But a second question arises: why are we judged on appearances? It might be intrinsically satisfying to have a well-dressed boyfriend, but there is nothing fundamentally less productive about a scruffy accountant. Evidently, the tie is important because employers believe it is correlated with diligence and talent.
If this is true, we would expect to see the largest premium on snappy dressing in professions where there are few other effective ways to evaluate performance. Estate agents and management consultants are sharply dressed in the absence of more convincing guides to their competence.
In professions where talent is more obvious, this façade is not needed. That is why when I scan the Financial Times office, neatly pressed shirts and blouses are hard to find.
James Ryerson in The New York Times, 12 December 2008:
A report on DFW’s very analytic deconstruction of a paper by Richard Taylor which draws metaphysical conclusions from a simple thought experiment.
In summary,
…his own analysis of the problem “seems to warrant the following conclusion of our own: if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate.”
From an interview in The Sun prior to his Round 3 TKO loss to Katsidis:
Mitchell, unbeaten in 31 fights, is realistic enough to admit his unbeaten record will not last for ever. He added: “Almost everyone gets done and you have to accept it.
“Amir Khan got beat, Carl Froch got beat, so what. He is fighting at world level and that is what happens. Fighters don't usually stay unbeaten. The test of a real fighter is when he gets beat, he comes back.”
From the same writing team who hit the big time with Sexy Beast, we have a more theatrical, darker piece. At first glance, it strikes on as something like a RESEVOIR DOGS set in London, but actually the themes, infidelity, vulnerability and forgiveness are remarkably congruent with Sexy Beast. Once again, there’s an all star cast led by Ray Winstone. John Hurt does some scene stealing Frankie Fraser schtick - a very long way from Winston Smith in 1984 or THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT. Bravo.
Witty dialogue, good pace and an interesting enough journey for the protagonist Colin Newman (Ray Winstone) make this well worth watching. It’s a far cry from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and all the better for it.
Interesting conversation between Krauss and Oz in Jerusalem. They discuss Israel, each other’s work and, interestingly, the process of writing.
Having just finished THE HISTORY OF LOVE, it’s interesting to their discussion of the book. Amos Oz is very warm in his praise and in particular commends Nicole Krauss on her ear for dialogue. He says that he hears the Yiddish beneath the English of the novels joint protagonist, Leo Gursky. Nicole Krauss talks about her idiosyncratic use of the phrase ‘And yet.’ - something that can grate as it’s used so much.
From a ‘let’s have Walken take us back to his old neighbourhood” feature article in The New Yorker:
“In Connecticut I don’t see anybody for weeks except the guy who comes and gets the trash,” he said. “At night I have possums, skunks, lots of raccoons. They come right in the house, through the cat door, and they bring their babies in. I get up at night and they’re in the kitchen, eating all the cat food.”
Similar cynics populate Mr. Stone’s novels, of course, but in the most persuasive of those books, he not only maps the sources of his heroes’ malaise and the fallout it has on their lives but also dramatizes their flailing efforts to grab after one last chance at a big score or even a whiff of love and salvation. In the stories in this volume we are not given the full arc of his people’s lives; we get only snapshots of their drunken nihilism and puerile self-pity. It’s certainly not enough to make us care, not even enough to engage our voyeuristic curiosity; it’s simply dismal and depressing.
Heaviest snow fall for several years and it’s still snowing. There are going to be some fine snowmen patted together. I wonder what percentage of commuters made it into work? The car insurance companies must be nervous indeed.
Sad story of Mike Quarry, brother of 1970s Great White Hope at Heavyweight, Jerry. Sadly both took too many blows to the head and suffered dementia pugilistica.
