Death in a Box

For these few seconds, there is no death. There is no death because there is no time. Death is the presence of time.

Why a little risk is good for kids

“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.”

Some links from this week

• Sex and Salter by Alexander Chee from the Paris Review: an appreciation of James Salter

  Reading Salter’s sentences, I saw what I knew of sex, that sex is a moment in which you are known and knowable. Whatever it is you desire appears from behind the veil of shame or fantasy or nostalgia, or sheer impossibility, and in its presence, you are revealed to yourself.

• Ariel casts out Caliban by Eric Michael Johnson: how our perceptions of our ape kin have evolved

  The common depiction of non-human primates in the West as representations of sin and the Devil, wickedness, frivolity, impulsivity and violence would ultimately say more about our own discomfort at being reminded of similar qualities in ourselves than their nature.

• In seconds, a life coming into bloom was lost by Jim Adams: Audrey Hull, amazingly gifted and full of potential, died this week when struck by a truck while cycling (and my thoughts on claiming the lane…)
• ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ and the Wonder of Words by Michael Chabon

  Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious—the most phantasmal—is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.

The Short Sleep
This story about people who thrive on four hours of sleep a day reminded me immediately of Nancy Kress’ Beggars in Spain, on which I mused a couple months back. Two thoughts here:

1. Speculative fiction writers need to ramp up their game if it takes only about fifteen years for science to catch up–Dr. Ying-Hui Fu talks about genetic modifications or short-sleep-in-a-pill, as though offering a synopsis of “Beggars”
2. I’m jealous; I sleep about six hours during the week–in bed at 10PM, up at 4AM–and seven on the weekends, and that’s sufficient for me, but I sure wouldn’t mind having a couple more hours of wakefulness on occasion. When you’ve got that pill, Dr. Fu, drop me a line!

I'm hungry. I'm bored.
Groupon sounds kind of like a whiny nine-year-old on Spring Break during a snowstorm. I’ve been encouraging the boys to earn their “living room survival merit badge” (because they’ve expressed great interest in the wilderness survival merit badge, but so far aren’t showing quite the fortitude they’ll need to be turned loose in the woods overnight with a pocketknife, a tarp, and a pocket full of crackers). I worry that the smart-phone powered Groupon Now is going to make my Scout leader job a little tougher. (0)

It's only "class war" when the workers fight back
“I think this is precisely the plan laid out by Gov. Walker and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is run by right-wing extremist billionaires and other cheap labor conservatives, to divide public workers against private workers and to drive down the wages and benefits of all workers.” – AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Eliot Seide Minn. GOP senators take aim at public worker benefits (0)

Happy birthday, Ned Ludd!
The Smithsonian has a nice article about the Luddites, who began their campaign of industrial sabotage 200 years ago this month. The piece dispels quite a few of the myths and misreadings of the Luddite legacy, a tendency as timely today as it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution. (0)

The New Nihilism
In any democratic political system, but especially in one with divided powers, no compromise means no governance. The Republicans’ Radical Nihilism (0)