More New Math
Monday, June 15, 2009
Larousse Gastronomique = Ordinary Recipe + Make it Complicated
After More New Math
A Time of Gifts
Thursday, December 04, 2008
For many years now one of my favourite writers has been Patrick Leigh Fermor; he's of Anglo-Irish descent and now at the age of 93 he is continuing work on the third and final part of his foot journey from London to Constantinople. The first two parts, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water are masterpieces of travel writing and indeed of English literature.
It was with great delight that I discovered a recent interview with him (by William Dalrymple), and once again marvelled at the life he has led.
From the article:
As Anthony Lane put it in the New Yorker, Leigh Fermor 'was, and remains, an Englishman, with so much living to his credit that the lives conducted by the rest of us seem barely sentient - pinched and paltry things, laughably provincial in their scope… We fret about our kids' Sats, whereas this man, when he was barely more than a kid himself, walked from Rotterdam to Istanbul. In his sixties he swam the Hellespont, in homage to Lord Byron - his hero, and to some extent his template. In between he has joined a cavalry charge, observed a voodoo ceremony in Haiti, and plunged into a love affair with a princess. He has feasted atop a moonlit tower, with wine and roast lamb hauled up by rope. He has dwelt soundlessly among Trappist monks.'
It's wonderful stuff, and I recommend no books more highly than his.
Fingers Crossed
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
For Obama, of course.