In our time.

I am so very, very happy to live in an age when you can look at the front page of a newspaper and see a headline like "Monkey's Thoughts Propel Robot ."

To be fair, they have fiber.

So it's not all bad. Because I was (morbidly) curious, I checked out the nutritional information for KFC's so-called "Famous Bowls" (heh more like infamous bowls amirite?).  Take the Chicken and Biscuit Bowl, for example ("homemade taste, served up quick!").

 

The good news: 7 grams of fiber per bowl (which, remarkably, counts as a single serving, but that's probably a deserved nod to actual practice rather than the arbitrary figures found elsewhere).

 

The bad news: 870 calories! 44 grams of fat! (That's 68% of recommended daily value for a 2,000-calorie intake.) 4.5 grams of trans fat! 2,420 milligrams of sodium, which means you can swear off salt for the rest of the day since you just hit 101% of your RDV!

 

Full info here. And if you're looking to slim down, consider the old favorite, Mashed Potato Bowl with Gravy, which weighs in at only 730 calories. Is anyone else feeling hungry?

Signs of the decline of western civilization.

The movie Bucket List.

Misc.

18 stunning bridges (some only concepts).

Coolest flash game ever.

Here (via MeFi).

Dear olde Harvard.

Harvard Square back in the 1980s.

50 book challenge: #53, #54, #55 (last 2007 post edition)

#53: Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great. God, you're so vain. You probably think this book is about you.

#54: Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America. A so-called "novel in stories," which means that it was basically a collection of short stories, but those don't usually sell well so hey, let's call it a novel. Stories from a Russian Jewish immigrant to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Occasionally cloying, but the local detail was irresistible.

#55: Stendhal, The Red and the Black. A remarkable novel. Julien Morel was one of the most singular characters I've known. It's not often you can have a thoroughly hypocritical, only marginally likeable person carry a novel for 600 pages, but when you have a supporting cast as forceful as Madame de Renal and Mathilde de la Mole - and a motivating genius like Stendhal's - you can do it. The novel was so thoroughly interworked with very subtle references to French politics of 1830 that I'm sure I missed a lot, even with the notes (and the lousy translation didn't help), but A+++ would read again.

Careful: your brain might asplode.

Behold: the 103d edition of the King William's College General Knowledge Paper: the most intimidating trivia quiz ever created by the mind of man. On a first (google-free) run, I think I got, like, 1. And you will find that google is not even that helpful.

I learned something today.

In Japanese, the word "Subaru" refers to the Pleiades star cluster, and that is why the car company's logo is made up of stars. Pass this on and you will be lucky in the new year!

50 book challenge: #51, #52.

#51: Pierre Bayard, How to talk about books you haven't read.

The dominant mode of relating to books is, of course, by not reading them. The thesis of this short, brilliant work is that the notion of "not-reading" is more ambiguous than we usually admit. His job is to relieve the anxiety and shame that go along with "not having read a book," in order to liberate (non)readers to talk about them anyway. There is some overreaching here, but overall this is one of the best books I read this year, and one of the most stimulating books I have ever read (or at least as far as I can remember, which is kind of the point). For all you haters out there, yes, I did read most of this book - I probably skimmed only about a dozen pages altogether. If you have a problem with that last sentence, then I say to you, "Tolle, lege."

This interviewer from the N.Y. Times claims to have read the book before talking to Prof. Bayard; to judge from her questions, she has thereby confirmed Bayard's thesis that having read a book does not necessarily enable you to make intelligent observations based on it.

#52: Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End. Well, this book has appeared on several year-end "best of" lists, but it left me feeling a little meh. The characters have distinctive personalities, interests, and actions, but they all seemed to talk in the same casual, banter-y, bright-toned register. Also, hasn't this tale of cubicle life been done before? Why does the subject seem so familiar? It's not a particular novel I have in mind, though more knowledgeable readers (or non-readers!) may know more, but it's definitely been worked over in other mediums - comics (Dilbert, right?), TV and movies (The Office, Office Space, Clockwatchers, etc.) Enjoyable enough, if you've got nothing else to do at your cube farm.