May 2009
4 posts
"Enormous Shark’s Secret Hideout Finally... →
I initially thought this headline referred to an enormous individual shark and his hideout, which would have been a whole lot better.
Foiled again...
Around lunchtime I was walking with some people in Central Square. We must have looked pretty nerdy. Near us, a comically large group of teenagers had fit inside a parked convertible and were dancing and shouting to very loud rap music.
From across the street, I shook my fist at them, old-man style. They thought I was giving them a fist pump, and reciprocated as they pointed and cheered at me.
April 2009
13 posts
oh god recession makes people do awful things →
Aww... (also, Liechtenstein 2011, anyone?) →
(“All eligible states are currently members with the exception of Vatican City, which does not participate in international athletic competitions.”)
His second post, 20 minutes later, was a little... →
Do other cities have this?
Nothing will happen immediately, but Flint[, Michigan] has begun updating its master plan, a complicated task last done in 1965. [NYT]
Full article also interesting.
For Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, “a combination of ignorance and arrogance” under the Bush administration squandered countless diplomatic opportunities with Iran and so allowed it to forge ahead with its nuclear program.
Referring twice to Dick Cheney as “Darth Vader,” ElBaradei told me in an interview that “U.S. policy consisted of two mantras — Iran...
Woody Harrelson claims he mistook photographer... →
Shouldn't we have an official surrender ceremony? ... →
Self-fulfilling, in a way...
leoncrawl:
OK smartypants, what happened to “that’s not the kind of linguistics I do”?
Layman: Doctor, in your practice, you study the teeth, right?
Doctor: No, I’m not that kind of doctor. I study the liver.
[next day]
Doctor: Man, that guy over there has really bad teeth, huh?
Layman: Well, well… Who’s “not that kind of doctor” now?
Aww
Last year, in the thick of the Pennsylvania primary a group of traveling Obama campaign staff couldn’t get home for seder. Instead, like the Jews in Exodus, they had to prepare a seder in haste. One junior staffer found space for the impromptu meal in the basement of a Harrisburg Sheraton. He gathered the traditional seder foods from the hotel kitchen, and from a cousin who was in college...
Self-fulfilling, in a way...
A year ago, Sony commissioned a study to determine how a change in government or the economy could affect television habits. Its conclusion was that this pendulum would swing away from dramas. Six of the shows on Sony’s slate [for the new season] are traditional sitcoms [-]
Also, I guess the LA Times fired its copyeditors, because, man, this sentence:
The multi-cam sitcom, such as...
there was a time when people called things...
keyholez:
51 years ago:
In 1948, Sheraton was the first to use the telex system for a reservations network. In 1958, it introduced Reservatron, the industry’s earliest automated electronic reservation system, which made Sheraton the first hotel chain to centralize and computerize reservations.
I always get a kick out of this entrance across the street from my department. I am told it is...
Unsettling symbiosis, Heartland edition
This weekend I was at Ohio State for a conference. Early Saturday morning, I’m walking to the campus along a nice tree-lined street: block after block of fraternity mansions. Most of the lawns are completely covered with beer cans and bottles from the previous night’s parties. Up and down the entire street, there are homeless people with shopping carts, reaping the morning’s...
Gang of villagers chase away Google car →
March 2009
15 posts
"Hundreds of French workers take bosses hostage" →
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
NEW: A top Caterpillar executive called the hostage-taking “unhelpful”
pretty good for a failed state
After the United States shut the border to Mexican trucks, in violation of a promise it made under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico placed tariffs on 89 American products, from grapes to dishwashers, in some cases appearing to select items from the districts of well-connected members of Congress to increase the action’s impact. [-]
WatchReserve yours today!
Also:
Earnest Small Child: It would be weird to see it on the streets. You’re going to the airport, and it’s next to you, and then it just takes off.
Adult Interviewer: She’s right. It would take some getting used to. But the future may be here sooner than you think.
