April 10, 2009
This election brought to you by Starbucks
Well, not exactly. Starbucks is offering a free cup of coffee to everyone who votes in the Indonesian elections. (Via Mong Palatino at GlobalVoices
Speaker info
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April 4, 2009
Obama Obama’s exceptionalism
James Fallows has an insightful analysis of a seemingly simple answer Obama gave to a question about American exceptionalism. And in it, you can see the workings of Fallows’ writerly mind.
April 1, 2009
When the tubes were tubes
The always insight/delight/ful Molly Wright Steenson describes 19th century pneumatic tube cylinder delivery systems. Quite astounding…and all in 5 minutes and 20 slides. From the O’Reilly Ignite series.
Veggie in New Orleans
Last night in New Orleans I had a delicious veggie meal at Bennochin (1212 Royal St), an African restaurant. The restaurant is humble, inexpensive, and friendly. It’s not a veggie restaurant, but they have lots of dishes that are, or can be made, animal free. It’s next door to Mona’s, which has some veggie, cheesy Italian dishes. Since New Orleans is not the veggie-friendliest of cities — they like their seafood here! — I thought I’d make a note of it…
March 21, 2009
The wisdom of snake mobs
Amboseli baboons engage in what’s called “snake mobbing”: Rather than fleeing from a predatory snake, they approach it and sound the alarm or even, at times, attack it. (“The Information Continuum,” Barbara J. King, p.43)
Surely this must be a metaphor for something.
March 18, 2009
March 15, 2009
Recycling tip #213 from the Night Manager
Last night I woke up from a seemingly unrelated dream, and wrote down the following household recycling tip: Since you generally buy bigger gifts for people the longer you know them, to keep the gift wrap re-usable, wrap your initial gifts in way too much paper.
Look, it’s a dream, so the premises may not be entirely right, but the logic is impeccable: If you wrap your initial (small) gift in just enough wrapping paper, it’ll be too small to wrap the subsequent (bigger) gifts you buy. So, wrap that first gift in enough paper to cover your later gifts.
You’re welcome, planet Earth.
March 14, 2009
The visual display of unfathomable numbers
These images from Chris Jordan make clear the vastness of the various sorts of stuff we squander. (Thanks to Joachim for the link.)
March 7, 2009
George Madoff
You have to admit, the guy looks like George Washington. You know, the guy on the dollar bills that used to be in your pocket.
March 3, 2009
Worst presidential Freudian slips?
Paul English points to this as the worst presidential Freudian slip:
That’s pretty embarrassing, but I don’t it’s Freudian in the sense of revealing anything other than the neural difficulties in pronouncing “success.” It’s surprising we don’t pronounce it “sex sucks” or “suck sex” a full 40% of the time.
On the other hand, I don’t know how to explain this one from McCain except as revealing something deep and dark about his frame:
That one is just plain weird.
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