Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Are these really advances?
I think I mixed some Haterade in with my coffee this morning, because the technology news has me shaking my head and wondering if some of these things being touted as breakthroughs are really all that awesome. Rik Fairlie at…
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Study Confirms Existence of the Itis
Aaron Magruder Creator of The Boondocks, must feel vindicated by food science these days. A study in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology seems to confirm the existence of a phenomenon Magruder described in Season…
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Saturday Morning Links
Morning, everyone. Here are some links to get your weekend started. I suspect that I’ll never be buying in a bar where bartenders harvest the grain that makes their spirits. I was a bartender while in college, and I didn’t…
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A Theory of Social Justice
I’ve previously mentioned The Examined Life, the film and book that examines the views of eight contemporary philosophers, and after watching the film American Casino yesterday — which investigates the subprime lending scandal and presents some awful examples of social…
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One Hell of a Gap
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. An updated graph showing the income share of America’s top %0.01 from 1913 through 2007 reveals that income inequality is currently at a “truly amazing” level. Just something to…
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Help Make a Story
“Any bird departing the yard in a north-north-westerly direction could by chance alight on the window-ledge of room 62A of the Florencio Motel, where a recently arrived woman is living out of a suitcase and several single-serving cereal boxes.” A…
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Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #1: Kafka at the 50 Yard Line
Introducing Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner, a new Rumpus column where Steve Almond highlights a wonderfully bad poem written by him, his younger self, or another bad poet. Enjoy. Kafka At The 50 Yard Line (Shady Side) Cockroach and quarterback…
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On the Couch
The protagonist of this novel about addiction, therapy, and recovery, confronts many of the same issues as its author.
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Choose Your Own “Adventure”
In his post “The Limits of Narrative” Mark Pritchard links to Alison Flood’s recent article “How I learned to cheat at reading” in which she writes “It was the Choose Your Own Adventure books that led me astray.” Flood admitted…
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Random Media Notes
The New York Times is going into the wine business in hopes of making some scratch. Glenn Beck continues to lose sponsors. Top US media companies and marketers have created a consortium to challenge Nielsen. Jon Friedman writes “CNN’s Lou…
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Grandmaster of 108
“Born in Greece and raised on West 71st Street in Manhattan, Kessler started skateboarding when he was 11. This was in the 1970s, a time when skateboarding was so alien to New York City that he had to mail-order his…
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Magic Gardens
“I’m a stripper, rocker, bartender, and writer. I had a lot of plans last year, but none of them involved breast cancer. The disease sidetracked my livelihood, threatened my life, and forced me to reinvent my chest. So far, I’ve…