Thursday, 12/30/04

Shirley Corriher is, with Alton Brown and Robert Wolke, one of my favorite chemists of cookery. I learned yesterday that Shirley is four years overdue on her book about the chemical science of baking. Two years of that was consumed by the cake chapter. I was rattled to discover that sifting does not adequately distribute leavening agents, but it's just the kind of experimental insight that makes Shirley such a stupendous badass. 12:38AM «

Malcolm Gladwell's ruminative review of Jared Diamond's new book, "Collapse", is as always a compelling read, but Stewart Brand's review is bluntly unsettling:

Diamond identifies five major causes of societal collapse: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trade partners, and stupidity. Any one or two plus stupidity will do.

Uh oh. At least I didn't run out of fingers. 12:27AM «

Tuesday, 12/28/04

Today, or more precisely yesterday, I learned from Alaska Airlines that one can carry up to five liters of alcohol in glass bottles in one's carry-on luggage. This adds a thick, dripping layer of farce to the TSA's continued willingness to impound tweezers and nail scissors.

I also learned that Charles Pickering, the judge whose federal appointment Senate Democrats rejected after hearing testimony about his questionable civil-rights background, has retired after serving out his somewhat notorious recess appointment. One less to worry about. I'd feel a lot better about Bush's judicial nominations in general if they were all one or two years away from retiring. 12:10AM «

Thursday, 12/09/04

What did Louis J. Freeh, hands down my least-favorite Clinton appointee, do with himself after he stepped down from being director of the FBI? Apparently he became general counsel at MBNA. I guess the gulf between mendaciously squeezing civil rights out of the public sphere and holding people upside down to shake the money out of their pockets isn't so great after all. 05:06PM «

Tuesday, 12/07/04

This list of 100 overlooked movies of the 1990s from the heretofore unknown-to-me Online Film Critics Society is quite something. I've seen 70 of them, and those 70 are heavily seeded with the best of their respective years: Lone Star, Heavenly Creatures, Ghost Dog, "Truly, Madly, Deeply", Breakdown (a guilty pleasure; JT Walsh's last role), Eve's Bayou, Richard III, Strange Days, The Limey, The Ice Storm, Croupier, The Girl on the Bridge (regrettably not yet on DVD outside of Europe), Fresh, Dead Alive, and Titus.

What's remarkable about the full 100, though, is the stinker ratio. Of those I've seen, the only one I disliked was Welcome to the Dollhouse, and there are only a tiny handful I probably wouldn't choose to see again (Sonatine, Jude, and The Sweet Hereafter). As an inveterate consumer of lists, this one is freakishly high quality.

On the subject of the cinema, I saw Closer over the weekend. It includes a bracing scene of two men in an adult chat room, one of whom allows himself to believe he's interacting with a woman. I believe this is the first time I've seen a big mainstream movie dispense with the conceit that people engaged in communication via a keyboard must mutter everything they're typing, à la "You've Got Mail". And if that wasn't enough of a gift to the literate adults in the theater, their conversation included the word "perineum". Recommended. 06:32PM «

First, Jon Carroll announces he's back to five days a week. Hallelujah. And then Paul Krugman takes a break from his break! A very good week for columnists so far. 06:17PM «

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