A short piece on yours truly in Bloomberg Businessweek online, in which I learn that I'm a gnome.
I was only an auditor in certain courses, in which I learned that some prisoners were specializing in self-injury as a crude solution to their despair.
That was the setting in which I learned that when war is involved, even living in the moment comes with uncertainty.
I thought back to how pleasantly surprised I had once been by a tasting of reposado tequilas, in which I learned that a little bit of aging could enhance the singular, undiluted identities of the blanco tequilas that I favored.
I confess I knew nothing of Tony Birch, beyond what I read in the programme, from which I learned that he was born in inner city Melbourne into a large family of Aboriginal, West Indian and Irish descent.
A book you should read anywhere but on a plane: "The Skies Belong To Us," by Brendan I. Koerner, in which I learned that in 1972 a hundred and fifty-nine commercial flights where hijacked in the United States, by "frazzled veterans, chronic fabulists, compulsive gamblers, bankrupt businessmen, thwarted academics, career felons, and even lovesick teens".
Subtly Worded has an excellent introduction by its principal translator, Anne Marie Jackson, in which I learned that Teffi (1872-1952) was the pseudonym of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, and that in the years before the revolution she was a star whose fans included, somewhat terrifyingly, both Lenin and Nicholas II.
Four decades earlier, he wrote in a letter to friends, "There is a learned article about my verse in Poetry this month, from which I learn that I am 'an objectivist.' " The learned fellow was Louis Zukofsky, brilliant eminence of the Objectivists, "with whom I disagree as to both form and content of verse, but to whom I am obliged for placing some of my things here and there".
Those would probably be "The Brady Bunch," which taught me about the dangers of throwing a football in the backyard, and "The Partridge Family," from which I learned that musical ability isn't required to be a rock star.
The Dark Room has a timer, through which I learned that there is a generation of gamers who've never played in a public space, where screen time is limited.
