July 2013

via Bill

July 30, 2013

via Kottke

July 25, 2013

Life expectancy in various parts of New Orleans:

More evidence that America has truly become a banana republic.

via The Dish

July 24, 2013

I’m still trying to parse this post from poet Kenneth Goldsmith:

There is dumb dumb and there is smart dumb. There is also smart smart. Dumb dumb is plain dumb and smart smart is plain smart. Smart dumb rejects both smart smart and dumb dumb, choosing instead to walk a tightrope between the two. Smart dumb is incisive and precise. In order to be smart dumb, you have to be really smart, but not in the smart smart way.

Dumb dumb is rednecks and racists, football hooligans, gum-snapping marketing girls, and thick-necked office boys. Dumb dumb is Microsoft, Disney, and Spielberg. Smart smart is TED talks, think tanks, NPR news, Ivy League universities, The New Yorker, and expensive five-star restaurants. By trying so hard, smart smart really misses the point. Smart dumb is The Fugs, punk rock, art schools, Gertrude Stein, Vito Acconci, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, Seth Price, Tao Lin, Martin Margiela, Mike Kelley, and Sofia Coppola. Smart dumb plays at being dumb dumb but knows better.

Being Dumb – The Awl

July 24, 2013

A photo of Saturn, with a wee Earth just below the rings, taken from the Cassini spacecraft, 1.4 billion kilometers away.

A Glimpse of Earth, Shining Brightly, From Very, Very Far Away – Slate.com

July 24, 2013

Kottke captions:

Published in 1927 in a publication called The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, this map shows what locations in California look like other places from around the world.

July 23, 2013

Detroit households making less than $30,000 per year:

The Decline of Detroit in Five Maps – The New Republic via Dave Pell

July 19, 2013

Thanks. All the best. Regards. Yours. Cheers. Family Ties.

No one can agree on the right way to end an email or letter. What’s harmless to one person is an affront to another. I like using “cheers” but apparently that makes me sound like an affected, wannabe Brit to some people. “Sincerely”, to my ear, is the least sincere way to sign off. To this guy, using “best” is “slightly creepy” and using “fondly” is “almost the same as writing ‘I hate you.'”

Good grief. Why not stop using them altogether?

July 18, 2013

The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator via Coudal

July 18, 2013

Wilbert Rideau, who served nearly 44 years for manslaughter, explains why 30,000 California inmates recently went on a hunger strike to protest the use of solitary confinement:

I know something about solitary confinement, because I’ve been there. I spent a total of 12 years in various solitary confinement cells. And I can tell you that isolating a human being for years in a barren cell the size of a small bathroom is the cruelest thing you can do to a person.

Deprived of all human contact, you lose your feeling of connectedness to the world. You lose your ability to make small talk, even with the guard who shoves your meal through the slot in the door. You live entirely in your head, for there is nothing else. You talk to yourself, answer yourself. You become paranoid, depressed, sleepless. To ward off madness, you must give your mind something to do. In 1970, I counted the 358 rivets that held my steel cell together, over and over. Every time the walls seemed to be closing in on me, I counted them again, to give my mind something to fasten on to.

And some inmates suffer irrevocable harm from the experience.

When Prisoners Protest – NYTimes.com

July 17, 2013