Republican activists in Iowa are decrying the Iowa Family Policy Center’s efforts to raise $100,000 to hire Sarah Palin for a speaking engagement, “recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.” The conflict speaks to the divide between those who want to submit to a leader and those who don’t. For [...]
Matthew Cordell writes: The WFP has announced a new twist in its successful program using mobile phones to alert Iraqi refugees in Syria about available food aid… [Quoting Reuters] “Iraqi refugees in Syria will this week start receive U.N. text messages they can redeem for fresh food in local shops. “… FP’s Joshua Keating notes the [...]
There was a time, before I always read MetaFilter and Andy Baio’s waxy.org/links, before I checked Jon Gruber’s Daring Fireball and Bruce Schneier’s blog daily, before I ran through every update on art sites ranging from Designboom to VVork, that I was often delighted by the posts in BoingBoing, one of the first successful instances [...]
The movie Caramel, set in Lebanon, can steal your heart as quickly and effortlessly as the best of Almodóvar’s movies. A little sentimental like Amélie but without the naivety. A very moving, very clear poem with depth, poise and humility.
This shark story from Australia (an estimated 20 ft long predator takes two big bites out of a 10 ft great white) is sad, to me. The prey was caught by a human trap: “The great white was savaged after it got snared on a drum line – a baited hook attached to a buoy [...]
A map of the most and least remote places on Earth. (via MeFi)
The marching band down the street had been teasing out the riff for about 10 minutes before they hit the recognizable phrase. They’re playing the Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like an Eagle (“Time keeps on slippin’”) at 7 am. It’s a spectacular wake-up alarm. Well played, Eagle Rock High School Senior Jazz Band.
And here I thought Google was already doing this for the U.S. government: In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using [...]
Peter Hessler‘s essay “Chinese Barbizon” in the The New Yorker is fantastic: gentle characterizations, arresting ideas, fascinating details. It dovetails the particular with the metaphysical; a great surprise. (PDF)
The AP quotes one of the pilots of the NWA flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles: “We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight.” Has anyone asked them if they were making out? Update: sadly, it was a Dilbert moment. (Or Tufte.)
A study of male testosterone levels during election night 2008 suggests male supporters of McCain-Palin were “amped up” on testosterone. As technology advances, we’ll have many more insights into the ways that biology reflects and, perhaps, impacts culture. But the temptation to “medicalize” our political differences must be rejected. If, someday, it turns out that [...]
Change I can believe in: New York City’s MTA Weighs Lower Fares During Off-Peak Hours. Discounted fares on weekends and late nights would certainly increase ridership and revenue, but it would also make dynamic pricing more normal to some of the most influential people on Earth – New Yorkers. Using dynamic pricing, utilities can charge more [...]
Yesterday morning I looked out our bedroom window and saw what looked like a pile of gray debris. “Concrete?” I wondered, “how did that get there?” And then I saw some motion just a few feet away from the pile. “Oh,” I realized, “that’s a hawk. Eating its breakfast.” It had begun its meal above [...]
Would love to know what basis the NYT and Brian Shelter have for making the following claim: “But shots are still being fired, which animates the idea that both sides see benefits in the feud.” “[A]nimates the idea.” That’s some fancy language. The rest of the article lays out the case for why Fox News [...]
Does reality TV leave viewers confused as to what is reality and what is fantasy? The BBC: Parents are being asked for up to £40,000 ($80,000) to fund the courses. But some in the industry claim they are a waste of money. The demand for music and drama courses has soared, following the popularity of [...]
Maybe I’m just in a sentimental mood but this art strikes me as both genuine and tender.
About 14 years ago, I wrote a friend back east the kind of letter only a 22 year-old can write. In it, I asked why it had to be that there were no national magazines of the stature of The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books based in – and named after – [...]
In the shadows of horrible crimes, a glimmer of hope, provided by cell phones: But even more than the shootings, the attacks on women — horrific anywhere, but viewed with particular revulsion in Muslim countries like this one — appear to have traumatized the citizenry and hardened the opposition’s determination to force out the leader [...]
On NPR’s Marketplace this morning, a media business expert chimed in on Conde Nast discontinuing the print edition of Gourmet magazine with: “They’ll still keep a zombie version around with a web site.” The web version is a zombie version. I guess that would make an iPhone version, paired up with instant printing services, a [...]
Why the U.S. is and is not at war in Latin America: What has happened in Rio applies, in varying degrees, throughout Latin America–most notably in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia. Two decades after the collapse of Communism, the region’s Marxist guerrillas have disappeared, only to be replaced by violent drug mafias. And what [...]
From a very funny letter to Earthlings by Paul Simms: A little bit about us: our males have two penises, while our females have only one. So, gender-wise, if you use simple math, we’re pretty much identical to you.
The 1982 drama Missing with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek is a great movie for Americans who want to take a few steps down an alternate memory road. The Cold War had both bad guys who were really bad and good guys who were almost as bad. Meet some of the latter.
Bootstraps and the real economy: Sam Chang’s Budget Hotel Empire in New York City in the NYT is a great, brisk read.
Admittedly not the best story to read while having trouble sleeping: Finance will be costlier and investment weak, so the stock of physical capital, on which prosperity depends, will erode. …Before the crisis the overpriced assets held by banks and households were accompanied by vast debts. After the crisis their assets were shattered but their [...]
The October 5th edition of The New Yorker is not happy. Movies: “As a piece of moviemaking craft, ‘A Serious Man,’ is fascinating; in every other way, it’s intolerable.” Theater: “You feel as though you were watching not the play you’ve read but a sketch for an idea about a play.” Opera: “[H]e has failed [...]
I seldom laugh out loud while reading The New Yorker but this closing sentence is sharp: Instead of working to make us ask ourselves ["Whom haven't we betrayed?"], Hoffman works to make us see how hard he works. He takes up as much space as a white man can, if you let him.
In a meandering discussion on MetaFilter I had occasion to note that, as a genre, science fiction is closely related to religious writing. If science fiction grants the reader access to an alternate reality, so does religious writing. Both are most powerful where fantasy (infinite) and reality (finite) overlap. Both are self-conscious: science fiction asks [...]
We made lamb souvlaki last night. I have sheep on in my mind. L: Untitled # 137 by Simen Johan, R: Gordon Ramsay by Jillian Edelstein.
Cabel Sasser tells the story of the Kashiwa Mystery Cafe. A wonderful if transient place.
Tonight, as I sat outside, a dying bee flew into a light above me. It buzzed against the hot bulb for a while before falling out and landing on the floor, still. Ater a few quiet seconds it flew up again, into the light, buzzing intensely in the sconce before falling out and onto the [...]