March 2010
“If the Catholic church were a normal organization that was even moderately...”
– Exit, Voice, Loyalty and the Catholic Church — Crooked Timber
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Harvard Places Lectures Online | The Onion -...
Harvard Places Lectures Online Harvard is the latest university to offer lectures for free through Apple’s iTunes store. Here are some of the topics they have made available: The Role Of The Harpsichord In Modern Parlors Writing Comedy The Hollywood Way Areas Of Research In Neuroscience: Data You Can Help Us Log The Easiest Way To Spend $34,000 Of Your Parents’ Money Business...
“This grisly little man is not above or outside the law. He is the titular head...”
– The pope is not above the law. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
“For Ratzinger, the sole test of a good priest is this: Is he obedient and...”
– The pope is not above the law. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
“Partisan/Bipartisan by John Holbo on March 29, 2010
Suppose you have a...”
– Partisan/Bipartisan — Crooked Timber
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“For most of the time I knew Dave, the most intense interaction I had with him...”
– Jonathan Franzen on David Foster Wallace (via paulhabeeb)
Increasing Number Of Parents Opting To Have... →
WASHINGTON—According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home.
(Thank you to The Onion, once again. My morning laugh.)
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Latest internet hit app "Chatroulette" meets Lady...
via scitechbits.com Posted via web from Daydreaming Idly | Comment »
“Even if every union were to liquidate all of their assets and set aside every...”
– Drowning Democracy In An Ocean Of Corporate Money (via ryking)
Demetri Martin Is a Frustrated Web Designer |...
via ccinsider.comedycentral.com Posted via web from Daydreaming Idly | Comment »
“The bottom line: The human brain is the best learning machine on the planet and...”
– Love, sex and the male brain - CNN.com
“It’s his poker face and his analytical response to personal problems that...”
– Love, sex and the male brain - CNN.com
“All that testosterone drives the “Man Trance”— that glazed-eye...”
– Love, sex and the male brain - CNN.com
We’ve all been there…
“In terms of citizenship, the danger of replacing the polis with the polls is...”
– The Polls and the Polis (via azspot)
See also, DFW’s thoughts on the “professional smile”, and even, possibly, the Nadir cruise ship experience from “A Supposedly Fun Thing…” as synecdochic of this future.
(via shorterexcerpts)
“Look, at this point I’m less interested in making money for the movie and...”
– James Cameron trashes Glenn Beck
“I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is...”
– Waterloo | FrumForum
“The hope is that these young people will eventually leave the house when the...”
– The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME
“This transformation will be not so much political as antipolitical. The decision...”
– The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME
“Imagine a future in which millions of families live off the grid, powering their...”
– The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME
“So why are dreams so much more than literal playbacks of the day just passed?...”
– Why We Need to Dream - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com (via wehr) (via eightyeightmph)
Can Science Answer Moral Questions? Sam Harris...
via 3quarksdaily.com Posted via web from Daydreaming Idly | Comment »
Watchsoupsoup:
brooklynmutt:
“Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox.” - former Bush speechwriter David Frum
c&l
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“The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity...”
– David Foster Wallace, quoted by Zadie Smith in Changing My Mind
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“Wallace’s work rejects “goal-directed” philosophies of human...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“One way to read Brief Interviews is as a series of intimate confessions of...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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There is a weird ambient sameness to Wallace’s work. He was always asking essentially the same question. How do I recognize that other people are real, as I am? And the strange, quasi-mystical answer was always the same, too. You may have to give up your attachment to the “self.”
Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“His stories simply don’t investigate character; they don’t intend...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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They are terrified of the possibility of no emotional connection. This is what his men truly have in common, far more than misogyny: they know the words for everything and the meaning of nothing.
Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“What have we become when we “understand” ourselves so well all our...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“More significant is this idea of a looped discourse, of a language meant to heal...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“If Wallace insists on awareness, his particular creed is - to use a Wallacerian...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a...”
– David Foster Wallace
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“Wallace wanted to interrogate boredom as a deadly postmodern attitude, an...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“We self-deceive to give ourselves higher and stronger excuses to do what baser...”
– (I forget where I got this one - didn’t write down the source when I wrote this one in my notebook)
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“Dave wrote like that, as if his talent was a... →
“Dave wrote like that, as if his talent was a responsibility. He had a radical way of seeing his own gifts:
‘I’ve gotten convinced,’ he wrote, ‘that there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to do with talent, even glittering…
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“I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who...”
– David Foster Wallace
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“The dream persists, even as reality asserts itself.”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“This party is fun, all are beautiful, except for the old men who are powerful.”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“It’s easy to ridicule. Personal integrity is always ridiculed by adults...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
Glenn Beck outraged at civil rights leader acting... →
jonathan-cunningham:
By now, it’s clear that Glenn Beck has invented an entire alternate history of the United States, in which the evil Progressives seized power from the Founding Fathers sometime in the 1920s, and everything went downhill from there. Still, it wasn’t until Monday — a day after the House passed sweeping healthcare reform legislation — that the vastness of the gulf between Beck’s...
2 tags
“Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“The connection: a perverse acknowledgment of limitations. One does not seek the...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
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“In ‘Netherland,’ only one’s subjectivity is really authentic,...”
– Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
“On the face of it, the disillusioned clergymen who form the subject of Dan...”
– On Faith Panelists Blog: The faith trap - Richard Dawkins
“A new CNN poll today finds that Americans oppose the current health care plan by...”
– The GOP’s newfound love of public opinion - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
“How do Republican leaders reconcile their claim that “consent of the...”
– The GOP’s newfound love of public opinion - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com