December 2010
1 post
“It all gives me this vision of Thiessen dreaming about single-handedly stopping...”
– Pundit calls for development of magical anti-Wikileaks computer virus - Boing Boing
September 2010
1 post
““One day I got so upset, I took a metal lunch box … walked right...”
– NY Post via NY Mag.
July 2010
1 post
“[I]t’s something out of a Borges novel, a security which gets traded at $37.50...”
– Felix Salmon conjures up the world’s worst Borges novel.
April 2010
1 post
Artisanal Pencil Sharpening →
David Rees has a smash hit idea on his hands here.
March 2010
3 posts
Should We Clone Neanderthals? →
To ask the question is to answer it.
February 2010
5 posts
Twitter and the Big Blog Dream
As one might expect, I agree vehemently with George Packer’s recent screeds about new media here and here; especially, from the latter post, this bit:
[T]he response to my post tells me that techno-worship is a triumphalist and intolerant cult that doesn’t like to be asked questions. If a Luddite is someone who fears and hates all technological change, a Biltonite is someone who celebrates...
Harper's and the paywall
In general, I’m not inclined to blog about the recent goings-on at Harper’s, where our editor, Roger Hodge, was recently fired. But I do want to comment on Felix Salmon’s post opining that our magazine has been “doomed by its paywall.”
When it comes to the finances of highbrow magazines, it’s simply impossible to say that the publications with paywalls have...
December 2009
2 posts
Sports news on a Friday?
Like a savvy politician, Tiger Woods picked Friday afternoon to announce that he’d be taking a hiatus from golf. I wonder, though: is that really a good idea when you’re a professional athlete? I mean, sports fans spend all weekend watching nothing but sports news. It’s all they’ll talk about. Seems like Tiger might have been better off picking Sunday afternoon.
“What Foer’s and Chabon’s baroque ministrations avoid is the one immutable fact...”
– Fatherhood Gets Hip - The Daily Beast. Hear, Hear.
November 2009
5 posts
IHOP
This is a funny story in itself. Also funny: the NYT blog says that the Facebook status update said, “Where’s my pancakes?” — but was written in “indecipherable street slang”.
But in the image, you can see the actual status update in question and it reads: “ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK… WHERER MY IHOP” Which is not much indecipherable as...
Silent "Matrix"
“I once tried to come up with a definition of art. Always a risky enterprise. But...”
– Errol Morris.
The Box
Richard Kelly’s The Box isn’t out yet, so I don’t know how accurate this promotional copy is, but I do find its use of the phrase “impossible moral dilemma” to be pretty funny:
What if someone gave you a box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you a million dollars…but simultaneously take the life of someone you don’t know? Would you do it?...
Yangians and Savagites
Brooklyn scene-mate Wesley Yang has a trenchant essay in last week’s New York Magazine analyzing the corpus of their recurring “Sex Diaries” feature. Having read every single diary (no mean feat in itself), Yang makes the observation that they’re not really about hedonism but rather about a whole host of underlying anxieties: about choosing partners correctly, about not...
October 2009
3 posts
"If this is organized, we suck." →
The “flash” Tea Party didn’t do so well, I guess.
“When health-care reform is finished, there are going to be two books worth...”
– Ezra Klein. Man do I not want to read either of those books.
Flash Mob Burglary?! →
Ooh wee.
September 2009
4 posts
A national spam economy
as imagined by the Onion News Network:
"A problem with the industry"
Via Romenesko, the NYTPicker reports on Times tech reporter David Pogue responding to his critics, who think it’s a conflict of interest for Pogue to write books about tech companies while he’s also reviewing their products. While Romenesko and NYTPicker spotlight Pogue’s rather disingenuous assertion that he is “not a reporter,” the part of his remarks that really...
“[W]hat is being celebrated here is the ideology of no ideology—the ascendancy of...”
– Washington Diarist: Against The Plane | The New Republic
Every technology will flourish!
As a lover of falsely precise charts about not actually quantifiable phenomena, I’m obviously a sucker for the Gartner Hype Cycle, the latest report on which was just released:
I do find it hilarious, though, that Gartner refuses (for obvious commerical reasons) to predict the disappearance of any of the technologies on the chart. Look at the legend: they even create a category of...
August 2009
4 posts
"Seven Truths about Viral Culture"
A while back I did a Q&A over tea with AdAge’s Simon Dumenco, but only yesterday did he post it to the magazine’s website. No doubt because of his very artful arrangement (a numbered list of “truths about viral culture”), it’s currently the #1 most-read piece on AdAge.com! What, slow week in the ad biz? Hasn’t someone made a blockbuster new spot with a...
“Just over a month from now, Justice Sonia Sotomayor will take on one of the most...”
– (NYT) Really? One of the most demanding in the land?
Most awesome .gov domain name EVER
http://couldihavelupus.gov
Is some other federal agency squatting on all the good lupus URLs?
