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  • Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears

    Jim Murdoch’s piece on the reader’s responsibility to breathe life into poems is fascinating. At the very least, it’s a good metaphor for people who teach poetry to those who don’t read it much. Here’s a look back–way back–at some…

  • Remembering Hurricane Katrina

    The fourth anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina would likely be garnering bigger headlines right now if not for the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. It might have even drowned out the howling over “socialized medicine” and “death panels”…

  • Science Saturday

    I’m starting this Science Saturday in the world of alcoholic consumption, which is a world very dear to me. I am joyful in every study that suggests moderate drinking is good for you, though I weep a bit inside when…

  • Who would win…?

    When it comes to groups willing to argue passionately over possible outcomes to contests that will never take place, Sci-Fi-ers and sports nuts are far and away the most obnoxious. Inside the world of Sci-Fi, however, there may be no…

  • Saturday Morning Links

    It’s Saturday morning. Get the sleep out your eyes and start clicking. Farhad Manjoo has some solid ideas on how to beat the Kindle. Now, if only Amazon’s competitors will listen. There is great sadness in Sequoia National Park, at…

  • Morning Coffee

    The 10 geekiest tattoos. “An essay on the horrors of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure® story” from Rudolph Delson. It is hard to have babies in outer space. Mythical creatures vendiagram-ed.…

  • Morning Coffee

    Proof that everything that could possibly exist does somewhere: Life takes you inside a fish hospital. Library themed ice cream? It turns out that coin flips aren’t fair at all. Dang, I guess I should have gone to grad school…

  • Would Tolstoy Get Tenure?

    “Name of applicant: Rimbaud, Arthur “The candidate is not suited to a university environment except as an expellable member of a fraternity – if one would take him. The committee unanimously withholds details.” Times Higher Education ponders how academic search…

  • Morning Coffee

    The LA Times looks back on “Day of the Locust.” For some reason, placebos seem to be getting more effective. Take THAT science and medical advances! Atlas Obscura is a wiki-type set for all the world’s oddities, curios, and tourist…

  • The Best Fake Holocaust Memoir Ever

    Born (and undoubtedly circumsized) in 2001, Booklyn-based Heeb Magazine has been irreverently covering Jewish culture for nearly a decade. Recently they one-upped themselves in the hilariously inappropriate category with the Germany Issue’s Fake Holocaust Memoir Competition. The winner? A “harrowing…

  • You Don’t Know Me: Bomb, Opium, Gigantic New York Summer Soiree

    Get ready to get your rocks off. Literary art mags Bomb, Opium and Gigantic are joining forces to host a night of short artistic/musical/literary programs this Wednesday, August 26th at Bowery Electric to benefit their efforts in literature and art.…

  • Morning Coffee

    Adaptive re-use of crashed starships. If presenting Wuthering Heights like a new Stephenie Meyer gets people reading, does it matter? Scientists draw squid using its 150 million-year-old fossilised ink. A look inside Writers’ Rooms. I love ewe (eww).