Deep anorexia.

"Is this the best possible book I can be reading right now, of all the books in the world?"

That's Tyler Cowen's question about reading any given book, which he poses in his new book "Discover Your Inner Economist." (Is that the best book?) He seems to be saying you should toss the book aside if the answer is no. I'm afraid that's a formula for never finishing a book. Isn't there something to be said for maintaining your focus and following through lest you approach reading -- and presumably everything else about life -- with a growing case of attention deficit disorder? Take it from me. I read virtually the same advice written by Doris Lessing in the introduction to "The Golden Notebook," which became the first book I tossed aside following the principle. That was about 30 years ago. Since then, I've started a lot of books, and I would have cast them all aside -- save one or two -- had I not forced myself through some of them. But the vast majority of the books I've started lo these 30 years, I haven't finished, and the crazy thing is that I maintain the belief that I'm still reading a book for many years as the pile of books I believe I'm reading piles up. One thing about reading on line -- especially reading to blog -- is that what you don't finish evanesces. Once the day has passed, you feel utterly absolved of any obligation to go back to anything. The text flows on and you grab what you want and feel no pangs about what goes by unread. The question is what's new? I mean, what was I saying about a growing case of attention deficit disorder?

A Brooklyn walk.

I took a midmorning walk, down under the Brooklyn Bridge...



... then along a deserted street that would have scared me at little, except that there were police standing around at regular intervals. The graffiti was creepily cheerful:



Sensual:



Bursting with life:



Around the corner, I found a nice café. There weren't many people there. And no WiFi. If there were WiFi, would it be full of people? Maybe it's just too early on a Saturday.



Around another corner, buildings encroached, seemingly spanned by a segment of Manhattan Bridge:

"We can expect more global robot depression, more boom-booming 'til the break of boom..."

"... more getting diseases from monkeys, more foux de fa fa, and more rhymenaecology because HBO renewed Flight of the Conchords."

"Postsurge."

A new word.

"The perfect nexus of celebrity-spotting, couture gowns and young love -- with just enough wonk thrown in to explain even dour politicos' obsession...

Gearing up for a White House wedding. Haven't had one -- not a real one -- in 35 years. Hillary Clinton's brother doesn't count. If Chelsea had gotten married in the White House -- why do I get the feeling Chelsea will get married in the White House? -- it would count. The last time we had a real one -- the child of a President marrying -- it was Tricia Nixon.

"If Jenna got married in the White House, it would be a tremendous boost to [President Bush's] popularity," says Doug Wead, former special assistant to the first President Bush and author of "All the Presidents' Children." "Nixon received a lot of goodwill because of Tricia's wedding. I've said before that President Bush's best chance to come out of his term well is if they capture Osama bin Laden and one of the twins gets married."

I think capturing bin Laden would beat both twins getting married... in a double wedding... to twins. But we do need our distractions, and public opinion is tweaked down as well as up by all sorts of irrelevant things.

"There's a certain geometry to life... life has a certain math equation to it..."

Actually, it doesn't, and that -- from Ethan Hawke -- is from the most pathetic justification for a failed celebrity marriage that I've ever read.

"It's unfair when one person's career is taking off and the other is really suffering. "What happens -- it's not that they're jealous of each other; it's that the person you share your life with isn't in the mood to support. You want to have a pity party for yourself, but they're off to the Golden Globes and you don't want to go because everyone is going to think you are jealous. "There's a certain geometry to life -- that life has a certain math equation to it and if you're never together, you can't build a home. "Joanne Woodward put her career on the back burner for that marriage (to Paul Newman) to last. And something's got to give."

Thoughts: 

1. As the first commenter over at the link says, why didn't he put his career on the back burner for Uma? 

2. He had Uma! He should have done everything for her. 

3. Uma could come over there and kick his ass: 

 

4. He didn't want to go to the Golden Globes because somehow everyone would infer that he was jealous, but he says so now, which makes it obvious that he was jealous. 

5. I thought Ethan Hawke was the smart one:

 

6. Really smart: 

 

 7. Whining is a dangerous game. Don't do it. Especially about Uma.

6 a.m. skyline.

"And then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times!"

Remember that line from the song "Cell Block Tango" in the movie "Chicago"? All the women are singing about killing men, with the refrain "He had it coming." The women were singing from their cell block -- the jury didn't believe them. But here we see that a Madison jury acquitted a man who testified that a woman stabbed herself... in the neck.

"Northwest might eventually own Midwest."

Strange headline. (Unstrange article.)

"Beneath the pretty-boy exterior, there is something fierce lurking inside."

David Brooks on John Edwards. A fierce thing lurking inside -- sounds like an animal! Whatever it is, "[i]t comes out in his resentment toward those born to privilege (which helped sour his relationship with John Kerry)."

