Links for 2009-09-16

"[F]rom where I now stand-9/10ths of the way through and surveying the path I have trod thus far-it now seems obvious to me what the book is "about". Infinite Jest is a novel about sincerity.107

The question now becomes: why does it take so long to realize this? Surely this does not reflect well on Wallace, that he so thoroughly buried the lede that someone could abandon the tome 800 pages in and still not know the point. In fact, it seems as though those with only a superficial knowledge of the book-having read only the first 50 pages before giving up, say, or basing their opinion solely on synopses of the plot and setting-describe the book as the very opposite of sincere, as ironic and cynical and dark."

"The sad thing is that most of these places recycle the same old lines about how "traditional" publishers refuse to accept new writers*, and then they start listing famous and bestselling authors like Grisham and Paolini who chose to self-publish instead of going with one of those New York monstrosities . . . the implication being that you too will be a NYT bestseller if you self-publish your novel!

I finally got annoyed enough to gather some of these claims together, starting with good old Grisham."

"No college may be as class-notes crazy as Williams, Mr. Rosen's alma mater. Several years ago the college started printing a separate publication just for class notes--called Williams People--after the voluminous section threatened to take over the entire magazine and its budget. The August 2008 issue, full of wedding photos, obituaries, and news of mini-reunions, set a record at 144 pages."

"Quantum mechanics states that an electron doesn't exist as a single point, but spreads around the nucleus in a cloud known as an orbital. The soft blue spheres and split clouds seen in the images show two arrangements of the electrons in their orbitals in a carbon atom. The structures verify illustrations seen in thousands of chemistry books because they match established quantum mechanical predictions."

We're #19! We're #19! For reference, tuition, room and board is $48,552 this year.

"Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour."