3 Banal Thoughts on 10-Digit Dialing

For those who don’t know, Montreal went to 10-digit phone dialing this month. 1. When I moved here, I enjoyed the 7-digit phone number as kind of rustic. There’s some kind of threshold between 7 and 10 numbers on the phone. Or maybe that there was a tactile distinction between local and long distance calling, …

The End of Authorship. . . .or just reading?

In today’s NYTimes Magazine, John Updike has a piece defending authorship and books against the usual digerati critiques. I basically agree with it, but I took special note of the following: Kevin Kelly, identified as the “senior maverick” at Wired magazine, the article describes a glorious digitalizing of all written knowledge. […] Unlike the libraries …

Sweet Victory at Last

Coach Greg predicted it. Yesterday, the rain gave way to sunshine and as the clouds began to part the False Consciousness took the field against a team from Chemistry and Physics known as the Otto Masochists, which is no doubt some kind of disciplinary in-joke I don’t understand. As a bagpipe player droned on in …