January 2012
25 posts
The Most Badass Excerpt From Barney Frank's...
Interviewer: You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
Barney Frank: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Barney Frank: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?
Interviewer: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
Barney Frank: Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion?
“Well maybe she can chow down on her own smug sense of self-importance. Tell this...”
– Alan Davies as Roland White in Whites.
— From SF.
“In Europe, in the United States, throughout the world, we need to make sure we...”
–
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, seems to be saying that privacy and economic growth are incompatible.
This is, of course, the exact response you’d expect from someone who’s personally made millions (billions?) of dollars exploiting people’s...
Comedian Ruby Wax tells of being a Beatles fan during grad school:
“I used to call the operator in Liverpool from Chicago so that I could hear the accent and all my girlfriends would be crowded around the phone and when she, you know, would say ‘Livapoool’ we’d scream. We’d scream and then we’d hang up.”
(From BBC radio 4 Saturday Live)
— From London.
“The French Army Knife includes a white flag.”
– Speaking of racism, this has got to be my favorite anti-French smackdown, courtesy of friend Jameson’s American grandfather, a World War II veteran.
— From SF.
1 tag
“In one study, although researchers found that people who experienced lots of...”
– The Telegraph, last month, reported on a series of studies that show resilience is a learned skill.
The concept of resilience (defined as one’s ability to recover from negative events) is something that has always preoccupied me. For a long time, I have been convinced that resilience is the...
My mother-in-law is better than yours.
Fact.
Mrs P. always tells me how sweet she thinks it is that I call her “Mom.” And the thing is, I don’t remember how or when it started. There was no premeditation. I didn’t think it through, never asked myself, or her, what to call her. It seems conceivable that I should’ve gone through a phase of calling her “Mrs. Permenter” before Jason and I were...
December 2011
14 posts
The French Phrases →
“We don’t have time to fuck the flies in the ass: we can’t afford to nit-pick.”
Simon Evans decided to compile all of the French phrases I’ve been tweeting into a single blog, so that they can easily be found in case you need a quick and easy way to get your point across.
I’m having fun sharing these with you, and I hope you enjoy them too.
— From SF.
The Endorsement
In a recent interview satirist Barry Humphries spoke to the Financial Times about his alter ego Dame Edna Everage and his ‘nice’ childhood in Melbourne that he soon fled because it was too much so. He then created Dame Edna to be the opposite of that middle-class Melbourne with its thinly veiled racism, snobbery and one-upmanship.
But he also tells how he once knew a man who had...
“Negativity gets a bad rap. But it shouldn’t. It can also be practical, pragmatic...”
– The School of Life takes a little bit of the guilt away from not wholeheartedly joining the “cheer” of this new holiday season.
Be critical, frustrated, annoyed, at others and yourself. Tease everyone, including yourself, mercilessly. This isn’t new, we are smarter when we are...
“A lot of convenience and power could be gained, and a lot of unhappiness,...”
– David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale and a man who, 20 years ago, described with disturbing accuracy the internet as it is today, thinks computers are still too complicated.
“The industry doesn’t grasp the fundamental lack of sympathy between, conservatively, at least...
The Raw, Untreated Material That is Love
Contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton explains why love and philosphy are more like an awkward blind date than the perfect match:
“Philosophers have not traditionally been impressed: the tribulations of love have appeared too childish to warrant investigation, the subject better left to poets and hysterics. It is not for philosophers to speculate on hand-holding and scented letters....
WatchMurmuration
A chance encounter and shared moment with one of natures greatest and most fleeting phenomena.
— From Melbourne, thanks Haze.
November 2011
35 posts
Curled Toes
It was wonderful to discover that there is indeed an annual prize for the worst sex scenes in literature, the Literary Review Bad Sex in Literature Awards. And apparently the list of nominees traditionally included more male writers than female ones. Among this year’s are Stephen King, David Guterson and Lee Child. Rowan Pelling investigates why male writers are worse at sex scenes.
...
Watch“Hallelujah, I Love Her So” — Hugh Laurie, singing silly on French TV.
— From SF.
Fair Pay
A report by the High Pay Commission in Britain triggered a debate here about excessive executive pay that has brought some astonishing details to light. The report concluded that because some executive pay moved from 13.6 times the average salary at a firm in 1980 to 75 times today, it hurts the economy as employees are less likely to cooperate with their bosses.
The Guardian’s Jonathan...
Told or Known: Atheism is faith. →
ronbailey:
whileyouweresleeping:
So let’s think about it dispassionately: what is atheism? Some define it as the absence of faith. I’ve certainly experienced it as a void, an empty spot where my spirituality would’ve been. However, if we stick to strict scientific reasoning, if we remain intellectually…
And I seriously doubt you’ll find a single atheist who is interested in disproving the...
Atheism is faith.
You’ll have to forgive me, I’m new to Quora. I read a question about atheism today, and the answers (often written by atheists), seemed to be filled with half-truths about what it means not to believe in God, and completely beside the point. I think there’s much more confusion about the whole topic than is strictly necessary. These are big questions, but there’s much too...
“The mess threatens to bring down the European project and European economies. It...”
– David Brooks says it like it is.
Remember when I wrote the European crisis concerns you? Yesterday, Fitch warned U.S. banks against Europe’s worst-case scenario. This week, The Economist quoted a central banker pondering the implications of it all, because the largest conflicts of the 20th...
“The federal government requires applicants for certain civil service jobs to...”
– Should Candidates Have to Pass a Civics Test?
That is a very good question, Room for Debate of the NYTimes.com. If the humblest immigrant can nail a test Newt Gingrich could never pass, should the latter even be allowed to run?
I say no.
— From SF.
