Why Nerds are Unpopular — an essay by Paul Graham blaming the neuroses of adolescence on the pointlessness of schooling. I’m surprised to find I haven’t blogged it already; so here it is so I’ll be able to find it again.

As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they’re made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.
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This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one place for a certain number of hours each day. What I didn’t realize at the time, and in fact didn’t realize till very recently, is that the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same cause.

Ronald Bailey slaps Francis Fukuyama silly. Thanks to Monica White and Perry Metzger for the link. (See also Happy Fun Pundit‘s response to Fukuyama’s previous bio-luddite essay.)

It struck me today that Buffy fans ought to enjoy College Roomies from Hell!!!.

Saturday was Hayward’s hottest day this year, or so it seemed; so we went to a place where, for a fee, we could sit in coolth for a while. As a bonus, they showed us Hero (英雄), the most gorgeous piece of film we’ve seen in years.

Later: The following weekend was another scorcher, and we saw Vanity Fair, which stinks. Reese Witherspoon (who was so brilliant in Freeway) plays Becky Sharp on one note, and the plot is violently compressed for time. — Anachronism?: the regiment embarks for “Belgium” to meet Bonaparte. The kingdom of Belgium was created fifteen years after the battle of Waterloo; so what would the English have called that country at the time? Flanders, I guess, though Waterloo is not in Flanders proper.

In his blog Literal-Minded, Neal Whitman reports on his toddler’s acquisition of syntax.

Once in a while Netflix makes a booboo: this week they sent me Taxi Driver (1976), which I have already seen, in place of Taxi Driver (1954).

Tuesday: Make that twice in a while.

Wednesday: I imagine that some minimum-wage handler looked at the disc and the mailing sleeve, saw the title Taxi Driver on both, and concluded that the customer is bonkers.

Wednesday, Sep 15: What comes after “thrice”?

Traffic on this site is heavier this month than in the previous eleven, with a spike on August 19 which seems to be a fluke.

Later: September was heavier still. I hope it’s not just me.