Feeling a bit slow? Go Renshaw yourself.

tachistoscopeHeinlein, in several of his works, made reference to Samuel Renshaw, a WWII-era psychologist famous for teaching a form of speed-reading, or more aptly, speed-comprehension, that involved flashing images or text on a screen for brief intervals to force the student to perceive them faster.

If you’re interested in such things, and I am, you might be interested in an article I found on the subject. Click below to read it.

You’re Not As Smart As You Could Be

Miley Cyrus continues to confound me.

So she entered this short film in the NYC Porn Film Festival.

It’s actually kind of interesting, soundtracked by Alt-J’s “Fitzpleasure” and chock full of bondage imagery.  But despite the hype about it being “explicit,” YouTube hasn’t banned it yet, so it’s not really explicit. And it’s certainly not porn. But it’s really good to see her doing something creative and interesting with her almost-nakedness.

Missing teen; houses being shot at…

a-bolt-shotgun-sideA couple of young men, 18 and 20, were arrested not far from here on Saturday for a couple of weeks of random shootings at houses in the White Oak area of southern Stafford County. They are cousins. Apparently they had been going around late at night shooting at occupied homes with a rifle or shotgun (you know how the news is never clear about those things, although it’s easy to be clear about those things). Occupied homes, I emphasize. However, nobody was hurt (that we know of). Over a two week period they shot at at least eleven homes.

Now, very close to the time this started, police alerted us to another young man, 17, gone missing. This young man was last seen seven miles by road, or less than two miles as the crow flies, from the residence of one of the shooters. He was last seen the evening before the shootings began.

I could see a number of hypothetical scenarios that could connect and relate the two events.

Perhaps something went wrong between the three of them, and something awful happened to the 17-year-old, and the two others were involved, and panicked, and went on a spree, acting out as the result of their panic?

Or, perhaps something went wrong, quite intentionally, and the spree is an attempt to cover up what happened to the 17-year-old, much in the way the DC sniper attack was allegedly an elaborate attempt to cover up the murder of an ex-wife or something by mixing it in among a serial crime.

We haven’t yet heard of any connection between the two separate events; I am just speculating.

I’m not mentioning any names because they’re local, and I don’t really want to become part of the news feed for these events.

TEN YEARS of FINNEGANS WIKI

finnegans-wakeTen years ago today, I launched a site, pretty much on a lark, which took the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and turned it into a Wiki that allows people to add notes, discussions and interpretations. The site became somewhat popular worldwide, and is still in heavy use today.

I would never call myself a scholar of the Wake, or of Joyce in general. I never studied in school. I just came upon it naturally and was fascinated. To be honest, I launched the site because I felt it would be an easier way to study the work myself. I never anticipated it would be as much of a draw as it became. I just felt it would be an approachable way to correlate the work with the many interpretations that have been birthed over the decades.

I’m proud of the site, and I’m proud of the fact that I was able to keep it free all these years. Most of all, I’m proud of all the hard work that went into it.  Users have contributed countless hours and thousands of edits, endured and cleaned up after automated vandalism, and suffered several long outages.

This pint’s for you, fellow Wake fans.  To another ten years!

http://www.finnegansweb.com
http://www.finneganswiki.com

 

Inspiration

I am sometimes a creator, sometimes an achiever, sometimes a curator, sometimes a connector, sometimes a collector. But no matter how much I am able to enjoy or accomplish, stories like this one just make me feel simultaneously small and inspired. Apparently what they say is true, and nothing is impossible. Turn off the TV and do something! Anything! Make sure the world notices when you’re gone!

She founded SiriusXM, a religion and a biotech to save her daughter. Now she’s the top-paid female exec.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/martine-rothblatt-she-founded-siriusxm-a-religion-and-a-biotech-for-starters/2014/12/11/5a8a4866-71ab-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html

Dream: An intimate evening with Jerry Orbach and S. Epatha Merkerson

No, not that kind of intimate.  SINGING.

We stopped into a small place for dinner, the family, all four of us, and we picked a table and were looking at menus casually, when the music started. There were two blonde girls playing impressive piano, and we pointed it out to our girls.

After a bit, the singer came out, and it was S. Epatha Merkerson, singing sultry while walking around the restaurant. Eventually she settled on me, and was trying to get my jacket off of me.

Next number, Jerry Orbach came out and sang a tune. I woke up thinking, “what’s his name? Lenny Bruce?”  No.  Lenny Briscoe.

putting more of myself out there