Hugh Nicoll's Weblog » General

Upgrading to Lion

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:20:11 +0000

Giddy at midnight, still giddy at first light: the upgrade to Lion, Mac OS 10.7, was a rib-tickling kick from start to finish, and put a feather in the cap of an already very happy day, at least for those with geeky tendencies, for had already updated BBEdit and Tinderbox. I had also read a few pre-release musings about how the download and install process would go, and my end-user experience was pure joy, especially once the install splash screen announced the completion of the download: the MGM Lion tamed. To Steve Jobs and his fellow designers/programmers, kudos and huzzahs! The Lion in cameo against a white background; could anyone have designed a more minimalist and elegant confirmation of Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre? Yee-haw.

Simon Schama’s The American Future

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:00:54 +0000

[openbook booknumber="0670044792"]
I’ve been reading Simon Schama’s The American Future: A History over the last few weeks in preparation for re-thinking my Introduction to American Studies course for this year. Schama uses the lens of the Obama campaign to look forward and back at American history in ways that make the USA refreshingly familiar and simultaneously brand new.

Reading John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:01:42 +0000

I have just finished reading Steve Rothman’s account of the publication of Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” which I also finished reading today. I have two copies of Hersey’s text in my library, the version published in the 1988 reprint of Here to Stay, a collection of Hersey pieces originally published in The New Yorker and in Life, and the digitized version available on the DVD version of The New Yorker. The print version has all the practical versions of the codex book, easy to read in bed, etc. to pick up and put down as the practical necessities of life take precedence over reading time, while the digitized version gives one a copy of the full text of the 31 August 1946 issue of the magazine. The New Yorker issue of 31 August 1946 was devoted in its entirety — with the notable exception of the columns and pages given over to advertisements — to Hersey’s piece. Hersey’s much praised tone — objective, understated, and sober — is luminous and pure, and stands in ironic contrast to celebrations of wealth and taste in the ads, which would appeal to the The New Yorker’s upper-crust readership: the educated and well-heeled readers who have the leisure to think carefully about the morality of government policy and to shop at Lord & Taylor’s, Tiffanys, and and Bergdorf-Goodman.

“The Publication of “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker,” was written as a term paper for a graduate course on science and society at Harvard in 1997, and contains a very useful overview of the publication and reception of the original version. There are a number of links to related pieces on Rothman’s home page, including one to Terrorism, War, and the Press, a 2003 collection edited by Rothman’s wife, clearly of immediate interest as the war in Iraq drags on, and politicians continue to beat the drums of war. Consider, for example, McCain’s latest pontifications on democracy and so-called U. S. interests in relation to the current crisis in Georgia.

The main questions, as always, reverberate: What must be done? When will we ever learn?

Pity the poor president!

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:30:07 +0000

Two pieces on Dead Certain. Read ‘em ‘n’ weep . . . .

Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times.

Ed Pilkington in The Guardian.

Zadie Smith on Zora Neale Hurston

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:24:10 +0000

In the spring of 1969 when I was about to graduate from high school, Dr. King had been gone for a year, black power was in its ascendency (and in the FBI’s sights as we would learn all too well in December of that year. To remember it as a time of many troubles sounds/feels trite now, but important texts were being re-published, including Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Jean Toomer’s Cane, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. My first real exposure to Hurston was attending the performance of TEWWG by a small black theater company in D. C., and I’ve been reading and re-reading the novel ever since, teaching it, and recommending it to my American Studies students as a senior research topic. For Japanese undergraduates the dialect is a challenge, but the writing is so good in so many ways it’s worth the challenge, for them and for me.
In this weekend’s Books section of The Guardian Zadie Smith has one of the most moving and thoughtful essays on the book I’ve read: “What does soulful mean?”.

Jonathan Derbyshire’s review of Mark Edmundson’s new book on Freud, and Paul Laity’s interview with Eric Hobsbawm good, too.

Grace Lee Boggs

Hugh Nicoll — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:19:48 +0000

“Seeds of Change,” a Grace Lee Boggs piece on the Bill Moyers Journal site asks a host of What must be done? questions for our time. She quotes Margaret Wheatley on the necessity of cultivating a new way of thinking about how we should participate in our troubled societies:

â€œFrom a Newtonian perspective, our efforts often seem too small, and we doubt that our actions will contribute incrementally to large-scale change. But a quantum view explains the success of small efforts quite differently.
Acting locally allows us to be inside the movement and flow of the system, Changes in small places affect the global system, not through incrementalism, but because every small system participates in an unbroken wholeness. We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, itâ€™s never a question of â€˜critical mass.â€™ Itâ€™s always about critical connections.â€

Her 1998 autobiograpy, Living for Change: An Autobiography is a longer testament to the ways courage, committment, and good humor can help us keep working.

Boggs is featured this week on the Journal, along with Robert Bly.

income gaps & Monbiot on the neoliberal con

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:01:50 +0000

The front page of yesterday’s Guardian featured a story, The Boardroom Bonanza on the 98 to 1 gap between executive and employee pay. I have no doubt that mention of the “R” word would carry little weight in policy discussions, but I also wonder what it will take for the people at the top to recognize that in the long run these disparities are not in their best interests. Or, am I merely naive? George Monbiot’s column puts things in perspective.

end of term release

Hugh Nicoll — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:08:01 +0000

Our first semester exams finished 1 August, but I was busy with marking, reading through student portfolios, writing up reports, committee work, etc. through 17 August. I failed, yet again, to make much progress cleaning my office, but I left Miyazaki on Monday the twentieth, and am now enjoying a working holiday. I have research reading & writing to do, but out of the office and out of the classroom for a solid five weeks makes this a real release. In Copenhagen until tomorrow morning, then will stay in the UK for three weeks, with stops in Maine and NYC before I return to Japan on the 25th of September.

Hic & Nunc at the Boulder Fringe

Hugh Nicoll — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:25:47 +0000

My sister Jessica and her partner Barry Oreck are performing at the Boulder Fringe Festival. They’ve got three more shows this coming weekend, Friday – Sunday. For more info, check out their page on the festival site.

Seyhmus Dagtekin

Hugh Nicoll — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:01:54 +0000

Yet another reason to be grateful for Pierre Joris’s return to more active blogging. Inspired by Pierre’s account of Dagtekin’s reading in Paris, I googled the poet, was was pleased to find his page at the French publisher site, Le Printemps des Poetes. I have no French, but very much enjoyed the excerpt from LE VERSANT OBSCUR DES CORBEAUX, and the accompanying sound file.