity commissioned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Gentzkow and Shapiro got 1965 test-score data for almost 300,000 kids. They looked for evidence that greater exposure to television lowered test scores. They found none. After controlling for socioeconomic status, there were no significant test-score differences between kids who lived in cities that got TV earlier as opposed to later, or between kids of pre- and post-TV-age cohorts. Nor did the kids differ significantly in the amount of homework they did, dropout rates, or the wages they eventually made. If anything, the data revealed a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young.

Justin Blanton's account of getting results back from the National Geographic Genographic Project is a fun read, and I was practically sending my $100 in for my own genetic analysis after the third paragraph, but I wonder if his account has actually spoiled the results for me. If I'm reading the map and the text right, it sounds like pretty much everyone of English/Northern European descent -- which happens to be my own background -- will end up with the exact same genealogy that Justin's father received. Though I gather as they receive more genetic material, the story will get more precise in terms of the last 30,000 years or so. Still, it's a lovely idea. I can't wait until my kids are old enough to understand it. (Thanks to Kottke for the link.)

Staten Island, Land Of Wonder

There was a great story in Sunday's Times on New York City's projected population boom, filled with all sorts of tasty demographic nuggets. But my favorite thing about it was the infographic that accompanied it on the front page of the City section. The boroughs each have their own slots, with the projected percentage increase in population -- and each is illustrated with an emblematic photograph designed to capture the essence of the borough. For the Bronx, it's Yankee Stadium. For Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Bridge. For Manhattan, the Empire State Building. For Queens, the globe from the '64 World's Fair. And for Staten Island? A three story house with a garage.

It was a classic Manhattanite view of the "outer boroughs." Ooh, Staten Island -- not only do people have cars there, they actually have garages too. Can you imagine?

I'm working in the office this morning, listening to Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 2, and our four-year-old son walks in.

"I like your music, Daddy," he says. "It sounds like candy. It sounds like a heart."

There's a great letter to the editor in the Times today that asks a question that hadn't occurred to me before: what exactly is the Secret Service's policy on hunting? I mean, they go to the most extraordinary measures to protect the life of the President and Vice President, but they still let Cheney roam out into the woods with a bunch of senior citizens armed with loaded weapons?

I can't believe I'm quoting Bruce Willis quoting Justin Timberlake, but I hadn't heard the latter's smart response to the Frey hooplah:

James Frey is a writer. He can write whatever he wants. It's fiction. It's just shameful how he was treated. It's just shameful and it's just not fair and not right. Justin Timberlake had a really good response when he was asked about that because I think he was asked to play James Frey in the making of that book. And he waited and waited and listened to everybody and said, "Have you heard of this magazine called In Touch Magazine? Or Us Weekly? Or People Magazine? Or any of these magazines. They lie about people and they just make up shit all week long." And you have to sue 'em to get it changed. This is the world we live in.

Blogging In My Sleep

The only thing more tedious than someone telling you about the dream he had last night is someone blogging about the dream he had last night. So I'll spare you the details -- but suffice it to say that last night I had this dream where I was staying in a hotel with my wife and kids, and at some point in the middle of the night, some sort of hotel detective-like figure arrived and demanded that we pack up and leave. In the dream, we got into a heated argument, which culminated in my threatening him by saying: "I have a very prominent blog, and if you kick us out for no reason, I'm going to write up this whole event, and you're going to lose a lot of customers thanks to the negative publicity."

I half woke up from the dream, still filled with rage at this hotel employee, and then had a weird, twilight moment where I thought: wait, was that a dream? That's normal enough, of course, but what strikes me now as particularly hilarious was that my full thought was: "Hmm, I'd better figure out if it was a dream or not before I blog it." I wasn't terribly concerned about the idea of my family getting dumped onto the street in the middle of the night. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't posting fictitious information on my Typepad account.

And to think they say there's no accountability in the blogosphere.