Brian Short's Reading List

  • :  Right away, Jonze told me, he could see that the heads were absurdly heavy. Only one of the actors appeared able to walk in a straight line. A few of them called out from within their costumes that they felt like they were going to tip over. Jonze and Landay had no choice but to tell the Henson people to tear apart the 50-pound heads and remove the remote-controlled mechanical eyeballs. This meant that all the facial expressions would have to be generated in post-production, using computers.
    from Bringing “Where the Wild Things Are” to the Screen


  • :  The early 90s called and they want their device back.” The comments on Engadget.com were especially pointed. “It looks like a Timex Sinclair glued to the bottom of an oversized 1st gen Palm device,” Marcus wrote. “That’s some ugly shit,” Johan agreed. “Was this damned thing designed by a band of drunken elves?” Jerome asked. CB summed it up: “It is truly butt ugly. wow. ugly.
    from Can the Kindle really improve on the book?


  • :  Their relationship — the rooster and Ms. Sandrow’s, that is — followed the usual fowl-meets-human trajectory. Ms. Sandrow gave him a name, Shinnecock, for the woods he was found in, and then set about learning how to make him comfortable. The rooster set about charming his new family: flying down each morning from the tree he roosted in (“Who knew chickens could fly?” Ms. Sandrow said) to dance a jig and gently peck their cheeks.
    from An Artist Feathers Her Nest


  • :  The trick,” he yelled in a heavy Greek accent, “is to use certain forces, like temperature and pressure, to preserve the product as a solid mass, so it doesn’t deteriorate.
    from Where Do Gyros Come From?


  • :  The trick,” he yelled in a heavy Greek accent, “is to use certain forces, like temperature and pressure, to preserve the product as a solid mass, so it doesn’t deteriorate.
    from Where Do Gyros Come From?


  • :  Before approaching me, Penn apparently made himself a nuisance to the California Department of Justice. Early on I was in touch with a nice investigator there named Fred Shirasago, who knew Penn’s father and could sometimes get him to make his son stop harassing me for a while. But I guess when you know something terribly important that the entire world thinks is hooey, it gets harder and harder to let it go.
    from Confessions of a Non-Serial Killer


  • :  

    This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.

    This part doesn’t: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, “You just hit our line.”


    from Metro Dig at Tysons Stirs Underground Intrigue


  • :  The program lasted eight weeks and participants were followed for an additional three months. Williams said they found those who received the mindfulness training “had significantly less daily hassles, psychological distress and significantly fewer medical symptoms” — like lower blood pressure and fewer aches and pains — than those who were handed a pamphlet.
    from Mindfulness Training Busts Stress


  • :  Instead of making the starting chemicals form a sugar and a base, they mixed them in a different order, in which the chemicals naturally formed a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When another half-sugar and half-base are added, the RNA nucleotide called ribocytidine phosphate emerges.
    from RNA Can Be The Starting Point For Life


  • :  Today, mainstream print and electronic media want to be neutral, presenting both or all sides as if they were refereeing a game in which only the players—the government and its opponents—can participate. They have increasingly become common carriers, transmitters of other people’s ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance, and at times even accuracy.
    from Newspaper Narcissism


    • bshort's new thing is a snipblog by Brian Short