In light of the mildly anti-Semitic remark in the comments section here, and the CFLB’s less than honest approach to my comments system as a whole, I found this post by Joel Spolsky quite interesting:

You don’t have a right to post your thoughts at the bottom of someone else’s thoughts. That’s not freedom of expression, that’s an infringement on their freedom of expression. Get your own space, write compelling things, and if your ideas are smart, they’ll be linked to, and Google will notice, and you’ll move up in PageRank, and you’ll have influence and your ideas will have power.

When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.

Spolsky’s thoughts were inspired by a longer post on the subject by Dave Winer (who, by the way, does not think a blog must have comments). I’m already late for my date with Galileo at NYPL, but I hope to give these articles the time they deserve later.

A blog without comments?

(PS Thanks for the tip, Nick!)

This was the scene outside the New York Public Library yesterday when the “Midtown Volcano” erupted. Inside, no one had a clue what was going on.

I have a vague memory of hearing a loud bang and assuming it was just a thunderclap as we’ve had a number of thunderstorms lately. Despite the headlines of gridlock and mass panic, when I left the library at 7pm (admittedly by the side entrance on 42nd Street) it was as though nothing had happened. I only found out about it when I got home.

I spent most of today at New York Public Library researching a new project about Galileo Galilei. One of the reasons I went to NYPL was because it holds two copies of The Private Life of Galileo, by Mary Allan-Olney. The book was published in 1870 and is currently available on Amazon for the bargain price of $165. NYPL has two copies, in fairly good condition, for free.

I’m ashamed to say it but it’s the first time I have been inside NYPL since I arrived in New York almost four years ago. The research room, as you can see, is spectacular.

I had a very productive day, not least because the wireless internet doesn’t stretch to the third floor reading room. But when the time arrived to xerox pages to study at home I hit a snag. I had to pay for library staff to make copies because the book was so delicate. The cost, 40 cents a page, wasn’t too bad. But someone had just put in an order for over 1,000 pages and there was a two-week waiting list for the service.

One of the librarians said I might be able to get copies sooner if the book was on microfilm. But before I looked into that, she wondered whether I had looked on Google Books. And there it was: The Private Life of Galileo, all 3oo pages, neatly scanned, easily searchable, instantly printable and free of charge.

The Campaign for Little Britain has not been an entire waste of Richard Branson’s money. Inspired by a series of emails in which CFLB insists that there is a precedent for renaming blocks after small businesses, New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog has come up with a great idea:

If they get the north side of Greenwich Avenue between West 12th and West 13th Streets renamed “Little Britain,” we demand to have the south side of that same block — in a window above which we happen to be sitting as we’re writing this — renamed “Little Place Where Some Jewish Writers Live.” We suspect we can find evidence that they’ve had a history in the neighborhood, too. And perhaps El Al will pay for our PR.

Now this idea I like a lot. I’d happily sign a petition for the CFLPWSJWL. Perhaps we could rename vast swathes of Park Slope accordingly too?

Only in Rugby League:

Wynnum Manly’s Ben Czislowski had been feeling off-colour since a sickening head clash with Tweed Heads forward Matt Austin in April.

15 weeks later he discovered why, when his doctor found his opponent’s tooth lodged in his head.

Czislowski recounts to ABC News (Australia) that the injury was not unusual:

By the end of the game I couldn’t see out of my eye. I’ve had a lot of cuts, and bumps and bruises and that from playing rugby league, so it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, it was a heavy collision but nothing different to what I’ve had before.

How can you not notice a tooth embedded in your head for three months?

It was really hard just above my eye. I thought it was scar tissue, and I’d asked a few people what they thought. And they thought it was scar tissue.

Czislowski didn’t have a clue the tooth was in there until he went to the doctors after feeling “really lethargic and really flat” in his game for months:

The doctor had a look at it and he just automatically assumed that I’d need plastic surgery on to fix it, but he just said I’ll put a local in there and I’ll just get all the puss and stuff all around the eye. And so he did that, and he just said, Oh, there’s something hard in there, I think it’s calcification. And he got his tweezers out, and straight away he just said, you wouldn’t believe this. And he had a couple of swear words in there. And I said what, and he said mate there’s a tooth in there.