August 2008
29 posts
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Bankruptcy bill? What bankruptcy bill? →
Fred Clark on Joe Biden’s role in helping to create the housing meltdown — and economic downturn — that we all know and love.
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“Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. “Show me the...”
– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobediance
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Stripe Generator - ajax diagonal stripes... →
A cool online tool for making Web page backgrounds. (See also this one.)
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“Unlike most elite gymnasts who train approximately 40 hours a week and have...”
– From Shawn Johnson’s official bio. Yay, public schools. That girl deserved to win.
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Olympics Tracker →
I can’t believe I haven’t noticed this before, but the NYT has an amazing interactive Olympic infographic. This is top-notch journalism.
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io9 Seeks Two Fall Interns →
Oh man, this would be the coolest internship ever.
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Just Irresistible: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the... →
Tor.com’s Jo Walton writes on how much she loves Dodie Smith’s first novel.
I Capture the Castle is one of the best books about how people form relationships I’ve ever read, and it has one of the best first person voices in the history of the universe.
I read I Capture the Castle last fall on Ashley’s advice. It really is a delightful book — and one that everyone...
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The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the... →
I’m in love with this site. Text-heavy Web design seems to be my thing — and I’ll definitely need to make use of this guide later.
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Wal-Mart: you can't scan century-old photos of... →
This is really insane — someone goes to Walmart to scan and reprint an old family photo and is stopped by an employee who says that the picture can’t be reprinted because it’s copyrighted.
In disbelief, I point out that the photo is almost 100 years old and the people are all dead. Undeterred, the Wal-Mart employee informs me that “Copyright lasts forever. It’s...
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“Rain” by Bishop Allen
Peppy and fun, with...
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The Classic Rock Magazine Is Switching to a... →
Like going from LP albums to jewel cases, Rolling Stone’s new smaller format just won’t have as much room for personality as the old one did.
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16 films featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls →
Like the Magical Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness.
Via jaundicedeye.
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Sci Fi Saves Shakespeare, For Real This Time →
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet production stars Doctor Who’s David Tennant as the brooding prince and Star Trek: TNG’s Patrick Stewart (who’s had some pretty impressive Shakespeare roles over his career) as Claudius. Casting two high-profile science fiction stars means that audiences contain a lot more geeks than usual — the type of people more likely to stand...
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“They wind up in London’s crowded Waterloo station where they have to dodge...”
– From The Guardian’s review of The Borne Ultimatum, via here.
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“Where, you may be asking, is this right not to be exploited and abused...”
– Change the Rules — Slacktivist
(I had a philosophy professor in college tell me that footnotes will contain the most interesting parts of a piece of writing. He’s right.)
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If your fob is lost, you'll sob over cost →
Not only can you not get newfangled key fobs duplicated at any old hardware store, but they’ll set you back at least $200 if one gets lost or broken. (And am I supposed to take my keys in to the dealer when the clicker’s battery inevitably goes dead?)
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“The video and telecom-addled civilization that bustles outside [the secular...”
– Neal Stephenson’s new novel makes me want to kill the Internet. Now that sounds like a book I’ll enjoy. (via nickdouglas)
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On TV, Married Sex Is Ho-Hum, but Affairs Are Hot →
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“…having a journalist “badge of tribal fealty” enables one access to public...”
– AZspot: Blogging and Journalism
At the same time, most organizations are pretty lax on their definition of “press.” When I was in j-school, we needed press credentials to get into the county jail to write a story on overcrowding there. Our professor made us nice ID cards that...
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So in 20 years will science textbooks contain a... →
(Not that the kids will be using textbooks, anyway, when they can just look everything up on Wikipedia. Also, “FTW.” Hee.)