maybe we should define clearly what reading means

Cabinet Magazine fondly remembers Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet.

Acclaimed in the Décade d’Augsbourg, a German “Who’s Who” produced between 1741 and 1755, as one of the outstanding erudites of her time, Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet (1706–49), considered one of the first women scientists, was relegated after her death to the Enlightenment’s shadows, from which she has emerged only recently. Brilliant and passionate, as fun-loving as she was hard-working, “la divine Émilie” was both admired and loathed by her peers, stunned as they were by the nerve of an eighteenth-century female who was as capable of debating men on the laws of physics as she was of performing the role typically assigned to her gender. She left in her wake a series of lovers in the best tradition of intrigue among French royals—or rather among intellectuals, long before the Existentialists and the French avant-garde.

go! team - junior kickstart

Aww...I miss New York. Even if you do run the risk of ghost vaporization:

Via Very Short List

coins rubbed smooth by circulation

Louis Menand examines how quotes are made quotable:

Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; Vince Lombardi did say “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” quite often, but he got the line from someone else. Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; Hermann Göring did not say “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun”; and Muhammad Ali did not say “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” does not say “Greed is good”; James Cagney never says “You dirty rat” in any of his films; and no movie actor, including Charles Boyer, ever said “Come with me to the Casbah.” Many of the phrases for which Winston Churchill is famous he adapted from the phrases of other people, and when Yogi Berra said “I didn’t really say everything I said” he was correct.

you can't steal a gift

Jonathan Lethem on "The Ecstasy of Influence" (and so much more likely behind this decision):

Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time. When I was thirteen I purchased an anthology of Beat writing. Immediately, and to my very great excitement, I discovered one William S. Burroughs, author of something called Naked Lunch, excerpted there in all its coruscating brilliance. Burroughs was then as radical a literary man as the world had to offer. Nothing, in all my experience of literature since, has ever had as strong an effect on my sense of the sheer possibilities of writing. Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers' texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the Forties and Fifties, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me. By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Burroughs was interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all.

Via Maud Newton

draw your weapons

The candidates for this year's Tournament of Books have been announced. My early prediction goes to The Road because it's unbelievably good.

clang, clang, clang went the trolley

More Guilty Pleasures of Literary Greats...

los angeles blues - peggy lee

The Guardian Unlimited blog collects songs about California.

The Oscars are almost upon us, so I'm going to have two weeks of related themes. The first is songs about California. Most of them will cover Los Angeles, I'd imagine, but anywhere from San Jose to Modesto is fine, not to mention songs about the state as a whole. (According to Wikipedia, San Diego has almost twice the population of San Francisco. Who knew?) We've already had California Uber Alles, Screenwriter's Blues, Burn Hollywood Burn and Celluloid Heroes, but I think that's all.

Will the creator of Los Angeles, Mach I & II please get over there? (You know who you are.)

Via WOTS

you mean work?

Toothpaste for Dinner

God's away on business

I'm having a lousy week - hell, year - of bad news, but at least there's Tom Waits:

be mine

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. I'm willing to provide details if someone just can't resist sending me some flora.

This stunningly nonsensical and oddly irresistible Valentine can be found at Evite.

buy titanium

From Style*Dash:

Given the state of affairs around the planet (wars, oil dependency, global warming, instability in countless nations), I'd like to encourage people to celebrate this Valentine's Day in a way that lets your sweetie know that he or she makes you want to do something good for the place we all call home.

To make things easier, I've come up with five great alternative Valentine's Day gifts that show your main squeeze that your love abounds.

his thing that summer was crickets

The Washington Post has a new ZZ Packer story, "Pita Delicious" (registration required).

That one day, when everything went wrong, Gideon was working on his dissertation, which meant he was in cutoffs in bed with me, the fan whirring over us while he was getting political about something or other. He was always getting political, even though his PhD had nothing to do with politics and was called "Temporal Modes of Discourse and Ekphrasis in Elizabethan Poetry." Even he didn't like his dissertation. He was always opening some musty book, reading for a while, then closing it and saying, "You know what's wrong with these facist corporations?" No matter how you responded, you'd always be wrong because he'd say, "Exactly!" then go on to tell you his theory, which had nothing to do with anything you'd just said.

Via Maud Newton

I like the nightlife baby

This iTunes add-on iConcertCal scans your library and creates a visualizer that lets you know when bands are coming to your area. You'd be surprised how much you miss even if you're paying attention.

Via blogging.la

mysterious carbon emitting ghosts

Art.blogging.la looks at Laurel Beckman's new Silverlake mural, All Matter Is Smart.

razorblading snickers

Band Names Rejected by the Smashing Pumpkins.