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  • Random Media Notes

    What would happen if Glenn Beck had to appear before Judge Judy? Jezebel has the answer. A poet from the Bronx sues Oprah…for one TRILLION dollars. Fox News is really just performance art masquerading as a news station, right? Right?…

  • Weaponizing Irony

    I have to admit, I feel a little assaulted myself after reading this proposal from Princeton Professors D. Graham Burnett and Jeff Dolven, which was a response to a request from Lockheed Martin for research initiatives. Warning: this isn’t Alanis…

  • Subscribe Anyway

    Okay, the Slate video was cute the way it compared newspaper reporters to starving children in Africa, but it reminded me of something the poet Jake Adam York suggested on Facebook a few months ago–that with the large number of…

  • Saturday Morning Links

    Welcome to Saturday, everyone. Hope you find this stuff as entertaining as I did. I’m not quite sure just what to make of this story: women in bathing sits and cartoonists drawing on them. Interesting photos at the very least.…

  • Indie Bookseller Weighs in on the Kindle

    In San Francisco there’s a great little indie bookstore called Borderlands Books, which sells science fiction, fantasy, and horror titles. In a recent newsletter, store founder Alan Beatts offered his perspective on the Kindle and Amazon’s power to unpublish titles…

  • Lies and Deception

    “You wouldn’t want to live in a world where you can’t be conned, because if you were, you would be living in a world with no trust. That’s the price you pay for trust, is being conned.” Yesterday we highlighted…

  • A Field Guide To Military Urbanism

    “I mean, when you’re forced to smuggle, by sheer necessity of survival, due to forces completely outside of your own control, when the power to decide your own destiny has been taken from you (as a nation), can it really…

  • Morning Coffee

    Dan and Stephen are both going to be out of town next week. It’s ok, we’ll make it through this. A little hometown pride: San Francisco turning toxic site into UN Global Warming Center. These things are sort of lame,…

  • The Joys Of Overland Travel

    In my opinion, the worst part about travelling is flying. It’s expensive, it’s boring, the food is awful, the people are usually not that interesting, the environmental and financial impact is profound and it takes a long, long time, especially…

  • An Agrarian Revolution In Detroit (And Oakland)

    “Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there…

  • “Lying has to be verbal. Do I believe that?”

    “Ricky Jay is an actor, bibliophile, historian of magic, arguably the greatest living sleight-of-hand artist, and a master of the art of deception. He seemed to be the perfect person to consult on the relationship between deception and lying. After…

  • Morning Coffee

    Is your time too valuable to spend doing errands and chores (obviously if you are reading this it is)? Might we suggest “instead men?” “How Is America Going to End?“ The inside scoop from the world’s leading futurologists. Plus “Choose…