Football Pick

The irony is Philip was delighted to see his beloved-then-scorn profession finally make it to the magazine, then he gleefully witnessed it beaten to a pulp. It’s a matter of fact (story-wise) but Philip, you make a gleeful note with a hint of self-pity to it. It’s a lost cause?

It doesn’t sound like the story about the programmer
has much to do with programming.

20 years ago, everyone who played recorder had
to read a story John Updike published in the
New Yorker about a group of recorder players.

He actually did do all the recorder group local color
right, but it was otherwise a typical New Yorker story
about marital infidelity and pointless lives.

The story was pathetic. The three personalities involved lived aimless lives and the author’s description of loss is a poor attempt at extending his imagination. The author could not have not known ‘loss’, for loss is a pain that can’t be justified in any which way except to see yourself as a wretched soul being emptied.

Philip, I thought you were going to reference the FORTRAN, too; which is almost more freakish in something like NewYorker. But the story struck a resonance in me as well.

The story is here: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/articles/050509fi_fiction

I thought it was a lot more significant that the Kolbert article contained a paragraph of Fortran code…certainly the first time I’ve ever seen that in the New Yorker! Maybe they’ll make it a regular feature (”Algorithmic Notes From All Over”).