December 2009
42 posts
Avatar is a bad film.
Not because it lacks any meaningful character development (which it does), not because its plot is laughably flimsy (which it is), and not because it is little more than a big-budget remake of FernGully, but because it is yet another example of b-grade Hollywood moralizing, of not very smart people with typically superficial good intentions offering Americans an insidiously...
The 2009 Whersies
We have a mailing list in the office referred to as “whereis”, a list everyone on the team emails with status updates if they’re going to be out of the office or leaving early or otherwise away from their desks.
Josh, our VP of business development, just compiled all the whereis updates of the calendar year, and the results were pretty hilarious.
Hands down the greatest work...
“I draw a radical distinction between the symbolic and the substantial. As a...”
– Cornel West
“Imagine ordering a Whopper with cheese: you take a bite but you taste only...”
– Me, in response to a friend on Twitter who was looking for a 140-character explanation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle suitable for her five-year-old preschool students.
“It’s so easy to fool yourself into thinking that you’re working...”
– Robert Caro, baller.
“After Checkers, to the cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon,...”
– Rick Perlstein, Nixonland, p. 43
Goddamn this book is good.
It is also worth noting that its title originates from a ‘56 Stevenson campaign speech penned by John Kenneth Galbraith, a speech which only reinforces Perlstein’s point:
Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In...
1 tag
merlin:
I’m painfully aware of the divisive nature of whatever the fuck it is that I do (and more particularly, how I do it)…
While we’re being “meta-ass-kissy” here I have to ask: why do you always say things like “whatever the fuck it is I do” whenever you talk about your work?
You make a living telling people how to be a little less stupid. Period. End...
goosebumpmusic:
It’s more change than you could’ve expected from McCain or Hillary, my friend. Count your blessings.
Sorry, not buying it.
I’m tired of these specious and puerile cliches, this talk of how “things could be worse” or “the perfect is the enemy of the good”. If we truly believe that only the perfect can be perfect then we delude ourselves into...
So here we are.
Two years ago the prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic nomination presented a healthcare proposal mandating universal coverage. Everyone would have healthcare. Those who could not afford it would receive government assistance to ensure they could.
That prohibitive front-runner lost to Barack Obama, who throughout his time as both a senator and a presidential candidate wavered between a...
Built to Spill, “Time Trap”
And life...
1 tag
Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants →
That’s quite a story:
You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.
And yet, I’m a woman.
This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy—I’m literally a woman.
This is my story.
“Eliot’s poems were difficult and depressing, but when you sign up to sweep...”
– Ryan Ruby, “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Frank O’Hara”
(via natashavc)
“We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to...”
– Richard Feynman, Caltech lectures, 1962 (via fdanbo)
I got turned onto this quote yesterday by Dan-o while we were out on a smoke break at work and we got to discussing quantum mechanics (because that’s how you make small talk in Kendall Sq., Cambridge). I was remarking on how striking it is...
3 tags
I can’t even begin to tell you how DONE I am with this whole nerd tradition of naming programming languages or frameworks after things the nerds responsible for maintaining them happen to enjoy. Take the examples of Python (so named for its inventor’s love of “Monty Python”), or Django (read: Django Reinhardt), or Hadoop (named for the lead developer’s child’s...
“Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there...”
– G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown
Happy Wartime President Nobel Peace Prize Day!
“I remember realizing a few years ago that most of the members of what I thought...”
– William Deresiewicz, “Faux Friendship”, in The Chronicle Review
Random dick with ample open seating to his right: Hey guys, would you mind moving down a seat?
Me: Sorry--why?
Random dick, whispering: To make room for this pretty lady.
Me, to Jesse: Man, I hate this fucking guy.
Jesse: Seriously.
Me: Look! He's wearing a ring!
Jesse: What a skeez.
Me, raising my voice: Hey, nice Blackberry, asshole.
Jesse: "lol"
Me, shouting: Hope you got a complimentary Bluetooth headset to go with that twist of lemon you fucking douchebag.
Jesse: "lol"
Me, still shouting: AND A COCKPUNCH.
Bartender: Another round?
Me and Jesse: PLEASE.
“Isn’t it SO much better being sent to a dumb war by a smart president? I really...”
– Aaron McGruder
(via jhnbrssndn &co.)
dailymeh:
I think, like Wittgenstein, that a lot of philosophy stems from misuse of and bewitchment by language. I think analytic philosophy, with its so-called “linguistic turn”, has taught us a lot about problems we failed to make progress on for thousands of years, and is continuing to do so. But that doesn’t mean that I think all philosophical problems are language problems. I don’t think the...
This is why we can't have nice things.
In America a president can campaign on a platform featuring a national healthcare program with a robust public option only to see it stifled by Congress because of the mere threat that a few senators are going to take to the podium and talk for a really long time.
And yet in America that same president can campaign on a platform featuring the escalation of a war in Afghanistan and 30,000 more of...
Screeching Weasel, “Hey Suburbia”
...
“In the interests of full and up-front disclosure, here are some reasons why a...”
– Pomona College, English 67, Section 02, Spring ‘05 syllabus, Caveat Emptor, instructed by David Foster Wallace. (pdf)
cursivebuildings on this unreleased take of...
“It takes an enormous act of violence to begin something.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Young Workman’s Letter”
(via @parisreview)
“This is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed...”
– Dave Eggers’ wonderful message on PRINT.
(via jaredgeller and meaghano)
Technicalities.
Going on twenty years now I’ve played the part of all-purpose-computer-and-technical-support-grunt for my family. I wish to finally disabuse myself of this ignominious title and terminate all these bothersome, unpaid retainers.
There are three reasons I wish to do this.
1. It’s discourteous.
Whenever one of them asks me for computer help my immediate thought is that I can likely...
Free Startup Idea
Elevator pitch: Well-off urban twenty-somethings and angsty tweens with livejournals buy the ever-living shit out of Moleskines, but only a handful of them have yet to write anything even remotely intelligent in one of these fashionable, top-dollar Italian notebooks. With 4.5 million units sold in 2005 and over 10 million produced in 2009 this is not only a fast-growing market, but the forerunner...
Eight years ago:
high school seniors were in the fourth grade
Slobodan Milosevic surrendered to authorities
Enron collapsed
the Baltimore Ravens beat the New York Giants in the Super Bowl
AOL became AOL/Time Warner
Aaliyah died
This is how long we’ve been in Afghanistan.
“If we had wanted Bush’s wars, and contractors, and corruption, we could have...”
– Garry Wills, NYRblog: Afghanistan: The Betrayal
