Gifting Digital Books — Craig Mod

~ Mark

This is a good idea.

My friend turns on their Kindle the morning of the day I select for the book to arrive. Their Kindle syncs with the Kindle cloud and — oh, look! A gift! The book is automatically downloaded. My personalized message — long or short — is displayed and kept as a part of that book. Furthermore, if I’ve opted to have my notes and highlights included with the book, those too, are downloaded.

Gifting Digital Books — Craig Mod

Metropolitan

~ Mark

Metropolitan. I loved it. What we have is a modern-day drawing room film/comedy of manners, with upper-crusty Manhattanite teens inviting a misfit into their fold. They go back and forth from debutante balls to house parties, gossiping and verbally jousting all the while. It’s very dialogue-heavy (they almost all speak in long, precise sentences, processing their emotions and ideals and the failings of society) and very funny. I think you could compare it favorably to Annie Hall or Manhattan, but with a younger cast. Ebert says. Criterion essay.

Crazy Heart

~ Mark

Crazy Heart. A through and through enjoyable movie. There’s no good reason not to watch it. One good reason to watch it, besides Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Robert Duvall being awesome, is to see Colin Farrell as a country star. Yes! I’ll be interested to see what else director Scott Cooper comes up with.

~ Mark

Graph of the year – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

Bill James (and others) have pointed out that true racial equality in baseball came, not when superstars such as Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays started joining major league rosters, but when there was room for ordinary black players to join their equally unexceptional white colleagues on the bench.

Similarly, graphical methods have truly arrived when journalists use graphs to make ordinary, unexceptional points in a clearer way. When making a graph, and including it in an article, is easy enough that it’s done as a matter of course.

~ Mark

Criticism can be instructive in the sense that it gives readers, including the author of the book, some information about the critic’s intelligence, or honesty, or both.

Vladimir Nabokov.
~ Mark

Criticism can be instructive in the sense that it gives readers, including the author of the book, some information about the critic’s intelligence, or honesty, or both.

Vladimir Nabokov.