Some of these spans are truly awe-inspiring; some just seem downright dangerous. Sign me up for the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Ireland. Which one seems the most fun?

This list is comprehensive. What it lacks in lack of authorial diversity (several writers make the list multiple times; but if they wrote good articles, what can you say?) it makes up for in its breadth of time. Each decade from the 1960s to the present is well covered, but the list stretches as far as 1816.

David Foster Wallace has several articles in the Top 100

Included are many articles from noted editorialists, such as Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, John Updike, Joan Didion, John Krakauer, and David Foster Wallace, as well as a plethora of other interesting articles.

Are there any absent articles you think merit a spot?

An article in Esquire magazine in 1971 extensively detailed the subculture and its goings-on at the time. It’s a fascinating and somewhat disturbing read. The nature of “phreaking” has morphed greatly since the 70s, thanks to the digitilization and computerization of the telecommunications systems, but this article is an excellent primer to the subject. While the technical aspects of the process are intriguing, the true insight of the article is into the members of the subculture. They are eccentric, intelligent, skilled, if slightly deranged. They speak about the “system” is if it’s a colony they hope to one day inhabit, with which they want to meld. Today, the “phreaking” subculture has largely linked with computer hacking, but the spirit of the movement is still alive and well.

An example of a “Blue Box” used to access phone systems in the 1970s

This world is one I had never previously imagined, but it certainly is not a mere afterthought to geekdom. Some widely known tech figures were former “phreaks,” including Steve Wozniak. The article is definitely worth the time to read.

The Economist has an article detailing a British betting firm’s odds on various scientific potenially-soon-to-be-discovered phenomena. The big mover right now is the superstar of the physics world: the Higgs Boson. Great stuff.

According to Wikipedia, one possible way the Higgs boson might be produced at the Large Hadron Collider.

Now if I can just figure out how to get in on this action. What odds will you give me on gravitational waves?

Thanks to Kenley Maddux for the link

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were predictably action vehicles, but they injected thematic intelligence to the maximum. Inception falls closer to Nolan’s other films, where the intricate plotlines are front and center. All the reviews you’ve heard are true: Inception demands you pay attention. It won’t take an IQ of 150 to understand the film, but it’s not simply fireworks in the sky. And that’s a good thing. The thinking man’s Hollywood movie is an increasing rarity.
Since the plotline is such an integral part of a viewer’s enjoyment of the film, I won’t delve into analysis or recap. The themes of dreams versus reality, memory, regret, catharsis, and reconciliation are abundant (a recurrence for Nolan) and excellent.

Fret not, action junkie, Inception is not all thought experiment. Nolan adds plenty of suspense and adrenaline to the film, including the first “zero gravity” fight scene. In some ways, the film is a traditional heist flick. Further, the cinematography is brilliant, as Nolan and team blend elaborate landscapes and special effects to splendid effect. On top of it all is a strong cast with strong performances, headlined, of course, by Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio.

Perhaps the greatest part of the whole thing, though, is the ending. Nolan unpins a grenade, tosses it toward a keg of explosives, and finalizes in a way that will leave you thinking. After the credits roll, the final aspect of the story causes the viewer to immediately reevaluate the finer points of the story they discerned in the process, a la Memento and The Prestige.

The only negativity I have encountered regarding the film are the need for a more resolute resolution and some noise from those who simply don’t like films to make you think. To me, the former criticism is understandable, but I like the ending just as presented. To the latter, I say, go see Toy Story 3.

Few big-budget films are worth the price of admission these days. Inception is definitely one of them.

mith rating: 9.5

Movies Cited:

0’00 – Roxanne, Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Gleaming the Cube, The Princess Bride, A Fish Called Wanda, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, Casino, Three Amigos, A Clockwork Orange

1’05 – Dolemite, Glengarry Glen Ross, Bad Santa, The Witches of Eastwick, The Big Lebowski, In Bruges, Full Metal Jacket, There Will Be Blood

2’05 – Toy Story, Casablanca, Encino Man, The Women, Predator, Army of Darkness, They Live, Uncle Buck, Big Trouble in Little China, New Jack City, Billy Madison

