Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Homeless Reality Show Too Real
Homeless Real World, a reality show about six homeless people in Denver, has been dismissed as too edgy by TV execs. Funny, we thought edginess was a desirable quality in reality TV. Maybe by too edgy they mean: Our viewers…
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What Will Become of the Word “Ponzi”?
When Bernard Madoff described his investment business as a ‘giant Ponzi scheme’, he gave a somewhat obscure phrase, used to describe a swindle that pays early investors using money from later investors, a huge boost.
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Detroit’s Brewster Projects: What’s Left
Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Mary Wilson lived out their early lives in the Brewster Projects in Detroit, the first federally funded public housing for African Americans. Unfortunately, the abode of these legends of the lyric is falling to pieces.…
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The Fine Art of Quitting
To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle. — Confucius
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War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery
With echoes of 9/11, the protagonist of Jim Knipfel’s novel flees the ubiquitous surveillance of a not-so-futuristic government.
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Film Bites
Though Gravure: The New American Journal touts itself as a fashion journal, its online presence offers a portal into a standout cultural corridor. Check out these three great short films for example: Urban Cowboy, Gymnasium, Kai Kuhne.
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
It’s Wednesday, which means that it’s time for another roundup of things we think you might want to read from book blogs around the Internet. Since last time, the Internet has been abuzz with the idiosyncrasies and failings of canonical…
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Ariane Conrad: A Poem I Love
You’d think Stanley Kunitz, near 70 and hobbling through “Touch Me” would have slid off my 19 year old self. But it was the only poem that stuck, from a night of literary luminaries. 15 years later, returning—not the first…
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Morning Coffee
13 Scientific truths that do not make any sense at all. Frustrated by the state of the stock market? Perhaps trained rats could do a better job. Biology Today, a 1972 science textbook that is beautiful and bizarrely psychedelic. The…