Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Raymond Carver: Vicarious Slumming for the WSJ
It’s Raymond Carver night at the Rumpus! Moments after I wrote and scheduled the preceding post, I saw this tweet from the Library of America: “WSJ on Raymond Carver: ‘There must be few story collections whose notes offer more melodrama…
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David Ulin on the LOA’s Raymond Carver
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is stunningly desolate, a group of stories so laconic they almost perfectly reflect the resignation of characters struggling with alcoholism, infidelity and the desperation of diminished dreams… “Despite the book’s success,…
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Little Old Riding Hood
Speaking of evolution, it turns out that many common fairy tales are older than originally thought. Dr Jamie Tehrani has studied “35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood” and has been tracking them back to their origin. Previously thought to…
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Poems for the Gmail Generation
Brandon Scott Gorrell’s debut collection, During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present is an anxious, ambivalent ode to Internet culture.
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The Evolution of On the Origin of Species
Science is fluid. Like everything else it progresses and evolves. Even Darwin’s On the Origin of Species transformed over the course of several editions. For example, “the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ — usually considered central to the theory and…
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Animals That Do Exist
I like how one of these incredible animals that actually do exist is just a really huge cat. Some other animals that DO exist? More cats! But the real payoff is the weird scrolling message at the end: WE’RE ALL…
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Mexico May Be Having A Tough Year
With the Grand Guignol that is the drug-fueled civil war gripping the country. The LA Times, trying to summon the glory of its former self as a top notch international paper, is covering its backyard well, with timelines, indexes, interactive…
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Health Care Links
“I still believe we can do great things.” Obama’s health care speech. Senator Ted Kennedy’s letter to Obama about health care (delivered after Kennedy’s death): ‘At stake is the character of our country.’ Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who shouted out…
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The Rumpus Interview with MC Lars
I was taken with the lyrics, the energy, and pure joy of the performance.
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Morning Coffee
Have you been trying to find someone to date who shares your love of Sean Hannity? Despite all of our advances in technology, sometimes pigeons are the way to go. Department of questionable science: Scientists levitate mice using magnetic fields.…