"The owner of the Psychic Experiences shop says she had a feeling something bad was about to happen to the signs outside her store."

Or so she said, after someone set fire to them. She's forced to add that she didn't do anything about that feeling, and that she has no insight into who set the fire except that it was probably just some kids. The travails of the psychic! Something bad happens to you, and people use it as an occasion to taunt you. If you're so psychic, why didn't you.... Oh, shut up.

"To be human is to be purely and violently self-interested."

That's the "creepy ideology that seeps into the movie ['The Invasion'] and informs its denouement," according to Manohla Dargis. I wonder exactly what got to her there. I'm guessing the movie felt right wing to her and that wouldn't do. But a good remake of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" should have some political theme. The original did. And it was pretty right wing.

MORE: In the comments, Michael points to this WaPo review by Stephen Hunter and says it explains what bothered Dargis. It's a bit of a spoiler, but here it is:

What I like about the film, however, is that as an intellectual tiff, it argues fairly. That is, it doesn't give us an idealized version of "freedom," as off a Norman Rockwell magazine cover in the '40s. No, no, it says: Freedom will be squalid, violent and dangerous. The key moment in the film comes when Carol faces freedom's ultimate challenge, which is defending it. She faces six men who want to take her down and "cure" her. They have totalitarian will and little regard for their own lives. She has a gun. But does she have the will to use it? Very interesting question, not only within the movie but within the world. The movie, at least, has an answer.

Another excellent moment: After making her decision, there's a wonderful scene that finds her in the kitchen as she has a crisis of the spirit: Did she make the right choice? Why was she so sure? Maybe her primal instincts were wrong?

Her ambiguity is the best coda to a movie that really asks the hardest question of all.

This makes me think about the book "The Sociopath Next Door," which I've been reading. The sociopath, the author (Martha Stout) tells us, has no conscience and is able to manipulate and harm normal people precisely because they do continually question what they are doing, whether they are wrong, whether they've lost their mind, etc. To wonder if you made the wrong decision then, is to give proof of your humanity. Stout talks about Barbara Graham -- the woman executed for murder portrayed in the movie "I Want to Live" -- whom she characterizes as a sociopath. Graham's last words were "Good people are always so sure they're right," which Stout says is exactly not true. Good people are the ones who are not sure -- as Graham (Stout thinks) knew when she chose them for the purpose of inflicting torment.

"The Qaeda training camp form had six of Mr. Padilla’s fingerprints."

That's a fact I learn reading paragraph 20, on page 2 of the NYT article about Jose Padilla. Here's paragraph 3:

The government’s chief evidence was a faded application form that prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

Faded. Just an old, faded piece of paper. Injustice -- the idea is planted in the reader's head. And yet what is the evidentiary significance the fadedness of the paper? Nothing, without more. For example, if the prosecution had relied on the fadedness to explain a lack of fingerprints, it would affect the weight we'd give to the paper. But in fact, there were 6 fingerprints!

In paragraph 4, we're told that the jurors, leaving the courthouse, would not speak to the press, but one woman, contacted by phone, said -- in the words of the NYT -- "that she had all but made up her mind before deliberations began." The readers' suspicions of injustice are stoked. Yet really, the juror has admitted nothing wrong here. Why the paraphrase? What did she say?

Do people even click to see what's on page 2?

James Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University, said the fact that the Qaeda training camp form had six of Mr. Padilla’s fingerprints was “overwhelmingly powerful” and had very likely swayed the jurors.

Swayed? How about convinced? Do the citizens who served on the jury in a 3-month trial deserve the dispargement implicit in the word "swayed"? (Dictionary definition of sway: "To divert; deflect... To exert influence on or control over.") And, again, why the paraphrase? I take it Professor Cohen did not say "swayed."

I was also struck by this: "After being held in isolation in a military brig in South Carolina for three and a half years, Mr. Padilla (pronounced puh-DEE-yuh) was transferred to civilian custody here last year...." Three questions: 1. Why after all these years are we still being told how to pronounce this man's name? 2. Didn't the defense lawyers inform us that his name was actually pronounced puh-DILL-uh? 3. Are we now being informed it's puh-DEE-yuh because the lawyers decided puh-DEE-yuh will do a better job of exerting influence or control over us?

The Althouse blog arrives in Brooklyn.

The exact point when I realize I'm going to witness many sunsets:



But I get involved in some IM-ing and forget to watch the dipping into the water part. That classic sunset stuff.

And then there's this:



A little silver slipper of a moon.



Just a line I remember from a play I was in long ago.

Laura, come here and make a wish on the moon!

New York changes -- first in a series.

Take less crap. Many comments deleted today. New policy: If I think what you wrote is crap, I'm deleting.