3’00 – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Departed, Carlito’s Way, In the Loop, Glengarry Glen Ross, Stand By Me, Grosse Pointe Blank, Duck Soup, Caddyshack, Planes Trains & Automobiles

4’00 – South Park, Napoleon Dynamite, Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, As Good as It Gets, The 6th Day, Step Brothers, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Full Metal Jacket, City Slickers, Road House, True Grit, Shot Circuit

5’00 – Raging Bull, The Usual Suspects, Snatch, Caddyshack, The Last Boy Scout, Ghostbusters, The Sandlot, As Good as It Gets

6’00 – 48 Hrs, In Bruges, Silver Streak, Glengarry Glen Ross, A Fish Called Wanda, Goodfellas, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Mist, Trading Places

7’00 – The Warriors, Point Break, Gangs of New York, Reservoir Dogs, The Breakfast Club, The Cowboys, Full Metal Jacket, Dodgeball, Donnie Darko, Scarface, The Good the Bad and the Ugly

8’00 – Anchorman, Tropic Thunder, Sexy Beast, In the Loop, Get Shorty, Blazing Saddles, The Way of the Gun, Blade: Trinity, Clerks, The Boondock Saints, The Exorcist, What About Bob?, Weird Science

9’00 – Con Air, True Romance, In the Loop, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Lake Placid, The Front, Gone with the Wind

Before I continue, let me note that not everyone disliked the episode or the plot developments. In fact, I spoke to a good number of people who loved it for various reasons (some because answers were finally doled out, some because they enjoyed the reveals themselves). But those cries seem to be drowned by a vocal backlash created by those who vehemently disliked the episode. In my discussions about the episode with the dissenters, several plot points seem to cause the most issue. Synthesizing the larger picture, I think I hit upon a general reason for their dislike, which we can parse a bit.

Lost’s serial structure, in my mind, has always been about peeling away a level of an onion. Or drawing back a curtain to reveal a bit of landscape, which takes you to another curtain. Or opening one door at the end of the hallway to reveal another hallway in a new dimension, with another door at the end of it. What do I mean? Take the wide-angle view of how the show’s scope has evolved:

1. The first curtain opens the series. In Season 1 we are presented with the island and its strangeness. The group of survivors find it enchanting, dangerous, and mysterious, but all we really see is there effort to remain alive, to find rescue.

2. The second curtain reveals another population on the island. Suddenly the island is not just an enchanting world from which you cannot escape, but is instead a magical locale that some people already inhabit and do not want to leave. Also, the Dharma Initiative elements add another group who have seen the island as a place to go, not to leave.

3. The third portion of the telescoping structure begins in the Season 2 finale and propels into Season 3. We see researchers attempting to find the island and doing so thanks to the EMP. Instead of a completely secret island inhabited by some lucky folks, we are now dealing with a population in the world at large in search of the island, revealing the scope of the island as something even greater than previously imagined. This portion includes the Others/Ben vs. Widmore saga.

The browser that comes with the Android system is appropriately called “Browser” and that’s about all it will do. As a mini port to the web via smartphone, Browser is competent, but not exemplary. Navigation, especially stopping the loading of a page, is clunky. Link selection via trackball is difficult and non-intuitive. Using the touchscreen is a bit better, but still not perfect. Opera makes significant upgrades to these problems. Screen navigation is much easier, as Opera actually features a mouse-like pointer. The trackball can move fluidly across the screen, unlike the link-to-link navigation of the built-in browser. Further, an in-screen task bar along the bottom of Opera’s screen creates easy access to basic functions such as going back a screen, putting a stop to a loading screen, etc.

Further, some of the extra features of Opera are splendid. The multi-window feature is the best in a smartphone browser I have come across. You can open multiple windows and switch between the two with ease. The bookmarks and history sections to the browser are intuitive and user-friendly.

Settings in Opera contain a lot of the same you find in computer browsers. Opera can save your password, can change font sizes, can change image quality, and toggle between mobile view or regular view. For certain sites, mobile view is superior (gmail), while others function better in regular mode (facebook). The fact that one is not a clear choice is one of the only apparent drawbacks to the browser. Opera also contains various privacy settings.

