Latest on twitter:
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.
—Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Can You Say ... "Hero"?
An amazing article on one of the finest educators I know.
When Irish Eyes are Crying
Fascinating article on the boom - and following crisis - in Ireland Bloom and Canning argued that a major cause of the Irish boom was a dramatic increase in the ratio of working-age to non-working-age Irish brought about by a crash in the Irish birthrate. This had been driven mainly by Ireland’s decision, in 1979, to legalize birth control. That is, a nation’s fidelity to the Vatican’s edicts was inversely proportional to its ability to climb out of poverty: out of the slow death of the Catholic Church arose an economic miracle.
Adventures in Depression
But my sadness didn’t have a purpose. Listening to sad music and imagining that my life was a movie just made me feel kind of weird because I couldn’t really get behind the idea of a movie where the character is sad for no reason. Essentially, I was being robbed of my right to feel self pity, which is the only redeeming part of sadness. And for a little bit, that was a good enough reason to pity myself. Spot on, the whole thing
OWS INCEPTION
It’s straight out of a Don DeLillo novel: A few hours after television producers set up a replica of Occupy Wall Street for the filming of a new episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, the real Occupy Wall Street announced plans to occupy the fake one.
GOAT!
NYTimes versus Wired
Hmm, in light of the earlier Wired article on Google+, the NYTimes article, “The Auteur vs. the Committee”, strikes me as horribly inaccurate.
Compare this:
“More redesigns have been promised. But they will be produced, as before, within a very crowded and noisy editing booth. Google does not have a true auteur who unilaterally decides on the final cut.” (New York Times)
with this:
“Because of the pressure the stakes and the scale, Gundota insisted that Emerald Sea should be an exception to Google’s usual consensus-based management style. He successfully argued that he, with Horowitz’s help, would set the vision. Even the founders would step back. Even though In 2010 Sergey Brin had a desk in Building 2000 and Larry Page dropped in a couple of times a week, their role was advisory with Emerald Sea. “This is a top-down mandate where a clear vision is set out, and then the mode of moving forward is that you answer to Vic,” Rick Klau told me last year. “If Vic says ‘That looks good,’ then it looks good.” (Wired)
Better than English
Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine (Turkish) It means “As though you are from those we may not be able to easily make a maker of unsuccessful ones,” and is considered the longest word in the Turkish language.
Eddie Izzard sucks and has a silly but not haha-silly name
With all respect to those thinking otherwise, I find Eddie Izzard completely unfunny. His schtick is mainly being (in the past) a cross-dressing homosexual in ugly pijamas and make-up, and, contemporarily as well as in the past, using easy absurdism as his main form of comedy. Being absurd is not difficult. Being absurd AND funny is Monty Python.
Perhaps if I’d know more about him he’d garner more respect, but I honestly feel his personal situation shouldn’t be necessary for me to appreciate his work. As it is, I don’t find him funny, and I feel a need to inform every one of my facebook friends about this. Serves you right for ‘friending’ me!
His uncomfortable lack of hilariousness on QI, among his superiors, Stephen Fry and Bill Bailey, only confirm this opinion.
That is all. I should really start a LiveJournal blog for this completely unnecessary opinion. I Bet you wished you could put me in a Google+ ‘silly ranters’ circles now, don’t you?
