The Best of Times

I bought an iMic Griffin off Ebay the other day. As I was leaving the apartment this morning I passed the Postlieferin on the stairs; she h...

Herr T-Com Kam

No more checking e-mails on a laptop just out of sight of Yorckschlößchen. No more camping all day on the sofa by the electrical socket. No...

Splitting the bill revisited

My late mother-in-law's highly numerate son comments: Where I had doubts about your argument was with your suggestion that numeracy or ...

Charité

A couple of months ago (22.04.07) I was supposed to meet Johanna Thompson and Tod Wodicka (author of forthcoming All Shall Be Well, and All...

Splitting the bill

Freakonomics had a link to an article by Uri Gneezy, Erman Haruvy and Hadas Yafe on The inefficiency of splitting the bill . Abstract: When...

Classic lines

Was going through my papers. Came across notes from Tarantula, Clint Eastwood's first film, made for the book I was working on before Th...

Out of town

Ingrid wants to do the plaster sculpture at a place called Lietzen. She says there is no Internet access. I think there are some e-mails I s...

More prisons

The sniper writes: There is a road that used to be open but now is closed called 443. closed for palestinians that is. There is a unit stati...

Prisons of the World

Thinking of switching to Wordpress, which lets you split a post: when you think the post is turning into War & Peace or Tristram Shandy ...

Ausgeschlossen

Locked out for 2 days. Camped out at Ingrid's. Went to the Schlüsseldienst in Katzbachstraße at 10; he told me to come back in an hour. ...

New Science Fiction

Locked out of the apartment. The Schlüsseldienst is closed because it's Saturday. Hanging out at Yorckschlößchen. Mimi the waitress who ...

Lawrence Power on Video Game Soundtracks (& Space Harrier)

Was going to pursue the topic of PayPal but got an amazing e-mail from Lawrence Power, a painter living in Berlin who has been telling me ab...

Weber's death mask

In Max Weber , by Hans Norbert Fügen (Rowohlt 1985). Yours here (new, €7.90, used, from €1.69).

Greening of Books

Geographical distribution of copies of The Last Samurai available through Abebooks on 11 June, 2007 can be seen here . PayPal Account of Hel...

Samurai option contract

I have made a will several times in the past 11 years. It is possible to buy a preprinted form -- in Britain they are sold in W H Smith’s an...

herupu herupu herupu!!!!! Why Steve Jobs needs Joel Spolsky

Joel Spolsky has just posted a comparison of the Apple and Microsoft approaches to screen rendering of type , in which he says if Apple is T...

tone or technique

My mother has just written an e-mail in response to Hassan's description of the concert by Lortie, which I sent her in an e-mail some ti...

Casting

Ingrid showed this extraordinary sculpture of her mother, Elsa, at the London Art Fair in January. I've asked her to do one of me; she ...

Nothing to do with Tom Cruise

The director Tom Dey has optioned The Last Samurai and plans to make a film of it. (I am rather hoping he will persuade Kurosawa Productions...

1 degree of separation from Lisa

My dear dear friend Alex Frey has been telling me about the extremely fabulous Lisa, who does highpowered matchmaking among companies. He a...

Gunslinger gesucht

DeWitt and Gridneff are looking for a fistful of dollars, or ein paar Dollar mehr -- yep, we're looking for an agent. The opening chapte...

Alex Frey and Tristram Shandy

An Air Force officer recently back from Iraq came up to Berlin for a few days. The blog immediately took on a Shandean impossibility, in whi...

The Third Arm

Johanna Thompson tells me she has seen Automatenhilfe in Frankfurt and in Friedrichstrasse. We were arranging to meet an exhibition last wee...