February 2011
“Backlit screens are something we’ve grown very used to without realizing what...”
– JDueck.Net : Calm Eyes Again One Day
You might also be interested in Joel’s other writing.
(via mwfrost)
January 2011
“‘It’s a big puzzle,’ said Russell D. Gray, head of the Auckland lab....”
– New Caledonian Crows Owe Their Toolmaking Skills to a Nourishing Nest - NYTimes.com
river maps →
The Mississippi river system as an Underground-style map. More info here; thanks to Matt Frost for the tip.
not quite "times of war," but still...
wesleyhill:
I just read this quote from W. H. Auden: “In times of war even the crudest kind of positive affection between persons seems extraordinarily beautiful, a noble symbol of the peace and forgiveness of which the whole world stands so desperately in need.”
And it reminded me of the picture everybody, including me, has been passing around on the internet.
Just wanted to note the...
Particularize →
As I mentioned the other day, the Shirky/Doctorow thesis is that the internet in general and social media in particular tend to generate political freedom; the Evgeny Morozov thesis is that those…
“Egypt, like many Arab societies, has a wealthy and well-armed elite at the top...”
– The stability we have embraced and encouraged in the Arab world isn’t really stability—it’s repression
“I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the events in Egypt and Tunisia – but...”
– A Wind of Change down Arab Street? | The Spectator
“Such wistful desire to evade responsibility exposes the childishness of the...”
– The New Atlantis » Slacking as Self-Discovery
“Who, alive today, will still be famous in 500 years? It’s the kind of...”
– Fame: Who’s going to live forever? - By Samuel Black - Slate Magazine
“Unfortunately, however, traditions that are not passed on from one generation to...”
– Views: Sorry - Inside Higher Ed.
I like much of this, but it is very, very wrong to suggest that there is a Western tradition — there is not even a Christian tradition. Western culture is largely a series of arguments conducted by proponents of different traditions that had their origin in or near...
“The great thing about art is that it’s there whether the academic humanities are...”
– Erin O’Connor
“We are unique as a species in our ability to point meaningfully. Chimps may draw...”
– review: Michelangelo’s Finger
“The big difference Facebook and, especially, Twitter has made is that it is...”
– Is the Age of the Critic Over?
“Late last year there was a confluence of critical opinion in America the likes...”
– Everyone’s a critic now.
Every now and then I see this kind of story about America in the Brisith papers: the kind of story in which a critic says quite absolutely that something is true that is in fact, not at all true. Critical opinions about Franzen’s novel were seriously divided....
“None of these observations is intended to condemn technology. They say that we...”
– Author, author: Sherry Turkle | Books | The Guardian
“Eagleton suggested three ways we engage with the tragic dimension: “social...”
– Christianity’s terrain of the tragic | Shirley Lancaster | Comment is free | The Guardian
“Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments...”
– Fitness and Outrage
The Whale and the Reactor (final installment) →
Let me conclude these posts on Winner’s book by looking at its third and last section, “Excess and Limit.” Winner’s approach throughout the book has been to pursue (as the book’s subtitle has it) “a…
Aaron Belz, "You Can't Pick Your Friend's Nose"
You can pick your friends,
we used to say, and
you can pick your nose,
but you can’t pick your friend’s
nose. We said it often and
understood what it meant:
man lives within constraints,
be they moral or natural;
our little lives were limited
by rules or laws, boundaries
we knew were there and
dared not cross. Nowadays,
my son tells me, you
can pick your friend’s nose,
you just can’t...
“It’s hard to imagine a revolution in understanding a popular sport that could...”
– Soccer stats, Prozone, Opta: The trouble with soccer’s statistical revolution. - By Brian Phillips - Slate Magazine
“Virus-writers seemed, at least at first, to be in it for anything but money. The...”
– William Gibson
“When Lévi-Strauss at last reached the Nambikwara after an 800-mile trek, the...”
– Library Man: On Claude Lévi-Strauss
“The human habit of overestimating other people’s happiness is nothing new,...”
– Is Facebook making us sad? Stanford University research and Sherry Turkle’s new book Alone Together suggest that social networking may foster loneliness. - By Libby Copeland - Slate Magazine
“As Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law and its...”
– In the Dock, in Paris « EJIL: Talk. Unbelievable. Yet not really: there will be much more of this kind of thing in the coming years.
“Strikingly, liberal education is not only effective at enhancing student...”
– The Winner: A Liberal Education - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
If this jumble of bureaucratic bromides is representative of how the liberal arts defend their own relevance today, then it’s all over. “Essential learning outcomes are aligned with the skills most desired in prospective...
The Whale and the Reactor (7) →
The idea that Reagan Ruined Everything seems to dominate, silently, the next chapter, “Decentralization Clarified.” I take this passage from its last paragraph to be its central idea: In…
“Strikingly, liberal education is not only effective at enhancing student...”
– The Winner: A Liberal Education - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com
“After all, the radical transparency of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook may not be...”
– Julian Dibbell » Radical Opacity
“The devil has his grip on the business of the NFL. Former players, like Aikman,...”
– Nate Jackson, former NFL player
books owned and leased →
Tim Spalding: We used to own our books. With most ebooks we own them in name, but effectively we lease them. As Jane documents, the slide toward more and more attenuated concepts of ownership…
“The 2010 election seemed to be about voters repudiating the $14 trillion...”
– Gregg Easterbrook
“‘The best research has failed to show that people who stutter, as a group,...”
– Jonah Lehrer on Stuttering in “The King’s Speech” - Ideas Market - WSJ
“Did Montaigne intuitively know that by inviting his would-be enemy into his...”
– Montaigne and the macaques
“Of course, technology doesn’t need to make us happy—indeed if it is capable of...”
– Happiness: Feature or Bug?
“The reason robots are such a slippery slope, according to Turkle, is that they...”
– Book Review - Alone Together - By Sherry Turkle - NYTimes.com
“The guardians of the liberal arts have made exactly the same mistake. They...”
– A Commonplace Blog: Blurring the liberal arts
“Every time we postpone some necessary event—whether we put off doing the dishes...”
– Robert Grudin, quoted by Mandy Brown
1 tag
“However wrongheaded you believe your ideological opponents to be, laying...”
– Ross Douthat
“If photography was once for special occasions, today we have an astonishing...”
– The slow-photography movement asks what is the point of taking pictures? - By Tim Wu - Slate Magazine
“ Students who study by themselves for more hours each week gain more knowledge...”
– News: ‘Academically Adrift’ - Inside Higher Ed
“The truth is that as remarkable as Steve Jobs has been in many ways—as a...”
– A World Without Jobs | Culture Making
“Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is...”
– Amy Chua Is a Wimp - NYTimes.com
“To appreciate the importance of a pre-modern blog, consult a database such as...”
– Blogging, Now and Then, by Robert Darnton