Classes at Union started up again just after Labor Day, and for reasons explained in one of the posts linked above, this has left me with very little time to write for myself. What posts I have been able to do have ended up being kind of noodle-y, the sort of thing that involves a lot of thinking-out-loud-into-the-keyboard but not much additional research. Anyway, here’s what I’ve posted since the last monthly(ish) recap:
Me On Substack:
— Youth Sports and Gell-Mann Amnesia: In which I am disappointed by a Famous Author’s takes on youth sports.
— NYC Notes: Brief thoughts on a weekend with the family in The City.
— Academia: Lawyers, Sons, and Money: Some start-of-the-academic-year thoughts about various issues in academia.
— Welcome to Year Three: Another year of trying to lose weight and keep from finding it again.
— Back to School: The advantages of formal school over home-schooling.
— History, Receding: In which The Pip’s homework makes me realize that I don’t think about 9/11 much any more.
— Confessions of a Professional Dilettante: In which I am reinventing my course, again.
— Against Tinkering: On the separation between my hobbies and screwing around with gear for my hobbies.
— Rules and Norms, Three-Pointers and Icing: Thoughts on the culture of pick-up basketball and how it reflects some of the same problems we face in other domains. Really kind of a 1500-word subtweet of a bunch of other stuff that’s been going on.
Me Elsewhere:
— Colder: how physicists beat the theoretical limit for laser cooling and laid the foundations for a quantum revolution at Physics World: Part two of my history of laser cooling (part one was in the August recap). The deadline for part 3 is one of the things restricting my writing time…
Links Dump:
— “There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys” by Susan Dominus: One of many more substantial things that I haven’t written is a bit about the gender split in college admissions that’s discussed here, and how I think the actual problem is slightly different than what most academics talking about it say.
— We Used A.I. to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Here’s How It Went. by Natasha Singer: Another more substantial piece that’s been kicking around for years is something on the general uselessness of statements of various sorts, but writing it is a real minefield. I think this is a decent illustration of the vacuity of (one part of) the form, though.
— Rankled by Rankings, by Liam Knox: The annual tweaking of the US News criteria produces the usual slew of complaints. Union actually moved up slightly this year, and Williams retained the top spot, which clearly indicates that the changes were a step in the right direction.
— Prefatory remarks on ‘Oppenheimer’ by Michael Nielsen: On the one hand, I find a lot of punditry about AI and the risks thereof to be overblown. On the other, Michael is a reliably smart and thoughtful guy, so…
— ‘A Haunting in Venice’ Review by Sonny Bunch: I have not seen the latest of Branagh’s Poirot movies yet, but I enjoyed the other two. This gets at a bit of the weirdness both of the series and the scorn many have for it.
— The Legend of Abraham Wald, by Bill Casselman: Another beautiful anecdote slain grievously wounded by actual historical research.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Month:
This is from just last night, a baseball game where one of The Pip’s travel teams won 12-4. He played a great game at first, accounting for a large fraction of his team’s outs, including one leaping catch that got a high-five from the other team’s coach (who reportedly said “You’re killing us out here”). This isn’t actually celebrating one of the more spectacular plays, though— it was a pretty routine put-out— he’s laughing and yelling at his friend the pitcher, who had slipped on the throw and fell on his face.
I’m really happy with the composition here. That’s largely an accident— it’s cropped down from a much wider shot— and the focus could be better (it was a night game so I was shooting with a pretty wide aperture). But for capturing his general mood about this game, I love it.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Month:
Steven Hyden (one of my favorite music writers) talked up one of Zach Bryan’s earlier albums a while back, which I thought was fine. In the course of a slightly lukewarm review of Bryan’s latest studio record, Hyden mentioned this live record, which is pretty great in an everybody-in-the-crowd-shouts-along-with-every-lyric kind of way. This is the closing number.
I’ve mostly listened to this on YouTube Music in my office, in between various rap albums recommended by The Pip (the latest Travis Scott record is the one that leaps to mind). An indirect result of this is that my music recommendations from their algorithm are absolutely psychotic, with the shuffle play whipsawing between weepy country ballads, indie/alternative guitar rock, and young men yelling about guns and hookers and cocaine. It’s very strange when I pay attention to it.
That’s the usual Bunch of Stuff. The next few weeks are going to be pretty bad for writing, as I’ve got some deadlines and a ton of teaching coming up. If you want to see whether I manage to sneak any blogging in, here’s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open: