January 2012
20 posts
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“There’s no indication that Apple was in a bidding war over Tim...”
– Matthew Yglesias, “Tim Cook’s Payday”
(via Ezra Klein)
Related: “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”, from This American Life.
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Demolition Looms for 'Blues Brothers' Mall →
The shopping mall that the Blues Brothers wrecked in 1979, immediately after it closed, is still standing. For another couple weeks.
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Supreme Court Gives the Go Ahead for... →
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“I approached [“Treat Her Like a Lady”] with a textbook’s worth...”
– Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, p. 141.
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“The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope...”
– Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”
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For Their Own Good →
A historical perspective on Newt Gingrich’s embrace of child labor.
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The Rick Santorum that America doesn't know →
Will Bunch argues that Santorum’s “Google problem” is a diversion from real problems with his political career and personal ethics, of which he provides a guided tour. Among the least of his offenses: “a so-called ‘leadership PAC’ created by Santorum that was supposed to fund other Republicans instead seemed to mostly pay for the lifestyle of Santorum and those...
December 2011
26 posts
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“Ryan’s surgical approach may be the perfect fit, putting the country’s fiscal...”
– Tony Lee, on 2011 Human Events Conservative of the Year Paul Ryan. Check out those metaphors!
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Food drives: Charities need your money, not your... →
Matthew Yglesias: “In-kind donations still help, of course, and nobody’s turning away boxes of food. But a fundamental issue is that many organizations feel that asking for money—like requesting cash as a gift—seems somewhat gauche. So, let me be rude on their behalf: Find well-managed charities in your community and trust them to know how to do their job. They have access to food at a...
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“Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both...”
– Glenn Greenwald, “Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths”
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At Last, Nations Agree to Landmark Climate Deal →
When I was copying NPR’s headline, my phone decided I meant “At Least,” and that’s not so wrong. As far as I can tell, this is another “we agree that we will agree on something, later” deal. It’s not enough to avert catastrophe, but it’s more than anyone thought we would get this year. So, merry Christmas!
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“[T]he basic problem with Washington’s conversation over debt is we’ve taken a...”
– Ezra Klein
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random thoughts on email filtering →
I ran across this a little while ago. It’s 17 years old today. I think I was pretty sharp, worrying about “filter bubbles” before Amazon, Google, or MySpace existed. Way to go, 1994 me.
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An Architecture Firm That Likes Its Urbanism... →
The lead sentence here is textbook: “Over a decade ago, Dwell published its first Modern Across America issue, devoted to discovering good design in unexpected places such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin or Louisville, Kentucky.” Unexpected by whom? And I like the word “discovering” - you know, like Columbus.
Anyway, aside from that it’s a pretty good article about Kansas...
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The Mini-States Of Cairo →
I don’t get all the jokes in Karim Shafei’s exegesis of Cairo, but the ones I get (via Global Voices Online) are pretty good: “In spite of the fact that the historical language of Cairo is Arabic, the language has evolved differently in each of Cairo’s mini-states to the point that it has become difficult for the residents of one mini-state to understand the residents of another....
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Lowry Bridge Update–Work Must Continue →
Hennepin County has agreed to put bike lanes on the new Lowry Avenue Bridge but should go one step further and add “slip ramps,” so bikers who aren’t comfortable near 40+ mph traffic have a safe way to get on and off the adjacent sidewalk trail.
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“Cathy Wurzer: Swede Hollow was destroyed by fire. Looking at the pictures,...”
– MPR today has a short but striking slideshow on St. Paul’s Swede Hollow, once an immigrant community (Swedish, Irish, Italian, Mexican) and now a park.
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10 Great Things about Sidewalks in the Wintertime →
Bill Lindeke: “When snow falls, driving sucks. Ice and snow might double or triple your daily commute. Thus winter, for most people, is a slow torture, stuck in traffic, wait for a car to warm up. Winter is like being trapped on a remote island, eternally scraping ice off your windshield like an Eskimo Sisyphus.
“Well, winter doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re...
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'Funkytown' songwriter leads copyright fight... →
Local interest aside, this is something to watch: A 1976 amendment to the Copyright Act “gives song authors the right to re-claim ownership of the song’s copyright after 35 years. It applies to all recordings released since Jan. 1, 1978. Congress decided 35 years is enough time for a label to benefit from any riches a song has produced.” Wonder how that’ll play out.
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“Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press...”
– Patrick Meighan
In related news, I hear Hennepin County confiscated most of OccupyMN’s stuff today.
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“I’d say I’ve worked on more films that want to find the imaginary version of New...”
– Nick Carr
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“We’re not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up...”
– Bill McKibben, “The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium”
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Middle-Class Areas Shrink as Income Gap Grows, New... →
Sabrina Tavernise: “The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970, according to a new study, as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.”
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“In short, the 21st century, if we survive, will be a kind of women’s lib world....”
– Isaac Asimov, circa 1974, has some things to say about the future.
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November 2011
22 posts
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Behind the Throne: Alinsky, Strauss, and the... →
Nice piece on the search for intellectual conspiracies.
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You may think it’s self-evident that whatever people think of the Occupy movement, they shouldn’t fracture veterans’ skulls, drive cars into protesters, etc. Roy Edroso rounded up some rightwing bloggers who disagree.
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Riding on the Shoulder →
In case anyone missed it: Jake Mohan’s Twin Cities Runoff article about “The Marginalized Cyclists of the Twin Cities” is good.
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“There was water before there was bottled water. Nobody was dying of thirst.”
– Chris Lane of Xanterra Parks and Resorts, a concessions company that stands to lose from a ban on disposable water bottles in the national parks, and is lobbying for the ban anyway.