Plan B(ee)
This giant scabious (Cephalaria gigantea to you and me) sure knows how to attract customers. Suggests that “Busy as a bee” is an accurate simile.
Quote of the Day
”If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.”
- Red Adair, the famous oil-well fire specialist
Thanks to Euan Williamson, who was reminded of it when he read Derek Bok’s quote about the cost of education in Friday’s edition.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Planxty | True Love Knows No Season
North American folk song composed by Norman Blake. This is the first time I’ve heard Christy Moore sing it.
Long Read of the Day
What Our Youthful Book Typologies Say About Us
This is a lovely essay by John Warner about how we are influenced by books we’ve read in our youth. It was sparked by the fact that at the end of his podcast Ezra Klein asks his guest to name three books they would recommend to the audience.
Warner was struck by one choice of Ian Bremmer, “an expert in foreign policy who spent 90 minutes describing in gory and depressing detail what is apparent to even grade schoolers, the Trump Administration is a colossal shit show.”
When they got to the books, Bremmer said:
Well, first, I’ve got to start with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because when I was in high school and college, there were basically three kinds of kids: There were the J.R.R. Tolkien kids that were way too dorky. Then there were the Ayn Rand kids, who you don’t trust to run anything. And then there were the Douglas Adams kids, and those were kind people. They were curious, they were interested, and that was a universe that really appealed to me.
At this, Warner writes,
“I laughed because, well…this seemed pretty true, true to my experience at least, and also because as someone who has re-read the five books in the original “trilogy” (Douglas Adams readers will get this reference) multiple times, and even wrote some stories in high school trying to ape Adams’ strange humorous mix of the manic and dry, I felt a bit flattered by the taxonomy.
I could not get into Tolkien or really any fantasy that involved orcs and swords and stuff. I was cool with magic and evil (see The Dark is Rising) but epic battles bored me. I didn’t meet any Randoids nor read any Ayn Rand until college, and thankfully I’d both developed a sufficient conscience and care towards my fellow human and taste in literature to be utterly immune to her charms by that time.
Klein followed up: “I love this typology. There’s no book I’ve reread more than The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Which struck me, because I could never get into the Tolkien stuff either.
Read on. It’s an interesting essay. And it made me want to re-read ‘Hitchhiker’…
Books, etc.
See today’s Long Read!
My commonplace booklet
Robert Shrimsley on how to escape the World Cup
The reality is that there is no escape. The coverage is as comprehensive as a major royal event. There’s no good complaining or being snotty about it. You just have to try to zone out and seize the opportunities it offers: emptier theatres, late tables at fancy restaurants. An England match is the perfect time to visit the shops, though the Panama game doesn’t start till 10pm so it will have to be the Tesco Express.
And this is a problem for fans and haters alike (the kick-off times, not the Tesco Express part). Because this World Cup is taking place in the US, Canada and Mexico — though, sadly, not Greenland, which failed to secure statehood in time — some of the matches will be in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Germany vs Curaçao is at a reasonable hour, but the poor old Scots fans will have to be up at 2am to see if they can dispose of Haiti. (By the way, if any Scots are heading State-side for the tournament, I hear there’s a camper van for sale somewhere.)
Link (£)
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- Spurious correlations
Whenever you’re looking for spurious correlations, this is the place to go. For example, the correlation between the number of UFO sightings in South Carolina 1975 — 2011 and the number of successful Mount Everest climbs over the same period.
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