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"The proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties, would not have been so eager to open their..."

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 21:17:11 -0400

““The proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties, would not have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.””

- Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion on warantless collection of DNA (via New York Times)

"I was surprised at the controversy. Pond scum currently has a higher approval rating than Congress."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:47:36 -0400

““I was surprised at the controversy. Pond scum currently has a higher approval rating than Congress.””

- Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Gabriel Gomez’s spokesman Will Ritter responding to questions about whether Gomez regretted describing his Democratic opponent Ed Markey as “pond scum.”

"I argued that contrary to what most think … the more we learn about the Universe the more..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:40:21 -0400

“I argued that contrary to what most think … the more we learn about the Universe the more relevant we become, molecular machines capable of seeing far beyond our limited perception of reality.”

- The inevitable question? (Via Marcelo Gleisler/NPR)

"You want to talk about Tsarnaevs,” said the mayor of this city on the Chechen border, a..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:19:11 -0400

““You want to talk about Tsarnaevs,” said the mayor of this city on the Chechen border, a barrel-chested local strongman named Saigidpasha Umakhanov. “Do you know how many Tsarnaevs we have?””

- Dagestan’s bitter shadow war (via Ellen Barry/New York Times)

"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:57:11 -0400

“Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.”

- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"We have to demonstrate, we have to make it clear to the public at large — even to those who don’t..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:54:00 -0400

“We have to demonstrate, we have to make it clear to the public at large — even to those who don’t use the library — that we can’t have the kind of society that we want, for ourselves or our children, if we don’t have the kinds of access to information, ideas, creation of new ideas, access to historical documents that the libraries have provided for ages.”

- Anthony Marx, president/CEO of New York Public Library (via WBUR)

"And all the things that we can learn about ourself in the context of someone else."

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:07:18 -0400

“And all the things that we can learn about ourself in the context of someone else.”

- A Trenchant Critique (Mike Kinsella)

"One of the ways we’re learning to deal with the trade-offs inherent to real-time streams is a..."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:11:52 -0400

“One of the ways we’re learning to deal with the trade-offs inherent to real-time streams is a burgeoning self-awareness of their potential to spread misinformation in half a heartbeat. A mechanism that purports to make that stream more accurate—even though a corrections button would not fully prevent bad information from spreading—would lull us toward a more complacent, less critical view of that stream.”

- Twitter: The medium of the moment (via Matt Buchanan/The New Yorker)

"The new edition [of “The Great Gatsby”], with its Art Deco glitter, presents a stark..."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:00:08 -0400

“

The new edition [of “The Great Gatsby”], with its Art Deco glitter, presents a stark choice for readers, as well as retailers who are trying to gauge the tastes of their customers.

At stores like Barnes & Noble, with its nearly 700 outlets, both editions will be available. But at Walmart, only the movie tie-in edition will be stocked, a tacit acknowledgment that the discount chain’s customers want books that appear fresh and new (even if they happen to have been released in 1925). And at independent booksellers like McNally Jackson in SoHo, customers who want “The Great Gatsby” can purchase only the original: not a single copy of the new, cinematic edition will be for sale.

”

- Judging “The Great Gatsby” by its cover(s) (via Julie Bosman/New York Times)

"Sneaky girl. You’re pretty."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:33:46 -0400

“Sneaky girl. You’re pretty.”

- J.D. Salinger in a letter to Marjorie Sheard, 1941 (via New York Times)

"No mayor wants his city to be defined by its worst moment, but rather by its response. Especially..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:15:14 -0400

““No mayor wants his city to be defined by its worst moment, but rather by its response. Especially when the attention of the nation and perhaps the world is riveted to your home, you want to show resolve and a sense that the city will come back.””

- ‘Managing tragedy’ a defining moment for civic leaders (via NPR)

"In such unspeakable moments, words fail. This was true for those at the scene of the Marathon, but..."

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:34:52 -0400

“In such unspeakable moments, words fail. This was true for those at the scene of the Marathon, but also for many who watched from afar as photos and videos began flooding social media and the enormity of the crisis began to take shape. When there are no words, “surreal” ends up working as a proxy for more complex, inchoate emotions that are difficult to verbalize. “Surreal” says: I saw it, but I don’t understand it. And with an event as terrible as this one, that understanding may never fully come.”

- Why ‘surreal’ took over, on the words we used in the aftermath of the marathon bombings (via The Boston Globe/Ben Zimmer)

"For Pete’s sake, Boston was founded by the Pilgrims — a people so tough they had to..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:33:37 -0400

““For Pete’s sake, Boston was founded by the Pilgrims — a people so tough they had to buckle their goddamn hats on.””

- Stephen Colbert responds to Boston Marathon bombings.

"Some of Moleskine’s most enthusiastic fans are digital natives."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:32:30 -0400

“Some of Moleskine’s most enthusiastic fans are digital natives.”

- Moleskine notebooks seek growth in digital age (via Mark Garrison/Marketplace)

"In the United States, women represent not only a majority of college graduates but also a majority..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:30:20 -0400

“In the United States, women represent not only a majority of college graduates but also a majority of advanced-degree holders. But the lack of policies facilitating the work-life balance — like paid maternity leave and flexible work hours — has millions of them underemployed. It’s hard to quantify exactly how much human capital is being wasted, but one clue lies in a study by economists at the University of Chicago and Stanford. It estimates that 15 to 20 percent of American productivity growth over the last five decades has come from more efficient allocation of underrepresented groups, like women, into occupations that were largely off-limits, like doctors or lawyers. Even more efficient allocation of women’s talents would, presumably, drive further growth, which will become even more critical in the years ahead.”

- How shared diaper duty could stimulate the economy (via Catherine Rampell/New York Times)

Mining literature to map emotions through a century

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:41 -0400

Mining literature to map emotions through a century:

Anthropologists find that the use of “emotional” words in all sorts of books has soared and dipped across the past century, roughly mirroring each era’s social and economic upheavals. And psychologists say this new form of language analysis may offer a more objective view into our culture.

"He has, over two decades, redefined the meaning of power in this city, his imprint quite literally..."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:46:20 -0400

“He has, over two decades, redefined the meaning of power in this city, his imprint quite literally on every street, along every block, in every neighborhood.”

- Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory on Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s decision not to run for an unprecedented sixth term. Read the full column here.

Junot Diaz takes on Colbert

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:19:49 -0400

Junot Diaz takes on Colbert :

Writer Junot Diaz debated immigration on The Colbert Report Monday. Diaz argued that “every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That’s just the truth of it.”

"And that’s about all that was said, sitting up there on Eleventh Avenue on Christmas Eve on a..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:30:15 -0400

“And that’s about all that was said, sitting up there on Eleventh Avenue on Christmas Eve on a sled which is as old as my marriage, with a brake that is as old as my daughter. Later tonight I will stand in my yard and throw this year’s reindeer droppings on my very own home. I love Christmas.”

- Ron Carlson reads from a short story The H Street Sledding Record. Listen here, via This American Life.

Camus reads.

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:30:16 -0400

Camus reads.