NY Times
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Bill Keller on Books
Bill Keller is doling out more contentious opinions! We already found out what he thought about twitter— its consequences on our cognitive abilities and its potentially deleterious effect on the well-being of his thirteen year-old daughter. But now he is…
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Tomi Ungerer Re-appreciation
Tomi Ungerer, writer of over 150 books, illustrator, engineer and designer of a cat-shaped kindergarten, considers himself “basically an author,” amidst all his varying accomplishments. This NY Times article features an excerpt from an interview. Recently, his career has been…
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Monetary Support for Indie Bookstores
Anybody who appreciates the community value of their local independent bookstore knows about the monetary pressure imposed by Amazon and internet-based competitors. So if you really appreciate the value of independent booksellers and the literary community it supports, why shouldn’t…
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Where Has All the Anonymity Gone?
What are the cultural consequences of cell phone cameras, social media websites, and online photo hosts? The degradation of anonymity and an obscured understanding of privacy. It’s shockingly simple to identify people on the web—whether to scorn them for an…
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Evolutionary Arguing
Next time you’re basking in the glory of your ability to reason, thinking that you’re closer to arriving at some sort of ultimate truth, consider this first. Apparently, our reasoning instincts come from a primordial impulse to win arguments, a…
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Sorkin and Carr Discuss the News
Director Aaron Sorkin’s conversation with NY Times columnist (and intrepid memoirist) David Carr for Interview Magazine delves into the territory of addiction, journalistic journeys and the state of news media. He uncovers much about the state of journalism in these…
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Sounds like a reasonable position
Reykjavik just elected a comedian to be its mayor. Jon Gnarr is the head of the Best Party, which took just over a third of the vote in the recent elections, which means they control 6 of the City Council’s…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
With the year winding down, the book blogs have been ablaze with your typical speculations about the best of this and that. But perhaps there are less obvious threads out there if we only knew where to look. . .…
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Expression So Vile
The First Amendment case that’s getting most of the attention this year involves Citizens United and political speech by corporations, in large part because most court watchers believe that the Court’s conservative majority is going to overturn almost a century’s…
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Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
It’s Saturday night, the skies are cloudy, and the satellite reception keeps cutting in and out. Guess it’s time for some poetry links. I don’t generally link to poetry reviews elsewhere, but the NY Times reviews poetry so rarely that…
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A Brief History of Economics
Two weeks in a row now I’m doing a blog post on the upcoming feature story in the NY Times Magazine. This won’t become a habit–they get plenty of attention on their own. But it’s such a good article on…
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Science Saturday
It’s time to release my inner geek. Okay, not so inner. Behold the cannibal galaxy! Triangulum, your day is coming! The nonprofit Solar CITIES is installing solar power systems in the poorest parts of Cairo. Global warming science is complex,…