May 2012
24 posts
6 tags
Even in Kentucky, Coal Industry Is Under Siege →
When the operator of the Big Sandy plant announced last year that it would be switching from coal to cleaner, cheaper natural gas, people here took it as the worst betrayal imaginable.
What happened to “Friends of Coal”? I thought we were all BFFs here?
Do you mean to suggest the coal industry was using us?
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“I rise to defend the faculty lounge, that magical idea factory that has become,...”
– In Defense of the Faculty Lounge
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“And there you have it: even then Didion was a writer who could produce something...”
– Becoming Joan Didion
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“In Bloomington, Wallace struggled with the size of his book. He hit upon the...”
– Some writing on David Foster Wallace in the New Yorker
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“Before I occupied Wall Street, Wall Street occupied me.”
– Alexis Goldstein in “Leaving Wall Street”
“We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House...”
– Grover Norquist
Mitt Romney, Servant of the Right
American Decline a Mirage in a World That’s Rising... →
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North of Center: Students confront Catholic... →
The wonderful North of Center was kind enough to publish my thoughts on Lexington Catholic’s banning of a same-sex couple from the school’s prom.
As a product of Lexington Catholic High School, I was chagrined to see the headlines Sunday morning, May 13. I say ‘chagrined’ because it is entirely unsurprising. The “same-sex couple unallowed to attend prom” headline surfaces with...
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German voters must break the Merkel mindset that... →
If Germany cannot pull itself together to keep Spain in the euro, then the markets can no longer ignore the fact that the lack of leadership and governance is a fatal flaw in the system.
What accounts for this? I would argue that the heart of the problem lies in the political culture of Germany and the mindset of its political and economic elites, which have never been willing to admit to...
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Peter Orszag: Good U.S. Jobs News Can Be Found in... →
Big business, we keep being told, has been so hampered by regulatory uncertainty over the past few years, it has been reluctant to hire workers.
So it is surprising to read the results of a little-known survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Very large businesses, it turns out, have been expanding their domestic workforces relatively rapidly. If, since January 2011, businesses of all sizes...
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A Dozen Writers Put Down Their Pens to Prove the... →
“We see by the number of people that literature still has authority in our society because no one called these people — they came themselves,” said Lev Rubinstein, 65, a poet and one of the organizers. “We thought this would be a modest stroll of several literary colleagues, and this is what happened. You can see it yourself.”
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Texas Wants To Drug a Prisoner So They Can Kill... →
Listen
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Greek Chaos Threatens World Economy—And Obama →
The whole episode underscores the need for a European growth strategy to supplement budget cuts and structural reforms. With the Germans blocking any idea of a fiscal stimulus—a stance they are unlikely to alter anytime soon, despite the election of François Hollande in France—the obvious way out is for the European Central Bank to engineer a large-scale monetary expansion and a devaluation of...
German Police Used Only 85 Bullets Against People... →
According to Germany’s Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A. As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren’t even aimed anyone: “49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed.”
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Scamworld: 'Get rich quick' schemes mutate into an... →
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The President’s Gift: What Obama’s personal... →
When Energy Isn’t Popular—Anywhere →
Benjamin Kunkel reviews ‘Paper Promises’ by Philip... →
A good (long) write up of ‘Debt’ which I’m currently reading.
Henry Hitchings on Proper English : The New Yorker →
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When Art Spiegelman visited Maurice Sendak →
“Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!”
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Occupy Wall Street's Debt to Melville →
On May 1, students and activists are planning to revive the Occupy Wall Street movement with a general strike. One poster making the rounds on Facebook and other social media features a hamster nervously eyeing a treadmill, and above it the famous words, “I WOULD PREFER NOT TO.” The hamster’s wheel of course represents the drudgery of our modern routines; the phrase, many will...
April 2012
5 posts
7 tags
Debt: N+1 Panel Discussion →
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Lesser-Known Chekovian Techniques →
“If in the first act there is a loaded rifle hung on the wall, then in the following one it should still be there, fastened tightly to the wall above the mantle. We don’t need another St. Petersburg.”
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The Believer - Donald Barthelme’s Syllabus →
I love this story.
Fairy tales: The Anti-Grimm | The Economist →
So cool.
March 2012
6 posts
6 tags
“I humiliated him as he should be humiliated,” Hemingway says of the “rich...”
– A different side of Hemingway
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'Stand-your-ground law': Kentucky →
Make the Punishment Fit the Cyber-Crime →
Civil rights statutes are being stretched to go after teenagers who acted meanly, but not violently.
n+1: The Son Shines Bright →
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NEW OPTICAL ILLUSIONS →
Two lines, where the first line looks longer than the second line. But when you take a ruler to measure them they’re actually the same length. Pretty standard illusion, right? Wrong. Because the ruler you used to measure the lines, it’s now a Snickers bar.
February 2012
15 posts
2 tags
Planning Of Municipal Bus Line 11A Three Weeks... →
Stop 8: The Acrid Smoke Engulfed Quadrant where the Sun No Longer Penetrates to The Center for Disease Control Headquarters (Defunct) – We shouldn’t be stopping here. One week after the CDC was “turned over to the states”, New Hampshire weaponized the mumps. I know. It doesn’t make any sense. But hey, “50 little laboratories”!
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“We know that we live in a “new normal” – a period of time in which we have to...”
– President Eli Capilouto of the University of Kentucky
What a crock…
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CJR: Why We Love The Political Gabfest →
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Though it is (broadly) a political analysis show, the Politcal Gabfest sometimes makes me laugh out loud. There was one evening last summer where I was that strange person on the subway, giggling maniacally, unable to stop as I listened to the show. The conversation had turned to dogs and mimes. You had to be there.
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How Companies Learn Your Secrets →
The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. “If you use a credit card or...
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The Julian Assange Show →
Is now the time for a forty-year-old cyber activist to sell out?
To sell out, Assange would of course have to violate his ideals. Maybe he has, but it would be wrong to confuse the romantic view that he holds of the world with a rigid commitment to ideology or unwavering idealism. He is a charismatic figure precisely because of the way his contradictions—manifest in WikiLeaks from the...
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At Work in Syria, Times Correspondent Anthony... →
The death of Mr. Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent who had a wife and two children, abruptly ended one of the most storied careers in modern American journalism. Fluent in Arabic, with a gifted eye for detail and contextual writing, Mr. Shadid captured dimensions of life in the Middle East that many others failed to see. Those talents won him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in...
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“We like to think Seamus spent his golden years in Canada, an outlaw, never...”
– Did the Romney Family Dog Flee to Canada?
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“Stop demanding to be spoon-fed like a baby. Figure out how to deal with art that...”
– D’Agata
Facts Are Stupid: An essayist and his fact-checker go to battle over the line between true and false.
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Larry Summers: What You (Really) Need to Know →
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Where Americans Most Depend on Government Benefits →
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Watch‘Saturday Night Live’ accurately skewers Verizon 4G advertising
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“Facebook exists to make the world more open”
– Mark Zuckerberg in the Facebook IPO filing.
What a joke.