Thoughts on that "Modern Love"
I’ve been puzzling over the #1-most-emailed Modern Love column on managing a husband who wants to move out. I guess if I’ve been puzzling over a Modern Love column this long, it can’t be all bad. Some disconnected thoughts:
(1) This approach probably works in a shocking number of situations, because this central insight —
I was not at the root of my husband’s problem. He...
July 2009
7 posts
Bright Lights, Big Internet
I have an op-ed in Thursday’s Times on how the Internet is (and isn’t) like New York. An excerpt:
Is New York still worth the trip? Recessions tend to be hard on youthful dreams, but this downturn has proved especially dispiriting. Those in the print media have come to see their present fiscal woes as not merely cyclical but structural, and so their slashed workforce and diminished...
Curb Day - October 24th →
This is a great idea: a pre-set day when everyone leaves their junk out in front of their house for others to take as they like. It’s a nationwide freecycle event. In New York, of course, every day is Curb Day, but other places really need this.
Thy Neighbor's Wife
I contributed a short appreciation of Gay Talese’s book Thy Neighbor’s Wife to the great literary blog The Second Pass. Here’s the opening:
Of all the mass utopian notions of the twentieth century, the Sexual Revolution was both the most spectacularly successful and, in the end, the most thwarted. Whereas most political or spiritual or cultural movements, from Communism to...
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
I was consumed with book tour during the dust-up a few weeks ago over Caleb Crain’s NYT review of Alain de Botton’s new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. (After Crain posted a link to the review at his blog here, Botton commented somewhat hysterically in the thread here, and the inevitable bloggy eruption ensued.) I made a note to go back and read the review, perhaps because as a...
End of the book tour
is today! Went through Seattle, Mountain View, Santa Cruz, New York, Washington, and today Philadelphia. Here’s the real video (David Rees’s Rickrolling notwithstanding) from the event in Santa Cruz, which actually was one of the most enjoyable I did. (I don’t think I made any sour faces.)
If, seventy minutes later, you’re still hungering to hear me talk more about...
Live-Blogging the Jackson Memorial Live-Blogs →
Heartening to see that it’s the Wall Street Journal, of all places, that had the foresight to come up with a concept this awesomely ridiculous. Via TPM.
June 2009
4 posts
Dear LAT op-ed-itor
I read this Father’s Day op-ed and I have a couple of questions. They relate to the following passage:
[T]his Father’s Day, like every Father’s Day, I’ll relive the last time I saw him. My mother was in the hospital recovering from surgery. And Dad was on the kitchen floor having sex with another woman. I found them. He went for his heart. I thought he was faking. By the...
Santa Cruz this evening
Sorry for the lack of posting — am out on the West Coast on book tour. When I get back, I’ll post some of what’s available online of my various appearances etc. I bet you can’t wait!
I did want to say that, if anyone out there is planning to come see me in Santa Cruz tonight, the event starts at 6pm, not 7pm.
(Which raises the question: Who goes to a book event at 6pm? I...
Making It Up From Scratch
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently asked whether there is a college bubble about to burst:
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average...
May 2009
42 posts
My Personal Aging Crisis
Elizabeth Wurtzel in Elle, plying another terrible genre that is essentially the personal-life equivalent of this one:
I don’t know what it is—I don’t have wrinkles or age spots or any of the telltale signs that the years have gone by. Thank God for La Mer and Retin-A and Pilates—and, yes, hot sex, which is good fun and may be no more than a Maginot Line against the inevitable, but that’s not...
“When an angry gorilla cries
Who’s gonna be there to dry his eyes?
And...”
– Auto-Tune the News #4. Back and in extremely fine form.
Against Self-Organization →
A great little essay about how “we need to question our reflexive belief — or unwarranted expectation, if you prefer — that emergent or self-organizing phenomena are somehow always (or, at least, generally) for the best.”
“I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.”
– “Proud Non - Reader” Kanye West Turns Author - NYTimes.com
Last Night I Dreamt I Was Using Twitter →
David Rees is “a yoga guy” now.
That Goldstein post on Sotomayor
linked below (original link here) —
for all that post’s merits, I think he’s dead wrong on this:
I discuss below the four most probable lines of attack that committed ideologues are likely to advance, but to my mind basic political considerations make it very unlikely that mainstream Republican politicians will vocally join the criticism.
No way. I mean, this might be true...
SCOTUSblog on Sotomayor →
A great, long post on the various political and judicial angles. Incredibly, this was posted this morning at 7:34am?! I know she was the frontrunner, but still. Seems like dude would have been pretty sad if the decision had gone another way.
“It’s the year of the wolf, I guess.”
– It’s Made of 100% Cotton; Its Sales Are 99% Ironic - washingtonpost.com
Mary Kay Letourneau Hosts 'Hot for Teacher' Night... →
Oh wow.