Monthly Archives: November 2008

Still Autumn.

Light is scarce – mornings are bright, but mid-afternoon is the limit of the only afternoon. The land turns dark and the seasons are celebrated indoors. The browns of tea and soup broth, the reds and oranges of my books continue Autumn indoors. Parents have been obsessed with the terror in Bombay. I’ve been struggling …

November 30, 2008 – 1:11 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Comments (1)

Happy Thanksgiving!

My plan for today is to go comatose in front of the television – I hope your day is just as joyous. Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation is interesting reading: it is very difficult to conceive how anyone in the US could have been in a celebrating mood in 1863. The question is, what is the relation …

November 27, 2008 – 3:34 pm | By ashok | Posted in lincoln | Comments (4)

My November Guest

Just contrasting moods with Frost. Robert Frost, “My November Guest:” My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. The trees are bare, but not quite withered yet. It is damp …

November 26, 2008 – 5:25 pm | By ashok | Posted in frost, personal, poetry | Comments (3)

In Defense of “The Big O” Finale (anime)

Spoilers galore ahead; this is a meditation on the last episode of the series “The Big O” has come under fire by people that initially appreciated it. To quote Wikipedia: For some reviewers, the second season “doesn’t quite match the first” addressing [sic] to “something” missing in these episodes. Andy Patrizio of IGN points out …

November 23, 2008 – 1:07 pm | By ashok | Posted in media | Tagged | Comments (11)

Lament.

At the bookstore yesterday I read a chapter or two of Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation, which is much livelier, forceful reading than his blog. His most important claim, that our unparalleled access to knowledge is coeval with a culture of decadence which allows the construction of entire worlds around our purely adolescent selves, has …

November 20, 2008 – 10:31 am | By ashok | Posted in education | Tagged | Comments (5)

Links, 11/19/08

Just a few links – still reading lots of Xenophon, still concerned about how this section is going to get written. I’m at a loss for words right now. Love in the Time of Darwinism – agree with most of this, but the author does say at one point that maybe dating isn’t hell. She’s …

November 19, 2008 – 10:41 am | By ashok | Posted in links | Comments (3)

First Friday in Philadelphia, 11/7/2008: On Schubert’s Quintet D. 956, Op. Posth. 163

1. It’s been two weeks, but I felt I could wait for the sake of saying an appropriate thank you to the Poor Richard’s String Quartet – Michael Finckel, Thomas Kraines, Andrea Schultz, Beverly Shin and David Yang – who played in Christ Church that night. I’m no good at writing music criticism, so I …

November 19, 2008 – 4:51 am | By ashok | Posted in music, personal | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

A Waste of Resources: The GOP’s New “Republican for a Reason” Site

“Republican for a Reason” – Just look at it and you’ll see my main complaint. Does anything about that site’s garish design, needing to make an account, and focus on utterly worthless issues (candidates don’t read the party platforms) appeal to you? Do you really want to go there and post in the forums and …

November 16, 2008 – 3:07 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged | Comments (19)

Tagging in Progress

Some of you have noticed that I’m streamlining and updating tags all throughout the blog. This is not an easy process: 200 tags were eliminated, with still more cuts to come, but a few are being added. Moreover, out of 44 pages of entries, only 8 or 9 have been tagged to my satisfaction, and …

November 15, 2008 – 1:21 am | By ashok | Posted in blogging | Tagged | Comments (2)

Do I Get to be Proud of 100,000 Pageviews?

Granted, it took 13 months. And there are blogs and sites getting 20,000 unique visitors a day that people online barely know about. But you know what? I’ve experienced firsthand from the net how many people are resistant to learning, resistant to reading carefully and well, resistant to anything that’s different, new, or – worst …

November 14, 2008 – 5:17 am | By ashok | Posted in blogging | Tagged , | Comments (3)