Outbox: September 8–14
September 8, 2014
I read Tuesdays with Morrie about a decade ago. I want to write a book called Mondays with Nathan. The premise will be simple: every Monday, Vasta and Nathan meet at a bar to watch the Monday Night Football game. Every Monday, conversation will go from football to all sorts of other topics, including politics and culture and relationships and current affairs. Every Monday, we will leave late at night, after the football is over, and realize that though we watched the game, we didn’t really come together for the sports, but for the companionship that comes from being able to talk to someone about everything with ease. We will part, and look forward to the next Monday, when we will do it all again.
- Why walking helps us think. All that time spent strolling around the city and wearing out the soles of my shoes is well spent, it seems.
- How everything we tell ourselves about how busy we are is a lie. We work less and have more leisure time than ever before. To appreciate it, it turns out we just need to sleep less and play more.
- The canon of philosophy student karaoke songs, including such gems as, “Hit Me Baby Wittgenstein,” “Camus Feel the Love Tonight?,” and “Forever Jung.”
- Fashion parties in the 1990s were crazy.
September 9, 2014
I had coffee with someone yesterday that reminded me why I’m willing to sacrifice the higher pay and increased prestige that would come from having a private sector job in my industry. Her motivations for working in social innovation were similar to mine — the opportunity to do something, make something that has a positive, lasting impact on the people around us — and I’ve needed to be reminded of that, recently. When I feel somewhat disenchanted, disengaged from what I am doing, it is nice to talk to someone that helps me re-realize that while the work I do may not always be appreciated, it is worthwhile.
Recipe for fast and delicious dessert:
- Scoop Grinning Face Ontario strawberry gelato into bowl.
- Top gelato with two pieces of Mast Brothers chocolate.
- Spoon into mouth.
- Student debt in America is now bigger than credit cards and auto loans. Listen to John Oliver explain why policy change around for-profit schools is necessary.
- According to Cinefix, these are the 100 most iconic shots in cinema of all time. Some really good ones in here, but some interesting additions and omissions too. Let the debate begin.
- For the past 8 years, photographer Christian Chaize has been rather obsessed with a small beach in the south of Portugal.
September 10, 2014
It is hard to know that someone is having a bad day and there is nothing at all that you can do about it. There’s a certain difficulty in accepting the powerlessness we have in controlling certain parts of life that have the ability to get us down; the thought that the only thing we can do is listen and sympathize is often frustrating. But in the end, that is sometimes all we can really do: listen to our friend, give them a hug, remind them that tomorrow is a different day, and with a different day will come new opportunities for joy and sorry, but your friendship will never waver.
- David Socknacki has decided to withdraw from the race to be Toronto’s mayor. It’s too bad — he was exactly the kind of person we needed in the city: wonkish, evidence-driven, focused on ideas. Hard to figure out who to vote for, now.
- The afterlife of an army base. What our shifting military footprint leaves behind.
- New York Magazine argues that Harvard University is mainly a hedge fund with real-estate holdings, and perhaps it is time it should lose its non-profit status.
September 11, 2014
I knew someone, once, very well, who had committed an incredible amount of poetry (mostly Eliot and Neruda) to memory. She could, in any instance, find a poem that was relevant to whatever our current circumstance. I was reminded of her when I read this piece on memorization by Caterina Fake:
“The single thing I’ve found it valuable to memorize is poetry. As a child I learned hundreds of poems by heart, which I can recite to this day. I wanted to become a writer, a felt that poetry was perfected language, so having it in my subconscious mind would make the music of language always available to me.”
I do not memorize anything. My memory has latched on to certain things — I can recall the lyrics to bad pop songs from the 1990s, the entire screenplay of Disney’s The Lion King, the way L looks just before she is about to go to sleep — but I do not consciously commit things to memory. Instead, I put things in places where they will jar my recollection; I attach memories to physical objects and places, and I travel through them, literally and figuratively, as I go about my day.
- Recipes suspended in air. Component parts of a meal, all floating above the dish.
- Sad dads at a One Direction concert.
- There’s a part of me that wants to move to Guanajuato, Mexico, North America’s most walkable city where all the cars are underground and pedestrians run the town.
September 12, 2014
Can architects be celebrities? I think they can. I have a list of favorite architects, and I can’t be the only one. That list, you say?
You have a list too, right? Maybe some of the people above are on it? Either way, as of today, Toronto now has buildings by two (Calatrava, Maki) of the five above. What do we need to do get the other three to build here?
September 13, 2014
I spent a chunk of my day talking about Foucault with a woman that works at a cute shop in the neighborhood. There are no valid reasons to bring up Foucault in everyday conversation, so I will not try to rationalize the discussion or the reasons for which we entered into it; it happened, and it is now done. Such is the madness of civilization. Such is the order of things.
- Why we love re-consuming entertainment. “Musicologists estimate that for every hour of music-listening in the typical person’s lifetime, 54 minutes are spent with songs we’ve already heard.”
- My meeting with Congressman John Lewis. Reminder that if you don’t have anything of value to say, don’t say anything at all.
- The awful reign of the Red Delicious. This is what happens when you prize beauty over taste. Give me a jonamac any day.
September 14, 2014
There is a farm two blocks away from our house, in the middle of the city. It isn’t large, but you’re guaranteed to find some horses, cows, goats, chickens, pigs, and many more such farm animals when you visit. The roosters are in charge. Even now, when there is palpable chill to the air and most animals are hiding in their shelters, the roosters stroll, chests puffed out, all through their enclosure in the barn. We take care to avoid bothering them as we walk through the barn, not wanting to disturb their wanderings, not wanting to accidentally face off against birds that know that, despite their diminutive size, they are the rulers of this roost.
