June 2013
9 posts
“
Watching you grow up has been the purest pleasure in my life to date.
Which makes it even more jarring to admit that I was once a sexist.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill, woman-hating misogynist who believes God made him superior to the fairer sex. I’ve always hated that guy.
Instead, I was the guy who didn’t even notice all of society’s subtle sexist behaviors. Sometimes I participated without realizing.
” —Mo Elleithee in an open letter to his daughter on Father’s Day.
— In Salon, from NYC.
“The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters. It might not be that Americans are excessively optimistic; it might just be that the others have many more good historical reasons for being pessimistic.”
—
Evgeny Morozov in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
And I am nodding vigorously.
More:
Silicon Valley is very clever at branding old phenomena [as] new. Silicon Valley would claim crowd-sourcing is unique and revolutionary, but in the 18th century, the British government ran a competition to determine longitude at sea. Toyota announced a competition to design its logo, and people sent submissions by mail.
— From NYC.
“When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word “prose,” or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer.”
—
Reporter Michael Hastings, who died yesterday in a car crash in Los Angeles at the tender age of 33, in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit.
This is the second of a list of ten tips he gave aspiring reporters. And I can’t emphasise how important it is.
If editors wanted to hire novelists, they sure as shit wouldn’t be talking to you. Make sure your spelling and grammar are correct. Make sure you know how to synthesise, structure information and explain things simply. Forget your style: it’ll get honed by years of practice and shouting matches with your bosses.
— Via Lexi Mainland, from NYC.
“A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate–these are the folks who reap the largest rewards.”
—
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke drops some wisdom on Princeton kids.
Damn.
Oh, and there’s much, much more. Juicy stuff, too. For example:
“Remember that physical beauty is evolution’s way of assuring us that the other person doesn’t have too many intestinal parasites.”
— Thanks to Ezra Klein, from NYC.
May 2013
14 posts
“There was no more forceful intellectual voice in support of the Iraq War than Christopher Hitchens. There were others who were more prominent, more influential or more persuasive, but Hitchens was the perfect shill for an administration looking to cast its half-baked invasion plans as a morally righteous intervention, because only he could call upon a career of denunciations of totalitarianism and defenses of human rights. (The fact that the war was supposed to be justified by weapons Saddam was supposedly developing didn’t really matter to Hitchens.)”
—
When Hitch was wrong, he was disastrously wrong.
And so we had the world’s self-appointed supreme defender of Orwell’s legacy happily joining an extended misinformation campaign designed to sell an incompetent right-wing government’s war of choice. The man who carefully laid out the case for arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes was now palling around with Paul fucking Wolfowitz.
I am always amazed when I see people project Hitchens as a “tolerant, peace loving, enlightened” man. Pareene calls Hitchens what he truly was: A bellicose warmongering misogynist. Many somehow forget that Hitchens called comedienne Wanda Skyes a “black dyke” in a review once. Many also somehow forget that when Hitchens was informed of the rising number of Iraqi civilians killed in the US invasion of Iraq, he said: “The death toll is not nearly high enough.”
How someone can possibly respect this man with all his violent views, is simply beyond me.
(via mehreenkasana)
‘Nuff said.
— From NYC.
“Actually, it’s pronounced ‘pedant.’”
—
Avery Edison (@aedison) December 6, 2009
— Via texburgher, from NYC.
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