February 2012
1 post
January 2012
2 posts
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...
Can You Say ... "Hero"? →
An amazing article on one of the finest educators I know.
December 2011
3 posts
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...
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...
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.
September 2011
2 posts
July 2011
3 posts
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...
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...
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...
June 2011
5 posts
WatchAstonishing
“Another reason the show may feel different than a lot of television: our model...”
– David Simon - Interview with Believermag.com
“A man delivers a single brutal “Good-by,” and that is the end of it....”
– Mark Twain, A Telephonic Conversation
“Last night I dreamed that the site was made out of roast pork and corn juice. I...”
– Clients From Hell
May 2011
2 posts
Getting Away
Several new science papers suggest that getting away – and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going – is an essential habit of effective thinking.” Certainly, we’ve all experienced the feeling that work concerns are just less important the farther away we get from the office. Now there’s proof to back up the classic “out of sight, out of mind” expression.
Lehrer goes on, “The reason such...
February 2011
1 post
December 2010
4 posts
“It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our...”
– Robert Fulghum
“And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid...”
– Kurt Vonnegut
Assange on the "why" of leaking secrets
“You may want to read The Road to Hanoi or Conspiracy as Governance ; an obscure motivational document, almost useless in light of its decontextualization and perhaps even then. But if you read this latter document while thinking about how different structures of power are differentially affected by leaks (the defection of the inner to the outer) its motivations may become clearer.
...
Interview: Michel Houellebecq →
Some views expressed by his main character [..] led to charges of misogyny and racism, which Houellebecq has yet to live down, to his evident dismay. “How do you have the nerve to write some of the things you do?” I asked him. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend that I’m already dead.”
October 2010
3 posts
Gansta Lorem Ipsum →
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September 2010
5 posts
August 2010
6 posts
“But the main problem with cultural differences is that you don’t really...”
– Daniel Duclos, on his experiences in Holland. I can confirm that it’s true both ways.
(via Clogs and Tulips)
Fortune Teller Is Right →
A man was jailed by a Kemerovo region court on Thursday for assaulting a Gypsy fortune teller who predicted that he would be jailed, the Investigative Committee said.
The rest is kind of sad, but this part is kind of funny.
What It's Really Like To Be A Copy Editor →
Not that pop culture didn’t try again and again to subvert me. My head still hurts a little when I think back to an article I edited about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The writer was trying to describe the combination of physical appearance and actual age of Brad Pitt’s character at various points in the movie. It took possibly as long as the movie itself to determine that the just-born...
“No one has to be afraid of the Best Party, because it is the best party. If it...”
– Jon Gnarr, comedian, founder of “The Best Party”, and now mayor of Reykjavik
How to Lose Time and Money →
And yet I’ve definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day—days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I’d feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I’d feel like I was descending into...
July 2010
6 posts
“The more I believe in something, and the more I take something other than me...”
– David Foster Wallace
World War II was full of plot-holes
I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”.
Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic...
June 2010
16 posts
Best sentence of the year contender
“A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.”
“The England team visited an orphanage in Cape Town today. “It’s...”
“Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting...”
– Bertrand Russell