Despite all those goodies, the main attraction to Opera when viewed against Browser is speed. Opera is noticably faster. The default browser is often tedious to work with due to its pace, but Opera loads pages with lightning-like swiftness (for smartphones, at least).

Opera is free and inherently superior to the built-in browser. There is absolutely no reason why an Android user should not have this application for web usage. Opera Mini 5 garners a massive recommendation from us.

For all intents and purposes, Animal Farm and 1984 are the same story. Orwell’s animals seem to be the stepping stone for his more polished, fleshed-out master stroke. Animal Farm is the lean morality play, stripped of language and subtlety. Both tales show the movement of supposed revolution toward supposed utopia. In Farm, we see the communist swath from start to finish, from noble idea to washed-out greed-fest. 1984 injects the human interest, the reaction to the story. Where 1984 muses on what it might be like to discover the authoritarian ruse and push against it, Animal Farm is the blunt punch in the face about how that authoritarian ruse comes to be. It is effective, but nothing more.

Orwell certainly held a creative touch for plotmaking and intricate detail. The momentum of the story from incident to incident is genius, but Orwell stops himself at that point. If you enjoy philosophical musings or wise ruminations, Animal Farm will leave you in a void. When viewed as a stepping stone toward 1984, however, the work’s existence is much more palatable.

When the final pages were turned, I found my experience with this book to be somewhere in the middle of my expectations. It was not the kid story I often conjured internally, nor was it on a level with the transcendence of 1984. In future, potential canons, seemingly Animal Farm will always take a back seat to its more muscular, sophisticated cousin, even if it came first.

mith rating: 7.6/10

Animal Farm was rated #31 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I read it as part of the Top Project.

At the core of Slaughterhouse-Five is the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Or so the narrator tells us. Viewed from a distance, Dresden becomes a passer-by, a fleeting addition. In fact, war itself is absent more than present. On a conceptual level, this fact fits. The narrator opens the book describing the aborted attempts at writing the great World War II novel. He struggles with memory; he struggles with what parts of his experience matter; he struggles with making the pieces interlock. The crux of his dilemma comes from describing the ultimately indescribable. He wants to portray the damage he witnessed and experienced, but short of raw numbers, dates, or facts, he really cannot describe what he means at all. Hence the only way he can write his book is to construct a plot for the character outside of the war. He weaves a character withered by war, a character who talks about war, yet the story is not about war. Dresden occupies strikingly little of the narrative. In fact, most of the damage done to Billy Pilgrim’s psyche happens in war before the narrative. When we meet him, he seems nearly broken. The point to take here is the omnipresence of war, despite its absence. The effects are there, but the war really is not. This skirting of the issue paradoxically allows Vonnegut to address the issue.

Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens. He travels through time. He lives in a mental institution. He survives a plane crash. Along the way Vonnegut introduces the themes that pepper the book: fate, free will, meaning, time, human logic. One easily imagines Vonnegut pondered these themes during World War II or because of World War II. In the book, though, he can only overtly discuss them through these non-war constructs. The notions are, of course, in action during the war sections, but they must be implied by the reader. In terms of Vonnegut work, the plot constructs seem scattered and infrequent. The first third of the novel I found less intriguing than I did reading the book the first time. As the page numbers elevated, however, I started to sense the pattern and the reason for this scattered, infrequent characteristics. Slaughterhouse-Five could not exist in the same way as other Vonnegut works. It has to be the scattered book; it would work no other way. In fact, by the end of the book, the fact that it is scattered and the normal Vonnegutisms are infrequent was no longer something that distracted me or made me like the book less. Sure, I yearned for the biting humor, but that scenario would be alien here.

From a schematic view, Vonnegut subtly married the fractured elements of Billy Pilgrim’s life across time with the fractured elements of the narrator’s attempt and memory of World War II. Interestingly, the muted language is highly appropriate for the ineffable experience Vonnegut wants to describe. As always, the sporadic, tangential bits of life-insight that Vonnegut inserts heighten the reading experience. S-5 is not my favorite Vonnegut book, but I certainly understand its place in the canon.

mith rating: 9.0/10

Slaughterhouse-Five was rated #18 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I read it as part of the Top Project.