Other
-
An Elegy for Oxford American
There has been a shakeup recently at literary magazine The Oxford American. Editor and founder Marc Smirnoff and managing editor Carol Ann Fitzgerald were fired on July 15. They have since compiled a website detailing events leading up to and after their…
-
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
I imagine you’ve been wondering how sperm whales sleep. You know what are crazy? 3D printers are crazy. Perhaps you’ve been wanting to name a flower. Good news! Very old tea. Let us now consider advances in Olympic photography (while…
-
We Can Be Heroes
“Poems are made of words that live in bodies — bodies shaped by line breaks, and fixed forever in space, on the page. Picture a gymnast in relation to the trampoline, the invisible line between the two driven equally by…
-
Community Bookstore 2.0
The Washington Post reports on the efforts to save a bookstore near and dear to the hearts of many Bay Area residents. Until its first closure in 2005, Kepler’s Books had been a Menlo Park institution since it’s founding in…
-
Dissecting the Hack
At Wired, Mat Honan shares an in-depth account of being hacked, revealing how security flaws in the online ecosystem contributed to the destruction of his entire digital life. “In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to…
-
Former Eagle Scouts Fight The Boy Scouts Of America’s Anti-Gay Policy
Maggie Koerth-Baker documents the ongoing confrontation centered around the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy. Many former Eagle Scouts are combating the policy by writing to the Boy Scouts of America and returning their badges, an effort that is being…
-
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Things that are good about the world today: micro-libraries and baby weedy sea dragons. Let’s all enjoy some defaced album covers. Is it just me, or has it been ages since I’ve linked to awesome old natural history drawings? On…
-
Mark Twain, Silent Movie Star
Check out the “only existing footage” of iconic American author Mark Twain – a silent film snippet from 1909 taken at Twain’s Connecticut home by his friend Thomas Edison. (Via The Atlantic)
-
Sean Stewart and the Underground Press
“No matter how you feel about the whole thing, what can’t be denied is that millions of people feel betrayed. The people held up their end of the bargain and rightly feel that they got sold out.” At Guernica, Matthew Newton…
-
Notable San Francisco: 8/6-8/13
This week in San Francisco . . . Monday 8/6 – Quiet Lightening will be having a reading at the Conservatory of Flowers as part of their summer series The Greenhouse Effect. Doors open at 6:30pm so people can peruse…
-
A History of Mars Exploration
Last night, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars, beginning its year long exploration of the planet. The Guardian has compiled a short history of Mars musing, which highlights scientists’ fascination with the planet. Since their first sightings in…
-
Sikh Temple Shooting
Our thoughts are with the victims of yesterday’s tragedy in Wisconsin. The suspect has been identified as Wade Michael Page, a 40-year old Army veteran and white supremacist. More on the man’s involvement with white-supremacy can be found here. “Racism…