malcolm gladwell has a blog. does that mean weve reached a tipping point?
Comment of the Day -- on a thread about conservative battle wanking fatigue
Son, we live in a world that has blogs, and those blogs have to be guarded by men with computers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Waring? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Reynolds and you curse the Keyboarders. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Reynolds’ existence, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that blog. You need me on that blog. We use words like “fisk,” “indeed,” “heh” … We use these words as the backbone to a life spent at home defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the endlessly self-important invective that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a laptop and start to post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
Batiste
, WSJ page A1 (saturday edition)
, WSJ page A1 (saturday edition)
kos booksigning wednesday on the bowery.
lance mannion thinks lost in the city by edward p jones is the best work of american fiction written in the past quarter century. what say you, bibliophiles?
city of god premieres on ifc tonight at 845.
never heard of a furniture librarian before
bill, did you catch sonic youth on gillmore girls last night? thurston and kim playing with their daughter in stars hollow. is it possible for a kid to have cooler parents? lucky girl.
sometimes people get exactly what they deserve. right, michael kelly? this is what he had to say about a speech al gore gave in the time leading up to the war in iraq. the speech is excerpt in the link, and was dead on. if you recall, kelly was an eager embed who died in an accident in the desert.
Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was
contemptible.
the new drum beat from the right is that the left is angry. it started with hil and now everyones getting called on it. its too easy. better angry than mad.
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated. --r.cohenand so on.
The whole "angry left" myth is a copout, an escape-hatch for those who are confronted by fact and choose to respond by attacking the messenger rather than the message. It's a cowardly tactic that originated on the radical right (see Malkin and the "moonbats"); lately, we have seen its use on the rise in the traditional media. It is, indeed, a pathetic diversionary tactic. Instead of addressing the substance of the critique, those who use the easy-out "angry left" defense avoid addressing the true issue at hand.
the allergy alerts have been at "High - Very High" since mid april. anyone else getting hammered extra special this year? every one i talk to is. i hear its cause the decorative cherry, apple and pear trees are all male now. so instead of 50/50 m to f its almost all male pollen pumpers in urban settings.
Turn your bicycle into a moped with revopower
The good folks at RevoPower claim they’re re-inventing the wheel. And, let me tell you, I’m wanting to believe them. Here’s the deal. You take your current bicycle (be it a mountain bike, a cruiser or a commuter bike), you remove the front wheel, and replace it with RevoPower’s. A little wiring here and there, nothing too hard, and you’re set. Then, you go out biking, as usual. But, say you’re growing tired, or you hit a slope and you’re just lazy… well, press a button, and the integrated commercial grade, 23cc two-stroke engine will kick in. You get 1.1 HP or 0.8 KW power output with a maximum rpm 7500 to help you along the way. On a flat surface, the engine will even take you up to speeds of 20mph, with a merciful 200mpg.Nothing too amazing here, except click through and look at the picture. It's really slick how integrated it is with the wheel. Seems like it would be really easy to switch front wheels back and forth between this, and your traditional bike wheel.
Interactive map of NYC (made with google satellite maps) that allows you to see the flooding that would result from a sea level rise between 0 and 14 meters. The LES (and Manhattan in general as opposed to Brooklyn / Queens and the Jersey waterfront) is actually a little higher than I thought.
What's up with blogspot.com? Under attack or just straining under the load? Or maybe it's just me? I can occasionally load a page, but most of the time it times out.
I like the idea of a website that just does one thing, and does it well. This might be taking it too far though: islostarepeat.com.
"Our classical music critic reviews The Busby Berkeley Collection a set of six DVDs of films by choreographer Busby Berkeley from the 1930s."
good commentary citing man ray and duchamp influences.
good commentary citing man ray and duchamp influences.
I'm sure everyone has seen this, but just for my own memory, here's a transcript of the Hayden interview where he demonstrates his complete misunderstanding of the 4th amendment. But at least he sounds like a smug prick, so he's got that going for him.
This guy is scary.
This guy is scary.
Still, Mr. McElheny's fascination is more with stories than with science. A second sculpture in the Rosen show, for example, is part of a continuing series based on a conversation that supposedly took place in 1929 between the Modernist sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the utopian architect and visionary Buckminster Fuller. Their exchange is believed to have posited that the only way to create an object that wouldn't cast a shadow was to make it totally reflective and place it in a totally reflective environment.
So for two of the works, Mr. McElheny built a wall-mounted landscape model in which abstract reflective forms are arranged on a mirrored plane. "It's really a horrible proposal," he said. "You couldn't live in this world. You couldn't escape your own reflection."
Mr. McElheny, who was born in Boston, became involved with glass in 1984, as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. "I heard this story," he said, "that glass blowing came out of an oral tradition, and that this tradition was passed down from generation to generation. There was an aura of romance and secrecy about it. I wasn't interested in making glass so much as I was interested in this story."
In pursuit of what he felt was "exclusive knowledge, impossible to learn from a book," Mr. McElheny secured an apprenticeship with Ronald Wilkinson, then the head of the White Friars Factory in Britain. "It was a unique opportunity at a historical moment," he said, explaining that many of Europe's family-owned firms were soon to close.
