Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Morning Coffee
Pictures of people looking at monuments. Eventually all of photography will just fold into itself. Using Google Earth and the country of Slovenia to create a satelite alphabet. (via Metafilter.) Did I just mention Slovenia? That must mean it’s time…
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The Science of Happiness
From an interview in The Sun with psychologist Barbara Fredrickson: “[Some] researchers have found that the number of positive emotions a person feels predicts his or her satisfaction with life. What we’ve done is uncover how positive emotions actually cause us…
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Caleb Crain Elaborates
Surely you remember our note about Caleb Crain’s new book, The Wreck of the Henry Clay? (He noticed us!) If you don’t remember the story, then briefly: it’s a collection of untimely essays from his blog, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, edited…
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Evening Cocktail
It’s been a hot day, so have a cold one. The nation’s first public library was founded on this day in 1731, when Benjamin Franklin and fifty associates pooled their books, and annual dues to buy more books, for the…
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“Reading That’s Bad for You,” or: Lessons in Publishing
Ron Charles of the Washington Post reports on Electric Literature, a new bi-monthly magazine that is making lit. mags differently. I’ve noted five lessons about publishing via Electric Literature’s watershed model: “Amid all the dismal reports about the death of…
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Corpus Delicti
Sometimes, in the work of German-Danish artist Christian Lemmerz, a “child’s christening is symbolised with a baptismal font in white marble with the inside shaped as a baby coffin….[A] wet grave filled with Kölner Wasser, to dampen the stench.” In…
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Don’t Look Back
A memoir by a critic for The Onion views a troubled youth through the lens of popular culture
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Nietzsche and a Reverend Walk into a Blog…
An interesting look at atheism, Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals, and religion by Reverend Dr. Giles Fraser (the vicar of Putney). Yes. Reverend. Fraser has been a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford and wrote Redeeming Nietzsche: On the…
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The Last Book I Loved: Hunts In Dreams
In the end, Hunts In Dreams is not a particularly deep book. But it’s rich, strange, comforting and sad all at once.
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George Pelecanos’ Favorite Westerns
The Magnificent Seven (1960) A handful of professional gunmen led by black-clad Yul Brynner are hired to protect a south-of-the-border farming village from scores of bandits in John Sturges’ western adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai.
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Morning Coffee: Science Edition
Hey there July, how are you today? Steven Pinker picks his three favorite pieces of science writing for 3quarkdaily. (via Metafilter.) Bacteria as psychedelic art piece. Scientists have developed a way to fuel hydrogen based engines on chicken feathers. I…