February 2012
“After running Collusion for a few days, I wanted to see if there was an easy...”
– I’m Being Followed: How Google —and 104 Other Companies— Are Tracking Me on the Web - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic
“Just yesterday, Slate’s Hanna Rosin, my own beloved editor, wrote: “The world...”
– Jan Berenstain dies. We attack her. - Slate Magazine
“A few years ago, when I was beginning to work on my book about the American...”
– Andrew Delbanco
“What can we do with this information? Gutman offers suggestions. Smile. Smile at...”
– SMILE: The Astonishing Destructive Power of Positive Thinking - Download The Universe
“More than at any point in our history, the smartest people generally go to high...”
– How Meritocracy Divides Us - Ross Douthat
“For some, the typewriter can be about yearning for a simpler time, a younger...”
– A Type of Nostalgia - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education
my career-change (conversation with Tim Carmody) →
“But there’s another, more self-serving reason that a particular type of...”
– Paul McCartney’s Kisses on the Bottom and the problem with Great American Songbook albums. - Slate Magazine
“How many times have you written something, published it, and then realized in...”
– Mandy Brown
“The international mission in Afghanistan has done some terrible things —...”
– If Afghans Want to Reject the U.S. and Embrace Theocracy, That’s Their Right - Max Fisher - International - The Atlantic
“Right now, it’s a loser’s game to try to find a more ethical smartphone....”
– There is no ethical smartphone - Apple - Salon.com
“In talking to audiences outside universities (some of whom may be graduates), I...”
– Stefan Collini
“Being a broken man himself, Greene knew how to probe the pain and romance of...”
– My hero: Graham Greene | Books | The Guardian
“In our offices, we have been seeing more and more young people seeking...”
– Text Neck
“A keen Morris dancer with a countryman’s voice, [Roy Dommett] was largely...”
– Francis Spufford, Backroom Boys
“Standing back and getting out of the way and letting things take on a life of...”
– Evgeny Morozov: Form And Fortune | The New Republic
“Much has been made of the Internet’s ability to resist such control. The...”
– Internet Freedom Fighters Build a Shadow Web: Scientific American. A typically fantastic article by Julian Dibbell.
“It’s the opportunity to engage with these issues and many others that...”
– Why I said yes to Professor Self | Will Self | Comment is free | The Guardian
“The thinker who has done most to expose the theological aspirations of secular...”
– New Statesman - The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology
“One of the difficulties with targeting religion, as some secularists do, is that...”
– New Statesman - The Books Interview: Charles Taylor
“This last detail, though, brings me to Goldstein’s fundamental problem with...”
– n+1: Learning in Freedom. Bingo.
““Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good,”...”
– BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep
“None of this offers even a start to the question of why people keep buying and...”
– Edward Luttwak reviews ‘The Iliad by Homer’ translated by Stephen Mitchell · LRB 23 February 2012
“For Vedantam and Inskeep, the local nature of Twitter is not only notable, but...”
– Matthew Battles
“Jesus’s decision in the desert led him into several years of working with and...”
– Lent is a chance to take stock and imagine a changed world | Jane Williams
“Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global...”
– Piotr Czerki. There is no nonsense quite like the nonsense that places everyone who happens to have been born within a given date-range, regardless of sex or class or ethnicity or nationality, under a single description. And that holds whether the description is written by some grumpy old fart or,...
“Though my heart leaps up when I hear the gorgeous music of 17th-century prose...”
– The American Scholar: Style Is the Man - Michael Dirda
Making reading social? →
“The startled glutton glared gruesomely,
grinned like a greyhound with grisly...”
– The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage – review | Books | The Observer
“Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive. Forget trying to form...”
– California Dreamin’ | MetaFilter. That’s one heck of a Metafilter thread.
“OK, the idea that kids these days are “digital natives” is a nice,...”
– California Dreamin’ | MetaFilter
“We live in a time when many religious people feel fiercely threatened by...”
– Marilynne Robinson
“To see just how our wires are rewiring us, a group of four neuroscientists at...”
– Rewired - Association for Psychological Science
Waging Guerilla War Against Distraction →
“A man, then, who portrays human beings excessively and extravagantly. A man who...”
– Rowan Williams (via Christopher)