June 2011
41 posts
“Letting stores track our purchases may not appear to be permitting an intensely...”
– Pulling plug on privacy - WWW.THEDAILY.COM
via Reihan
And to clarify, the scary thing here is not that the stores can snoop on us, because we all know they’re profiling us. It’s that by allowing a third party to access our personal information, we waive the expectations of privacy...
Isaac Smith: Is Shale Gas the New Pets.com? →
isaacsmith:
The NYT presents the big energy news of the week: [Shale gas] may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells. In the…
Ike’s right. Read the Michael Levi article. I’m glad I got out of the...
carpentrix:
We installed a screen door leading out to a back porch for a 50-something woman. We adjusted it so it shut with a tap, quiet as it hit the doorframe.
“No, no,” said the woman. “I want it to slam. It reminds me of summer.”
To her tailor: “no, don’t take the hem in. It’s important that my dress wave as I dance like a vision across the porch.”
“The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re...”
– 160 Million and Counting - NYTimes.com (via pegobry)
I usually consider it poor form to re-post a good closing line, but I’m making an exception here.
Like I’ve said before, I’m frustrated by people whose outrage at the millions of “missing girls” is based only on...
“I was downhearted the next morning to find that Mimi’s injury hadn’t dampened...”
– A Rough Guide to Disney World - NYTimes.com
This is hilarious and so familiar that I’m surprised I don’t already know this writer via twitter or something. But then again, I will never Disney, and maybe there’s an invisible wall of animosity between people like me and the weaker...
WatchBon Iver: Holocene on Fallon
I’m unable to maintain any semblance of a contrarian stance on this album. A genuinely great performance.
“The United States is known for the richness and diversity of its voluntary...”
– Non-Washington Solutions - By Reihan Salam - The Agenda - National Review Online
When I read Reihan and agree with him (which is quite often), I mentally remove all of his trademark hedging language. See how well it works?
“Our office hours are Monday through Friday 9-6. We do not hand out our cell...”
– Erika Hall of Mule Design, quoted in this Mother Jones article about America’s “speedup,” or “an employer’s demand for accelerated output without increased pay” (via austinkleon)
I’m reserving judgement on the “Great Speedup” article that everyone’s linking to because I...
2 tags
in a world characterized by change and upheaval,...
popsins:
Reading Klosterman is like watching someone play video games until it’s your turn to play video games.
Reblogged for MR’s simile.
“So [Raymond] Davis’s jailers emptied a section of the prison and put him in it,...”
– Men’s Journal » Black Ops and Blood Money » Print
Whatever I might think of the US’s various imperial bumbling and destruction, I’m completely failing to be outraged by either the mission or the behavior of Raymond Davis.
“And I just don’t know how to write a novel in which the characters can get in...”
– Ann Patchett
She could be a script doctor for horror movies.
“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would...”
– George F. Kennan - Around the Cragged Hill
For more of Kennan’s thoughts on American dissolution and secession, see Thomas Naylor’s site.
“As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on...”
– Woz.
“Why cycling and not, running or shot put or speed skating?
Cycling’s cool,...”
– Cole Maness, via Jon Hicks.
“While working as a vice president of technology at Elder Research, an...”
– These are the guys I buy my groceries from. They are great, and if you’re lucky, they will thrive and conquer your town, too.
DFW and the Desert Fathers →
portraitoftheartistasayoungman:
My review of the Pale King
So far, nobody has written a piece about DFW that, to me, adequately addresses the problem raised by all these prescriptive visions of happiness coming from someone who lived and died under crushing despair. His Kenyon address, for instance, should properly be understood as something much darker than it is. It feels to me like the...