October 2011
41 posts
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“It’s not really designed for people who like music. It sounds like what it...”
– Chuck Klosterman on the release of the new Metallica and Lou Reed album - Grantland
Klosterman reviews Lulu. I made it 3 songs in before I turned it off. (You can stream it here…at least until release date?) This record’s downfall is that it doesn’t suck so abysmally that it...
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“Lauren Myracle, an author of young-adult literature, was named to the shortlist...”
– She Coulda Been a Contender: National Book Award Finalist Withdraws After Mistake - NYTimes.com
Worst yoink ever. It’s a mistake, but for the National Book Foundation to ask the author to withdraw? Rude! Letting her mistaken nomination stay but not picking her as a winner seems like the most...
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““The story is about the two hunters who are out in the woods in their tent and...”
– Breyer and Scalia unintentionally make the case for cameras in the courtroom. - Slate Magazine
I do not agree with Scalia on social or political issues, but I have always maintained that he is the funniest SCOTUS justice after listening to so many Supreme Court arguments.
Oh, I do agree with...
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“The loss of water during cooling and drying-out is not responsible for...”
– Scientific American monthly - Google Books
In case you wanted to know, Scientific American from the early 20th century tells you why bread goes stale.
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“Watching Federer increasingly feels like looking in on something private....”
– The long autumn of Roger Federer - Grantland
The strangeness of Federer’s decline, which is a decline that’s not a decline as he’s never out of the running to win tournaments just yet. And the strangeness of people like us, mere mortals, doing a play by play of a tennis...
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“The situation. A leading global IT outsourcing provider and one of its top...”
– Implementing Strategies in Extreme Negotiations - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review talked to “extreme” negotiation consultants for tips on negotiation. I duuno, are these brilliant new revelations to you? Reading The Game and Mystery Method taught me more about...
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“The investigators next counted all of the syllables in each of the recordings...”
– Why Some Languages Sound So Much Faster than Others — Printout — TIME
Scientific analysis of language can be fraught with potholes, though. Counting raw syllables, Japanese may not be information dense. But it’s a language that has two alphabets and a set of Chinese characters. In...
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“Once the head is bitten off, the male’s movements become more active and...”
– Sexual Cannibalism! Female Praying Mantis Devours Her Partner | Environmental Graffiti
These praying mantis sex captions were written by a “Michele Collet”, which could be a woman or a man. I’d love to see the same set of photos captioned by different people—men, women, old,...
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“Coffee’s crime then was not so much the consumption of it, but the manner of its...”
– The Devil’s Drink by Luke Fentress - Roundtable | Lapham’s Quarterly
The brief history of coffee bans. Some bans were for coffee’s “devilish” effects (thus the invention of Americano-style diluted coffee) but also for social reasons.
Coffee and tea were the social media original...
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“On June 4, Deschanel sent out the following tweet: “I wish everyone looked like...”
– The Pinup of Williamsburg
Can’t the twee girls and the grounded girls coexist happily? What hinders women, in my opinion, more than anything is girl-on-girl nitpicking. There are many forms of femininity and peens that get hard for each genre of womanhood. Shooting down one form with the...
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Actually, ice cream sandwiches with rainbow...
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“Billing experts who translate doctors’ work into codes are gearing up to...”
– New Medical Codes Provide Precision - WSJ.com
Starting in Fall 2013, there will be 140,000 medical billing codes for various injuries. There is near universal coding, but universal healthcare is but a fleeting election promise.
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“If there is an assassination planned for the meal, then it is seemliest that the...”
– Top Chef, Old Master by Michelle Legro - Roundtable | Lapham’s Quarterly
Manners for being an assassin at a 15th century banquet, as written by one Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci’s stints as cook and kitchen remodeler are worth the click-thru and read.
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“Within the time it took to take a bite and then realize one had to have another,...”
– Paradigm Shift - Lapham’s Quarterly
Yes! When does a thing taste fully of itself? Rarely. Even in abundance of tenderly cared-for farmers market produce, I don’t find perfectly cherry cherries or quintessentially strawberry strawberries. But chemistry and semiotics implode and collapse once...
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“Last year, more than a dozen San Francisco restaurants that levy surcharges each...”
– Menu Surcharge Can Be Misleading - WSJ.com
In San Francisco, many restaurants add a surcharge to cover city-mandated healthcare for employees. I support workers having health coverage, but this is an example of San Francisco’s half-baked nanny state policies that ultimately fuck people over.
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“• “I am the emperor, and I want dumplings,” said Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria....”
– Locusts, Cilantro, Elvis Presley - Lapham’s Quarterly
Emperors, real and figurative, are hungry.
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“The answer is the training and foundation that clay-court tennis provides. That,...”
– The Surprising Reason for the Decline of American Tennis
This makes perfect sense, but then Nadal is a clay court player and I don’t see that kind of well-rounded skillset. A part of what makes Roger Federer’s game so dreamy and graceful is that he’s working from a bigger set of...
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“Translators don’t reinvent hot water every day. They behave more like GT –...”
– The Independent - Print Article
An article on Google Translate (GT). There’s nothing that hasn’t been said before. People who can say things that haven’t been said become respected writers and rappers.
And then, there’s Google Translate. Oftentimes, it says serendipitous...
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I looked up at the sound of the aluminum chair scraping against the concrete, when the lifeguard pushed it under the shelter of the pool house awning. Then, my body split in two like a magician’s assistant sawed in half: bottom half in the heated pool, top half being pelted by large, coldish raindrops. Sharp odor of chlorine and the warmth of petrichor swirled in a dissonant, spontaneous...
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“First, he fed normal lab mice a diet full of probiotics. Then, Mr. Bravo’s...”
– Jonah Lehrer on Yogurt, Gut Feelings and the Mind Body Problem | Head Case - WSJ.com
This study completely undermines the cunty Yoplait girls commericals. You know, the “burning this bridesmaid dress good” girls. Also, this study relieves Jamie Lee Curtis from having to allude to...
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“Dole and other banana growers have turned the creation of a banana into a...”
– How Whole Foods “Primes” You To Shop | Fast Company
We eat with our eyes. This banana pantone factoid blows my mind. But am I an outlier in the banana purchasing demographic? I buy bananas slightly underripe with a bit of green and let it ripen at home. A warm yellow would signal...
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“breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in...”
– Breakfast of Champions - Lapham’s Quarterly
Hunter S. Thompson, my patron saint. Right around his death, his breakfast menu shrank considerably. On the day he died, he had Jell-O with fruit cocktail and some gin sprinkled on top. (Yes, I have tried this. I love it, but I do not condescend on Jell-O...
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