I’m not exactly an insider here at The Rumpus. I’m not really an outsider either. I’m the Sunday editor. …more

The Daily Rumpus is an email Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott writes and sends out anywhere from two to five times a week. Most of them are not posted online, but subscribing is free. Just send an email here. This is an excerpt from the one he sent out this morning:

I was reading about the BEA and the launch of Bay Citizen and I thought I should say something about publishing and then thought I didn’t have much to say. But then I thought that books, like so much else, are moving toward community. …more

Hey fellow nerds, guess what? Every Popular Science has gone online! All 137 years. And it’s free! And it’s searchable! It’s much better than watching the Oscars. I promise.

I did a search for “Rumpus” and came up with this picture from 1947. Also, there were instructions on how to use the already existing plumbing from a “powder room” to make a bar, without losing the powder room. All of that seemed about right.

And then I decided to search for the phrase “uh-oh,” because that could only end well, and I learned what kind of man uses Vaseline Hair Tonic.

What can you find?

(via Boing Boing)

Stephen Elliott explores Christmas in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s an excerpt.

In the group homes, holidays weren’t so bad because we teenagers were all in the same parentless boat. Depending on the home, we would be given presents and there would be a nice meal. Volunteers would take us ice skating or bowling or something like that.

It was when I became a nominal adult, a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, that I began to understand my predicament.

Winter break would come; the students scattered; the dorms closed. And I had to figure out where to go.

Go check out the whole thing.

The future of book reviewing is online.

I say this not as a cheerleader for all things hi-tech (hell, I don’t even own an iPod), nor as some prophet of the post-physical book, but because the model of book reviewing we’re used to – delivered by the priestly class of critics; limited by paper, ink, column inches; determined by the latest microtrend and by who an author’s agent had lunch with – is clearly history. …more