Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 35

I AIN'T PEOPLE

But it's a fact of life, in your late teens and early twenties, that's just what people do: they go out.

Taylor Plimpton, at the Paris Review blog

Sapir-Whorf and ggplot2

To some degree, we are constrained in our ability to solve problems if we only know a single language. This situation has been recognized different ways by the programming community. The Logo programming language was built based upon constructionist learning theory and was intended to provide a "mental model" for children to come to understand mathematical constructs. In recent times, many programmers have committed to being polyglots, learning new languages as a part of professional...

ESPN's Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy) recently suggest...

ESPN's Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy) recently suggested that the primary cause of dwindling interest in Red Sox games by fans is that baseball games these days are too long. "It's not that fun to spend 30-45 minutes driving to a game, paying for parking, parking, waiting in line to get in, finding your seat ... and then, spend the next three-plus hours watching people play baseball", he says.

Erm, I always thought the reason I thought baseball games were too long was that I was not...

that clinking clanking sound

In a letter to the editor in 1988, literary critic Eddie Dow tried to set the record straight:

In 1926 Fitzgerald published one of his finest stories, ''The Rich Boy,'' whose narrator begins it with the words ''Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.''

Ten years later, at lunch with his and Fitzgerald's editor, Max Perkins, and the critic Mary Colum, Hemingway said, ''I am getting to know the rich.'' To this Colum replied, ''The only difference between...

Richard Morgan on freelancing at The Awl.

Richard Morgan on freelancing at The Awl.

Via MR, video of British town that turned its traffic lig...

Via MR, video of British town that turned its traffic lights off:

doing the decent thing

Colleen Lindsay wraps upat FinePrint Literary Management.

Thank you

When I got home from my German class today an envelope had come in the post. I opened it. An anonymous reader had sent me many, many, many, many euros.

This is unbelievably kind of you. Thank you very much.

My other Carter story comes from a conversation I had a c...

My other Carter story comes from a conversation I had a couple years ago with an economist who's about my age, a man who said that one reason he and his family moved from town A to town B in his metropolitan area was that, in town B, they didn't feel like they were the only Republicans on their block.

Anyway, this guy described himself as a "Jimmy Carter Republican."

Me: You mean you liked Carter's policies on deregulation?

Him: No. I mean that Jimmy Carter made me a Republican.

Andrew G...

Sometimes when I do turn it over, the situation actually ...

Sometimes when I do turn it over, the situation actually get worse, because that's God's plan for their lives. They may need the pain in order to learn and to realize the problem. They may have to get worse in order to reach out for help.

So, now when I turn a situation over and it gets worse, I don't have to rush in and try to "save" the day. I can sit back and say, "Go, God... do your thing!" Because I know he's got a better plan, and His plan is better for them than anything I ever came...