Here’s a summary of Charles Murray’s “groundbreaking*” new book
So you are spared from having to read it:
There is a “crisis” facing America. I will neither analyze nor allude to what might have “caused” this “crisis”, nor offer any “solutions”. Instead, I am I am only going to focus on how it affects 63% of the population.
*David Brooks’ words, not mine
Flickr is probably still my favorite social network. While it’s not loaded with functions the way Facebook and google are, it does it’s one or two things better than I’ve seen anywhere else on the web:
Photosharing publicly in a searchable way, leaving open the possibility of discovery (read: delight).
Scores pretty high in it’s privacy settings and low on gimmicks. You can opt out pretty quickly from sharing your geography, unless your the type of tourist that likes to brag. My mom sent us her vacation photos as a private album. My wedding photos were shared with family members who couldn’t make it without hurting the feelings of acquaintances we couldn’t invite.
A community of users that is very appreciative and overall, pretty positive, compared to YouTube commentary or the anonymous trolls on your local newspaper’s site.
A good translation of the photo album/art gallery experience in a way that makes sense to the web and digital experience. You can flip through fairly quickly, and give more consideration to that which commands more time and attention. Best of all, noone is competing for your attention.
True to the photo album experience, I feel pretty guilty not keeping my flickr updated. I can’t make this cae for twitpics instagram or even Facebbok photos, which are more like Polaroids (which is not a bad thing)
There you have it, my case for flickr as social media barometer. You probably will not invent the next Facebook or Twitter, but make us another Flickr, I’ll happily oblige.
(typed with an iPod touch, a much inferior way to blog on Tumblr than a real keyboard)
So I’m sitting in my office, thinking about Madison, and my teacher friends, and I’m listening to NPR or Rachel Maddow and one of those things informs me that Wisconsin has no less than 7 townships named “Union”, in seven different counties throughout the state.
The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude machinery, propelled by water power, had been invented; sails to propel ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze—but the application of stream to propel vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have lived to see the shape it assumed.
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (1885-86).
via Slate Gabfest
Source: bartleby.com
If you are going to reissue a Kafka book (above) with an iconic Alvin Lustig cover (below), you best get a heavyweight like Peter Mendelsund to tackle it.
1946 cover via benjaminhilts
See more: http://jacketmechanical.blogspot.com/2011/01/kafka.html
Source: jacketmechanical.blogspot.com
“The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.” —Barack H. Obama, Jan. 25, 2011 State of the Union Address
I’m standing behind Barack Obama 100% on his Dad-Joke Moment salmon remarks. And here is the reason: I don’t get paid to make jokes either, so I sympathize with my President, especially when his jokes go over like a lead balloon.
That said, how often is it that you get to punctuate your punchline with a clever infographic? For one night, Obama got to do his version of Stephen Colbert’s “The Wørd” segment. Well played, Mr. President. Well played!
The working-class kid from Scranton, sittin’ behind the President.
Effin’ love this photo. Everything about it screams win.
(via theatlantic)
Source: inothernews
Back cover of The Sense of Beauty, by George Santayana (1955 Dover edition)
THIS DOVER EDITION IS DESIGNED FOR YEARS OF USE
THE PAPER is chemically the same quality as you would find in books priced $5.00 or more. It does not discolor or become brittle with age. Not artificially bulked, either; this edition is an unabridged full-length book, but is still easy to handle.
THE BINDING: the pages in this book are SEWN in signatures, in the method traditionally used for the best books. These books open flat for easy reading and reference. Pages do not drop out, the binding does not crack and split (as is the case with many paperbacks held together with glue).
THE TYPE IS LEGIBLE: Margins are ample and allow for cloth rebinding.
All this for only $1.00! Plus you can re-sell it, give it away, or loan it out. I heard you can write in it, underline passages, and can even read it before the plane takes off the ground.
What are you going to do with that?
Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Every great record or novel or comic book convenes the fist meeting of a fan club whose membership stands forever at one but which maintains chapters in every city—in every cranium—in the world. Art, like fandom, asserts the possibility of a fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude. The novelist, the cartoonist, the songwriter, knows that gesture is doomed from the beginning but makes it anyway, flashes his or her bit of mirror, not on the chance that the signal will be seen or understood but as if such a chance existed.
Excerpted from “The Loser’s Club”. Published in Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon. 2009, HarperCollins.
This essay opens the very excellent Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon. After graduating a little more than 2 years ago with a liberal arts degree with a focus in a “creative discipline” the question I most often hear is “what are you going to do with that?” The questioner is usually preparing to hear an answer about money, although never asking the money question outright. I suppose the equation is Education = financial investment + time investment, therefore Degree should = ROI.
Before I read the above paragraph the other night, my stock answer used to be: “Hopefully, not having to struggle to answer that question.” Now I think I can answer this more eloquently, having a better set of words to work with.
