Rocket Man: Gravity's Rainbow at 36

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Sunday March 01, 2009 · 3:48 PM PST

2009/03/01 · 15:48

It was 36 years ago this weekend that one of the great American post-modern novels was published, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. So what would make this anniversary any different from the previous 35?

Well, it occurred to me upon finishing it that the book is now exactly half as old as its famously shy author. The same sort of symmetry is bound to pop up when one discovers it came out fifty years after another great 20th century novel to which it is often compared, James Joyce's Ulysses. It also occurred to me upon some Wikipedia-trekking that he was born the same week as another boomer icon who meshed lively wordplay with serious undertones, George Carlin.

turdraker

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Sunday September 07, 2008 · 4:56 PM PDT

2008/09/07 · 16:56

Don Haskins, the legendary coach who took the first black starting team to the national college basketball championship in 1966, died this afternoon. He was 78.

As an alum of the University of Texas at El Paso, I am proud of the role my alma mater played in changing the face of collegiate athletics, and of my home town, El Paso, for leading the way as well, the first city to desegregate in the state of Texas.

turdraker

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Tuesday November 06, 2007 · 7:12 PM PST

2007/11/06 · 19:12

Tomorrow marks the seventh anniversary of the fateful 2000 election that brought us to this state we're in. We all know what happened, so why cry over spilt oil? Instead, let's give this anniversary its appropriate commemoration. What will you do to mark this solemn occasion?

Here are a few suggestions I've whipped up on short notice:

turdraker

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Friday October 05, 2007 · 7:23 PM PDT

2007/10/05 · 19:23

I haven't heard much denial of global warming lately from those in my vicinity, short of Pavlovian outbursts whenever I poke one of them with a stick.

"They just want to ruin our great economy!" "The science is flawed!" "It's the Sun warming up!" "It's cyclical! Look at all those Ice Ages!"

Yes, Earth goes through regular cycles of cooling and warming. Serbian mathematician Milutin Milanković worked out many of the problems of our planet's motion and the resultant climate changes 70 years ago. But there is nothing in his work to lend any support to the wingnuts' claims of natural explanations for what is happening so rapidly. Scientists continuing his research speak of warming and cooling cycles that last from 19,000 to 50,000 years.

turdraker

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Friday September 14, 2007 · 5:06 PM PDT

2007/09/14 · 17:06

(AP) Washington - To mark Tony Snow's last official day on the job as press secretary, the White House declared today that it would no longer recognize that there any numbers whose sums add up to 13.
"As of today, six plus seven now equals fourteen," incoming press secretary Dana Perino told reporters at the daily press briefing. "As do five plus eight, four plus nine, and so on."
Once the press corps was able to resume breathing, several reporters clamored for an explanation.

turdraker

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Saturday September 08, 2007 · 7:20 PM PDT

2007/09/08 · 19:20

The Romans named our familiar constellations, but nearly every star of note in the northern sky takes its name from Arabic. Betelgeuse, Rigel, Aldebaran, Algol, Fomalhaut, Vega, Deneb. Frank Herbert dubbed the setting for his SF epic Dune Arrakis, after the Arabic name for the northern star Mu Draconis, ar-raqis, which means "the dancer." All these names come to us courtesy of the same explosion of learning in the centuries after the birth of Islam that gave us, besides the preservation of Hellenistic knowledge, algebra and our system of numbering, filtered through the three-quarter millennium Moorish rule of Spain. The emblem of Islam itself, after all, is the crescent and star.

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House Intel Chair: NO on FISA vote. Now tell us why!

turdraker

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Sunday August 05, 2007 · 1:13 PM PDT

2007/08/05 · 13:13

Congressman Silvestre Reyes (TX-16) is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

As someone with access to the latest and greatest intel on what Al Qaeda and other sordid fiends are up to, you would think he has at least the same access as Senator Jim Webb to troubling information about threats to our security, as documented by Webb's statement chronicled in this diary.

Yet Reyes voted not to capitulate to Jughead's demands for kingly and godly omniscience, aided and abetted by his remora of an attorney general.

turdraker

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Thursday August 02, 2007 · 5:03 PM PDT

2007/08/02 · 17:03

One of the papers in my neck of the woods, the El Paso Times, endorsed Jughead Dumbya Botch, 4 times. Twice for gov, twice for Prez.

The editorial page editor is of the Grover Norquist breed of "I hate taxes" Republican. He cried crocodile tears over Molly Ivins last winter, even though he reduced her column's appearances in 2004 in honor of a Karl Rove fundraising visit, replacing her with that wide and deep vomitory of racist bile, Michelle Malkin.

In July 2003, they printed full color photos of the bloody corpses of Saddam's sons on the front page. No bastion of the almighty liberal media, they.

turdraker

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Sunday July 01, 2007 · 7:33 PM PDT

2007/07/01 · 19:33

Anybody out there who, like me, is approaching fifty can recall that the UK has been the target of terror attacks for over a third of a century. Was there ever a time when the reaction here to these events ever came close to approaching the order of screeching magnitude we see today over what amounts to...

...a couple of duds?

Between 1973 and 2001, in London alone, there were some pretty spectacularly well coordinated and executed attacks, including an attempt that nearly took out Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher...

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Rocket Man: Gravity's Rainbow at 36

Don Haskins (1930-2008)

11/07/2000: The Seven Year Ache

It rains at the North Pole!

White House: 6 + 7 now = 14

Osama the Astronomer

House Intel Chair: NO on FISA vote. Now tell us why!

Texas paper: Bridge collapse is page 4 news

Putting the bombings in perspective