February 2012
“PageRank, however, has always been just one of the factors determining how...”
– Daniel Soar, London Review of Books
I learned of this review via Gmail. I read it — and posted this excerpt and link — via Chrome.
Hi, Google.
January 2012
“It is Alito’s quarrel with Scalia’s originalist approach that is most...”
– U.S. v. Jones: Supreme Court Justices Alito and Scalia brawl over technology and privacy. - Slate
Sam Alito is hilarious! Who knew?
You know it's a rough day when
… your dad calls you to tell you he saw you in your mailbag video and you can hear the concern in his voice immediately as he says: “Jeez, son, are you OK? You look like you haven’t slept in a week. Get some sleep. Can you take a nap during the day here and there, maybe? At least go have a steak. You need protein.”
To be fair to the pops, he ain’t wrong. Especially...
“Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything...”
– Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job - Boing Boing
“Decoder Magazine is foremost an attempt to interpret a world of culture and...”
– Decoder Magazine, Issue #1 Kickstarter
That sounds great and all, but wait … say what?
Residents of Worcester’s Grafton Hill neighborhood acknowledged Monday they would not necessarily mind a Panera Bread franchise coming in and wiping out Callahan’s, a charming, family-run bakery that has been a fixture of their community since 1964.
According to locals, the national restaurant chain would be just the thing to run the mom-and-pop establishment out of business,...
December 2011
“This has been a key theme of 2011: For reasons that defy any of the signals...”
– Ezra Klein
“Boys are given goats to herd and messages to deliver. They hunt and fish. Girls...”
– NYT — Now We Are Six: The Hormone Surge of Middle Childhood
Where does “riding a bike” and “watching ‘Howie’s World’” fit into all this?
“In courtship, the best gifts are “the most useless to women and the most...”
– The Behavioral Economist’s Guide to Buying Presents - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic (via felixsalmon)
“Romney and Gingrich share something important: they’re wonks. Gingrich is...”
– Wonkbook: Gingrich and Romney have the same problem
November 2011
“My son ain’t going to be miserable because he’s going to be the child of a rock...”
– Noel Gallagher Is on His Own
Almost forgot that one.
“This is rock ’n’ roll. Would Johnny Rotten have gotten a house on the eve of an...”
– Noel Gallagher Is on His Own
“If you were to hand out sufficient sodium pentothal on the lawn outside the Ohio...”
– It’s Time to Wake Up and Smell Election Day. Right Now. — Charles P. Pierce
College basketball has a big feel again →
Hey, semi-neglected Tumblr followers! I don’t use this page much for hoops stuff, because I do that everywhere else on the Internet, usually. But the college basketball season starts today! Neat, right? I’ve written many words about this; here are 2,000 or so of the most recent.
“Cornelius Vanderbilt was so angry when he learned that he had been betrayed by...”
– Vanderbilt University Register
October 2011
“Coldplay’s followup to 2008’s biggest-selling album is a curious...”
– Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto — The Guardian
“Our Internet intellectuals lack the intellectual ambition, and the basic...”
– The Internet Intellectual, by Evgeny Morozov
“We must always be very careful in trying to relate any country’s taste in...”
– Football Uber Alles. Uber Alles, Football — Frank Deford
4 tags
September 2011
2 tags
August 2011
1 tag
“Thomas’s approach to the Eighth Amendment underlines some of the problems with...”
– The Thomases vs. Obama’s Health-Care Plan
4 tags
This bit in the NYT Mag about David Foster Wallace and the modern style of writing he helped spawn hits remarkably close to home. I struggle to strip my writing of qualifying word, lulz jargon, parenthetical asides and ironic punctuation. Sometimes I can’t do it. Sometimes I just don’t want to. (Lots of my favorite web writers do this stuff all the time, and they’re very...
“Paying for something you value, even when you don’t need to, is a mark of a...”
– Felix Salmon
“That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those...”
– Russell Brand
4 tags
“Chaos erupted on JetBlue’s red-eye flight from Portland, Ore., to JFK...”
– Robert Vietze, drunk man, pees on 11-year-old girl on JetBlue flight
Lightweight.
“I’m also really into the emerging genre of mainstream dubstep bros who...”
– Carles on Skrillex, the Verve Pipe, and Spotify - Grantland
“Rosie is a golden retriever therapy dog who specializes in comforting people...”
– Dog Helps Rape Victim, 15, Testify
Most amazing paragraph ever? Most amazing paragraph ever.
“There was always a sense that Cantor had his finger on the pulse of the tea...”
– WaPo
The two reigning theories of our current economic moment are not opposed to one another. The economy is weak now, with too little demand and too little growth, and threatened by mounting deficits later. The answer, as any economist can tell you and as many told Congress, is simple: do more to support the recovery now and more to cut deficits later. In the short-term, we should expand the payroll...
