From a NASA satellite:

Beautiful time-lapse video:

Knopf knocked themselves out producing 1Q84. Even the page numbers have a weirdly appropriate design: the recto and verso numbers are mirror images of each other, and their positions in the outer margin changes from page to page, moving up and down in retrograde motion.  Parallel worlds!  Shifting viewpoints!

But what am I going to do with this 925-page artifact now that I’ve read its contents?  It’s not joining the vanishingly small number of books that I want to reread someday.  It can sit on a shelf only if I make room on the shelf by getting rid of some other book.  Most likely I’ll donate it to my local library.  But it deserves better.

Ah, e-books!  The perfect solution for the shelf-space problem.  Recently our family was blessed by the arrival of a second iPad.  Not having thought much about it, I was surprised when I downloaded the Kindle app from my “purchased” apps at the app store, and I found that it had tracked all my book purchases.  All I needed to do was download them to from Amazon to the new iPad.  Simple!

And yet, those page numbers in 1Q84 were a treat.  Like album covers on LPs.  Like major motion pictures seen in CinemaScope on a huge screen.

I must be getting old — except that I love my iPads.

Love you forever and forever

Love you with all my heart

Love you whenever we’re together

Love you when we’re apart

Recently I saw Greta Garbo in The Mysterious Lady, a silent movie from 1928.  Not a great movie, but I could watch Garbo silently read the Berlin phonebook.  The problem with the movie was the modern-day musical accompaniment, which seemed to have been intended for a different movie altogether.  The aria Vissi d’arte from Tosca plays a big role in The Mysterious Lady: we first see Garbo at the opera listening intently to it; later we see her supposedly singing it herself a couple of times (with Conrad Nagel supposedly playing the accompaniment).  But the score never even gestures towards the aria, or Puccini, or even opera.  Instead, we’re forced to listen to some bland genre-free movie music.  What’s up with that?

Luckily YouTube can cure anyone’s Vissi d’arte deficiency.  Here is Maria Callas, proving why grand opera is superior to silent movies any day:

The transcendent, ineffable greatness of YouTube also provides us with The Mysterious Lady done the right way, with the operatic music synched to the action of the movie.  Here is Garbo, entranced by the opera, simultaneously entrancing Nagel:

I’m not sure Aaron Neville’s angelic vibrato is quite right for Dylan’s irony, but this is still great:

Along with Bill Cunningham, Claus von Bulow is also a real person who is stranger than we can imagine:

This line was so good that Jeremy Irons recycled it for another audience:

U2 live:

This video has only 3.7 million hits as of the time of embedding.  What’s the matter with people?

I notice that Charlie bit my finger — again! is approaching 400 million views.  I wonder if this will lead to a worldwide decline in finger-biting; Steven Pinker should keep track of this for the next edition of The Better Angels of Our Nature.

Who doesn’t like Galapagos tortoises?  Are you saying you don’t like Galapagos tortoises?

I’m told the web site needs more color.  What’s more colorful than a Galapagos tortoise?