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Meta
Category Archives: arts
getting away with progress
In Before I Hang, Boris Karloff played Doctor John Garth, a scientist seeking a serum to “cure old age”. He tries a version of the serum on himself, and color returns to his hair — but he used a multiple … Continue reading
I can’t be the first to ask
At one point in Blade Runner (not the book by Alan Nourse), Deckard, with two broken fingers on his right hand, clings to a parapet ornament. I wonder whether that was an intentional salute to Harold Lloyd, who made movies … Continue reading
Posted in cinema
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more movies
Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths) (1936). Not much coherent plot, but some engaging characters. The director Jean Renoir said he made a point of moving the story to the banks of the Marne, but didn’t say why he kept the … Continue reading
more meaningless zeros
A quirk in DVD subtitles: a phrase like “ten minutes before seven” is consistently rendered as 10 minutes before 7:00. Why not go all the way and make it 6:50? I am amused to find that 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, language
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a perverse incentive in customer service
Awhile ago I worked out that, if you want to watch a different disc every evening using Netflix, your quota (the number of discs you have out at a time) needs to be at least five: three for the mail … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, economics
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where’s my fix?
For two or three years I was never without a supply of navel oranges, because the Australian (or before that Chilean) crop came in just as the California crop was ending; but the antipodean goodies have not (yet) shown up … Continue reading
Posted in economics, food, me!me!me!
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Nero Wolfe and the Drones Club
P. G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout were contemporaries and friends, I recently learned. The opening pages of Stout’s Champagne For One read like a Bertie Wooster story: an acquaintance known as Dinky, feigning laryngitis, rings to beg that the narrator … Continue reading