December 2008
46 posts
Watchmen: Watchmen's March Release May Be In... →
“Christmas Twin Falls Idaho’s her oldest memory …”
So ... how does The Daily Beast make money without... →
An Angry Chris Paul
thebasketballjones:
A story from TBJ watcher, Quinnthology:
I’ve written to you before telling of how Paul Pierce gave me his headband at a Nuggets game, and you have seen my NBA rap. You know that I love the NBA, and perhaps that I am a diehard Pacers fan. In the Pacers rap, I wear a Chris Paul jersey. He is my favorite player besides Granger. Well, I made a big mistake. You know the story...
What Klosterman's Learned
jamiemottram:
I received two books for Christmas: “Boys Will Be Boys” by Jeff Pearlman and “Downtown Owl” by Chuck Klosterman. I’ve read and enjoyed every book written by either author, so these are safe gifts for a guy like me, though I just read that “Downtown Owl”, Klosterman’s first novel, is a bad version of his first book, “Fargo Rock City”, which was very good.
Anyway, Esquire has a...
MAN POSTS NAKED PICTURES OF MODEL ONLINE, USES AWESOME LOGIC: “For her to say that these pictures were taken against her knowledge is untrue because she is smiling in them.”
ProFootballTalk.com - WE’LL SOON BE SAYING... →
Iraqi Attack Gone Viral: Rider Tries to Nail to... →
PERHAPS LATE: ‘SEC to Probe Relationship Between Madoff’s Niece and Ex-SEC Lawyer’
Either I'm Smoking Crack Glue or ESPN Beta Looks... →
Inspired By Teen Wolf, Tampa Bay DE Greg White... →
GOOGLE WANTS ITS OWN FAST TRACK ON THE WEB: ‘The celebrated openness of the Internet — network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic — is quietly losing powerful defenders.
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents...
Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums Of 2008 →
An irony of the internet: E’s post below expressing dismay at the respect Rolling Stone accorded to John Mellencamp’s new album prompted me to buy Mellencamp’s new album.
Meanwhile, my attempt to explain what I dislike about Malcolm Gladwell’s books has introduced my friend Gabe to Gladwell, and for all I know he’s bought the hardcover version of Gladwell’s...
The upbeat section titles from Part 1 of ‘Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,’ a draft of a federal report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
A Rush Job, p. 8
Military: No Planning Ordered, p. 26
Left Out, p. 32
Outsourcing Foreign Aid, p. 33
Four Hours, Lots of Roads, p. 37
Pentagon Takes Over, p. 54
Hostile...
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES ASCENDANT: ‘The basic question Keynes asked was: How do rational people behave under conditions of uncertainty? The answer he gave was profound and extends far beyond economics. People fall back on “conventions,” which give them the assurance that they are doing the right thing. The chief of these are the assumptions that the future will be like the past (witness all the...
Bail Out the Writers!
‘The other day, as I looked down on the field of cubicles from the “resting area” on the balcony, I felt an urge to read aloud from a Graham Greene story I had disregarded in my 20s: “Are you prepared for the years of effort, ‘the long defeat of doing nothing well’? As the years pass writing will not become any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those ‘powers of...
‘Science has a cure for wishful thinking. It goes like this: You have an elegant idea, you do the experiment, it seems to work. Colleagues and competitors repeat or refine your experiment, and now it doesn’t work. You really want it to work so you do it again, differently, and then so do they, and it still doesn’t work. After enough of this, and sometimes years of it, you admit it doesn’t...
The 10 Best Books of 2008 - NYTimes.com →
EDSBS gives you a great gift idea
hellofriend:
Certainly a better gift than a video game. Well, maybe. What if it’s a really cool video game? …
Most refugees come from places where governance and common sense have broken down completely, business has ground to a halt, education is scanty at best, and the very mouth of hell itself has opened up and disgorged its contents onto the ground where they live.
Then, having survived...
The Malcolm Gladwell Backlash →
Matt Yglesias wonder why people get so worked up about Malcolm Gladwell.
WSJ provides one answer: “Psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives crowd the top of a ranking of influential business thinkers compiled for The Wall Street Journal. The results, based on Google hits, media mentions and academic citations, ranked author and consultant Gary Hamel No. 1.
But Dr. Hamel is...
Is anyone surprised to see that Russian commenters are smart? They apparently are to American commenters what our writers are to Dostoevsky.
(If I were Clifford Levy, I’d start trying to build up a tolerance for radioactive poisoning now. Maybe start watching TV while wedged between two running microwaves.)
hellofriend:
People romanticize where they live. Particular to this endemic, I think, is Brooklyn; it is not unusual for people to describe something, and end it with “Only in Brooklyn, right?” or “This is the kind of thing that can only happen in Brooklyn.” Like: “A hipster kid in skinny jeans and an American Apparel t-shirt is having sex with a stroller mom in Park Slope, while her husband is...
WSJ Call This "A Glimpse Into the Identity...
Nixon: Well if you’ve got a candidate, what we need there… Godammit Chuck, we haven’t got an Italian yet. I can’t find any…
Colson: Did Bob mention the [foreign adviser John] Scali idea to you? …Could be at the U.N.
Nixon: Instead of the black?
Colson: Instead of the black. Who the hell cares about the blacks? Scali would love the U.N. That would give you an Italian in the cabinet. At least...
PEOPLE SHOU’DN’T WRITE BOOKS ABOUT AFRICA: ‘Not the whole of Africa. When was the last time you read a book about Eurasia? Never. The vastness of the European-Asian landmass precludes useful generalisation. And Africa is just as various, if not quite as huge. There are almost as many countries, rather more languages and a comparable degree of environmental diversity.’
SERIOUSLY? →
Seriously. No one’s ever devoted these kinds of dollars to Third World HIV/AIDS.
(via hellofriend)