May 2012
17 posts
Truth trumps nuance.
me: What are your thoughts about Updike? I tried to read Rabbit, Run. I dont think I finished it
AR: Dudes suck
AR: Dude writers suck
me: ahahah
AR: (it's the same feeling I have about Hemmingway)
AR: I could pretend it's more nuanced than that
AR: but it's not, really
AR: I just don't care about their boring-ass ennui
P. G. Wodehouse random quotation generator.... →
Oh man, only in non-America can you make fun of a guy because he speaks with an accent in the second language he’s fluent in:
The simultaneous interpreters in the European Council building in Brussels have a difficult job, especially when Wolfgang Schäuble takes the floor at meetings of the euro-zone finance ministers. Last Monday was a case in point. Schäuble said something about a...
Uhh, from the files of maybe-well-intentioned-but-ultimately-destructive policy ideas:
Tying the minimum wage to a diploma until the age of 25 (or some other high age) would be a drastic public policy measure. It has the potential to serve as a powerful monetary incentive to motivate potential dropouts to earn their high school diploma; it will do them a lot of good in the long run, and it will...
NPR’s Science Friday program had a segment last week asking whether there should be a presidential science debate. I would pay good money for a front-row ticket to such a spectacle. The program notes there’s only one current member of the U.S. Congress who’s a scientist. (I assume this doesn’t include M.D.s, a la Ron and Rand Paul?). Anyway, there aren’t many. No,...
“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we...”
– Keynes by way of Krugman
It's true, too.
me: THIS COMPUTER DOES NOT HAVE SPELL CHECK ON GCHAT. it really limits me. b/c I dont know how to spell for shit
CB: this is terrible
CB: me either
CB: (confession time)
me: yeah. but you speak three languages. so you get a pass.
CB: none of them properly
Bringing the things clownybee says on GChat to... →
“So blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all...”
– William James
You know how in grade school, when you learned about compound interest, your teacher got all excited to tell you how “powerful” this effect is and how leaving your money in the bank could really add up? Turns out, when that same thing happens to your debt, it’s not quite as exciting. Case in point: my student loans were on deferment for six months; they racked up $3,500 in...
“Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Hell yes, I’m from Texas,”...”
– Hunter S. Thompson, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (via ieatedthepurpleone)
The Internet is moody tonight. First it gives me the cold shoulder, pretends like it doesn’t hear me pleading with it to work. And then to mess with me, it turns around and does what I asked it to FOUR TIMES TOO MANY. Maybe it’s trying to tell me to go to sleep. Thanks for looking out for my health, Internet.
April 2012
12 posts
“But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,...”
– “Ode on Melancholy,” John Keats
Sometimes you wake up and read a headline like... →
Civil society institutions! On the one hand, organization and to-do lists and productivity increase the living standards for all of us. On the other hand, the “civil” world we’ve created is one where a united group of nations must take a vote about the advisability of stopping the slaughter of human beings? Oh okay, that makes sense. Best of luck, citizens of Syria.
"In a country where political role models ran from... →
“THE DEATH OF ARTISTS, Charles Baudelaire
How often must I shake my bells and...”
– Translated by Jackson Mathews
“Students get in more trouble toward the end of the month than at the beginning....”
– Peter Orszag in Bloomberg
It’s my habit now that whenever I’m reading about a person’s accomplishments and an age for when they started is given, I subtract my own from it, just to make myself feel bad. Apparently this habit holds even when the person is Paul Kagame and his accomplishments include possible war crimes. Huh.
One of the voices you hardly hear in the conversation about public education in this country is the students’. And then occasionally you do, but it’s in a headline like this: “Detroit High School Protest: Students Suspended After Demanding ‘An Education.’”
Students walked out of class to protest teachers who are abusing sick day policies and not showing up to...
“We have at the moment this monstrous hybrid, state capitalism… This is a...”
– John Lanchester · Marx at 193 · LRB 5 April 2012
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the...”
– Happy April!
March 2012
12 posts
“Since cars are immobile 95 percent of the time, you could plausibly argue that a...”
– Yes! I hate cars; didn’t get my driver’s license till I was 22 and a college grad, happily turned my car over to my parents when I was living in the city and have annoyed friends before because my idea of “it’s close enough to walk!” is < 30 minutes. Also, number of...
Our Media Critic Reads the Tribune, Somehow Finds... →
“More than any of that, though, his claim is difficult to verify because...”
– Chron of Higher Ed
"Why Don't Women Patent?"
After actually reading this paper, I’m disappointed the authors didn’t give suggestions for closing the gender gap, plus I think their methodology is a little less than convincing for how they got the 2.7 percent, but it’s an interesting question to ask:
We investigate women’s underrepresentation among holders of commercialized patents: only 5.5% of holders of such patents...
“Many books are read but some books are lived, so that words and ideas lose their...”
– Leon Wieseltier: Washington Diarist: Voluminous | The New Republic
“Education is inherently political, as suggested by the primordial work of...”
– Comment: Test Patterns : The New Yorker
February 2012
24 posts
“She had dropped into a chair and picked up a book. She looked like something...”
– Summer Lightning, P. G. Wodehouse
You Should Know That
bubblypotentially:
The reification of post-capitalist hegemony is virtually coextensive with the systemization of power/knowledge.
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm
haha
The poetics of the gaze furnishes a provisional lens for the analysis of the discourse of the gendered body.
Incidentally (in re: prior post), Wired magazine keeps sending me emails to take their survey because they want “100 percent participation.” Hmm, I think this makes me doubt the intellectual integrity of a tech / science magazine which doesn’t even know that, in surveys, higher participation (after a certain point) does not equal better results.
Chicago News Haikus →
NYT book reviewer suggests calling Jodi Kantor’s... →