Weekend Things, S02E07
By the time I post this, you will already have seen XKCD’s amazing timeline of global temperature change, but you should go ahead and print it out and stick it on your wall.
On September 11, just after the WTC attack, Air Force One left Florida with the President and a bunch of others — staff, press, medical and military personnel — and flew around for 8 hours, stopping a couple at a couple of military bases, before returning to Washington. This incredibly detailed and absorbing recollection of that day, which pulls together edited interviews with at least a dozen people who were there, is stacked with fascinating stories. It’s long, but you’ve got to read right to the epilogue.
About fifteen years ago I worked in the Melbourne Museum for a year, not too long after it opened, and during my lunch breaks I’d often wander through the wonderful Forest Gallery, or through Bunjilaka, the Aboriginal Cultural Centre. It’s been a long time since I last visited, and a few years back Bunjilaka had a big overhaul that’s made it even better, wonderfully combining art and history with the feelings and experiences of contemporary Aboriginal people. There is horror and sadness, but it’s also uplifting and positive, and, well, everybody should visit it.
Top of my to-do list when I’m next in the United States is the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, which sounds like it has a similar effect.
Jane Gleeson-White on Djuna Barnes and Nightwood — a good reminder to go back and re-read. I suspect I’d get a lot more out of it now.
The whole Trump birther story is fathomless. Is this real life? Is it really happening?
Stephanie Convery hit the journalistic jackpot in her first week at the Guardian when Lionel Shriver said those specious things at Brisbane Writers’ Festival; Steph wrote this good round-up of perspectives. A common theme of responses to Shriver has been “do what you do, but don’t think you’re immune to criticism”, and that seems inarguable to me:
[Omar] Musa says accepting criticism is a crucial part of this process: “There will be people who will tell you that maybe you didn’t quite get this right, and you just have to cop that flack.”
Books and writing have always been criticised, and sometimes you might find the criticism unfair or incorrect, but for the most part it’s up to others to judge. Lionel Shriver seems to be forgetting that.
I really want a Shaper Tool (or maybe just a Fidget Cube).
What an absolute pleasure to watch the Doggies dispatch Hawthorn in last night’s AFL semi-final. They remind me so much of the 2007 Cats — thrilling movement of the ball by hand, precise kicking, occasionally vulnerable to quick goals out the back, and ferocious around the contest.
Take a look at this terrific new website for ARM Architects, assembled by various friends and acquaintances of mine.
