"Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York..."

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"... every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves."

I warned you I was going to do this. Come on. Play along. (And, no, I wasn't thinking about Andy Kaufman when I dreamed this up. It was all a riff on that Baz Luhrmann trailer for the new "Great Gatsby" movie.)

So, now, let's talk about oranges and lemons. The phrase "oranges and lemons" appears twice in the sentence, unchanged, even as the oranges and lemons themselves are changed. That's the whole action of the sentence, the transformation of oranges and lemons in one form into oranges and lemons in another form. Here they are on Friday, in crates, and here they are on Monday in "a pyramid." That is, they have become, in that alluded-to time period  — the weekend — a pile of garbage. But the pile is called "a pyramid," A pyramid! We're called upon to think of the grand erections of pharaohs, in comparison to crates from the lowly little character with the silly-sounding occupation "fruiterer."

Are the crates even stacked up? There's the absurd and obviously false notion that the fruit has been improved by whatever it was that went on in that house over the weekend. That absurdity calls upon us to think about the people who arrived and left, the people who ate all that fruit. But of course, they didn't eat it. They drank it. The pulp was extracted for use in alcoholic mixtures, and if the fruit emerged from the weekend as "pulpless halves," then, we may infer, so did the people. We don't hesitate to keep calling them human, yet we see the inaptness of calling the mere rinds "lemons and oranges." Even if you could conceptualize the big pile of rinds as a pyramid, you'd easily perceive it as garbage. Since that perception is easy, we have energy left to think about what is more difficult. Who are these people?

"Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000..."

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"... while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear win for President Obama, who campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy."

Is that a "clear win"? Good lord, whatever happens, the NYT will spin it as a win for Obama. I thought his number was $250,000 for couples, and now, it's way up at $450,000. That should be called a clear compromise. How hard it must be for the Republicans to compromise, when even clear compromises are declared clear wins for the other side.

Electronic devices on planes are dangerous...

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... but not for the reason the FAA seems to want you to believe.

If progress [toward changing the rules] is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won’t be because the device is interfering with the plane’s systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator.

Chief Justice Roberts informs Congress that the federal judiciary is scraping by on a mere $7 billion a year.

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$7 billion! Why, if that were one person's entire fortune, he'd only be #50 on the Forbes list of richest Americans. He'd only just butt ahead of Charles Butt.

The Chief stressed the bargain we the people are getting:

“Yes,” he went on, “for each citizen’s tax dollar, only two-tenths of one penny goes toward funding the entire third branch of government!”

In the report, Chief Justice Roberts said the judiciary was doing what it could to cut costs in rent, salaries and computer services...

The federal courts went to great lengths last year in trying circumstances, notably after Hurricane Sandy. “As just one example,” he said, “the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York conducted emergency hearings in Lower Manhattan the day after the storm hit, working in a building without heat or hot water that was only sparsely lit by gas-fueled emergency generators.” Though Chief Justice Roberts did not say so, the Supreme Court also showed fortitude the day the storm hit, hearing arguments when the rest of official Washington was closed.

I could think of quite a few ways to economize on the federal courts — things Congress could do. The courts are forced to handle the cases that fall within their jurisdiction, but Congress could target litigation-generating laws for repeal.

ADDED: Another way to increase that "two-tenths of one penny" proportion would be to reduce spending on things that are not the judiciary.

The Clinton clot plot thickens... or thins... with anti-coagulants.

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So we were just talking about the oddities of the Clinton clot story. We noted that no sooner was it said that Hillary Clinton would testify, as Secretary of State, on the Benghazi attack, than there came an announcement that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. The coincidence raised suspicions of an effort to engineer an evasion of this testimony.

And we weren't told where the clot was, which is a crucial bit of information when assessing how serious this health scare is. Clinton had recently suffered a head injury, which makes one think the new problem would also be located in the head, but she'd also had a blood clot in her leg years ago, which makes that alternative seem plausible. If the clot were in the leg, withholding that information suggests a strategic choice to incline the public to view the problem as  more serious than it really was.

Later, Clinton's doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she's "making excellent progress" and likely to "make a full recovery." The Washington Post repeats the information that she's being treated with anticoagulants. You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." But that WaPo story says: "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months."

I know some of my readers are doctors. Can you help us out with that inconsistency about the anticoagulants? [ADDED: Here's what Dr. Pogo says. And here's some useful detail. I think the crucial distinction is whether the clot is in the brain or in the space between the brain and the skull.]

And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I'm glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That's how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.

ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!

And let's get back to basics: What we need to talk about is Benghazi.

How to read a book a day for a year.

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Choose short/easy/audio books.

Actually, I read a book a day and have for years — but it's an audiobook, and most of this reading is done while asleep.

Do you have an reading-related New Year's resolutions? Let's think up some reading projects for the new year. We don't necessarily have to do them. Let's just contemplate them. I've already thought of 2, one of which I plan to do. First:

Maybe a good project would be those "History of..." pages, not just for their most common words — WAR! — but to have had it run through your head, at least once, what happened in all of those places. Do you know how many pages we are talking about? The number of members in the United Nations is not the right answer, but do you know that number? It's 193. Wikipedia lists 206 sovereign states (including those with disputed sovereignty).

Let's make a New Year's resolution: Each day, read one Wikipedia "History of..." page. Will you join me? We'll go in alphabetical order, and I'll prompt you with blog posts.

That will start on New Year's day. Don't worry, I'll make it amusing. Second:

What I like [about "The Great Gatsby"] is that each sentence is good, on its own. Seriously. Test it out. "As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon." Every sentence is a writer's inspiration....

I feel like starting a blog devoted to individual sentences in "The Great Gatsby," chosen randomly, and continuing until all the sentences have been used up.

With commentary, of course. For example, here's my commentary on the hot-whistle-simmering-hush sentence (responding to a commenter who complained that "trains do not 'emerge' from tunnels. They blast, speed, rip, explode, hurtle. E.B. White and Orwell would have hated the verb 'emerge'):

Now, one reason the train can't "blast" or "explode" from the tunnel — and by the way, oh, you men, with your cocks — is that the "only" sound was the "hot whistle." Otherwise, there was a "hush." That's all very surreal, no? Why didn't the train make any noise? It emerged, because it wasn't a screaming cock blasting through a vagina tunnel, as happens in your (presumably) E.B. White-approved works of fiction. Why was the train silent, why were the whistles hot, why was the hush simmering, why was it noon, why were the whistles biscuit whistles, and why wasn't it the biscuit, rather than the whistle, that was hot?

Welcome to Jake's Architecture World

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Welcome to Jake's Architecture World
"First we shape our buildings, then they shape us." –Winston Churchill
I have been extremely passionate about architecture my whole life and I thought it would make sense to create Jake's Architecture World so I could share all my ideas and notes on architecture with the world. I intend to showcase many, many different types of architecture, with an emphasis on innovative design. In particular, I am fascinated with intimate spaces that incorporate the best technology, but typically keep it invisible.
I figured I would begin with a photo of one of my favorite pieces of architecture that was designed by Lloyd Wright, who was Frank Lloyd Wrights son. This beauty is located in Los Angeles, and I intend to go into much more depth on this masterpiece.