4/28/2008
fiatluxemburg:
hartman:
fiatluxemburg:
elsam:
[discussion of austria and austrians]
Another main thing about Austria is Freud…
ahem…
What’s his relationship with incest?
no no, just sayin’… as long as we’re breaking out the balance sheet for that country, there are at least some names in the other column.
4/28/2008
fiatluxemburg:
elsam:
[discussion of austria and austrians]
Another main thing about Austria is Freud…
ahem…
“information is not only free, but also comes at a breakneck pace, often...”
– [-]
a pretty good summary of what is wrong.
um
Headline:
Scientists discover the brain’s ‘God spot’
Body text:
‘There is nothing unique about religious belief in these brain structures,’ Professor Grafman said.
‘Religion doesn’t have a ‘God spot’ as such, instead it’s embedded in a whole range of other belief systems in the brain that we use every day.’
[…]
Dr...
bygone times
She was a recognizable figure in academia, usually wearing a distinctive cape and carrying a tall, forked walking stick.
wikipedia on Margaret Mead
“I always found it interesting that people would... →
“It’s basically like years of therapy in two or... →
February 2009
14 posts
“Every person you pass has read Michael Pollan, every person has thought about...”
– [-]
if any brooklynite reading this is in a “raw milk club”, let me know so i can unfollow you
There’s a bit of a sequencing issue here…
octomom is just a normal word now?
Joy Behar: Let me ask you something. What is your reaction to this octomom? Nadya Suleman, the story. What do you think about that? [Crazed Octodecamom] Michelle Duggar: […] heart, […] judge […] judge […] heart, […] God […] heart […] God […]. Behar: Right, at least you guys enjoyed having the babies, you went through the sex then the giving birth....
A disturbing prospect
It will be interesting to see, now that the apocalypse has arrived, how various modes of American status-striving will be rejiggered […] [P]erhaps these times of hardship will see a return of the true bohemian, as in the days when the Left Bank was actually squalid. [-]
Even if classic, squalid Bohemia did manage to stage a return, how many denizens could it reasonably expect? ...
terrible
msmandrake:
(I’m missing Top Chef right now! :( ).
[-]
i refuse to even find it online, but: the preview for two lovers? dyuhuhuhuh i saw it again last night — basically a generic romantic drama trailer that someone felt would become ‘highbrow’ with the addition of an opera score played over its entirety. it feels like one of those old youtubes where they make the shining into a family comedy trailer by changing the background...
crime x → "conspiracy to commit x"
is this recursive? if so, i’ve probably committed a lot of crimes over the years. (2 offenses in recent months come readily to mind — conversations/plans to “actually consider this” that never quite got off the ground…)
MR. RICKS: […] Ambassador Crocker, a very thoughtful diplomat, says that the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened.
MR. GREGORY: That is an amazing statement. And a lot of people have to be listening to that, thinking, “Well, what’s the other shoe to drop, then?”
MR. RICKS: There’s a whole lot of shoes out there. A whole lot of...
“He’s had feuds with all the right people.”
– Overheard today. Two members of the philosophy section of my department, discussing a colleague’s prospects of getting tenure at another institution.
By the age of 50, everyone has the face they...
Apparently this is a saying, one I never heard until today. Google says Orwell said it. I’m not sure what it means exactly, but I am scared.
January 2009
24 posts
keyholez:
[tumbling an important life event]
this is like how a girl in my department recently announced her pregnancy simply by making the ultrasound image her facebook photo for the day. aww, and how everyone’s congratulating by “liking” the ring picture! young adulthood these days…
“Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, refers to him in briefings as...”
– [-]
something i've always liked
Plain as an old-fashioned synonym for ugly (“She’s terribly plain!”). I don’t even get the sense that it was being used euphemistically, either — which reinforces a weird idea I have of an Olden Times where everything was more or less pleasant, or at least inert. So plain was a genuine insult in those days because the Austen-era attractiveness scale didn’t go...
sunplusnightplusjess:
‘The Simpsons’ does not, and never has, endorsed any religion, philosophy or system of beliefs any more profound than Butterfinger bars.”
Luckily for Cartwright, Scientology falls outside this category by a large margin…