Via Lifehacker, I came across this useful list of 7 possibilities for what to do with your blog during vacation. I can’t even blame vacation, however, for my spotty posting this week. Bear with me.
I’m wondering if anyone else finds it odd that the one thing that drug stores keep under lock and key are razor blades.
Perhaps the increased fashion for beards and facial hair of various sorts has its vulgar Marxist explanation.
Kieran Healy compares the United States’ incarceration rate with other nations’, developed and undeveloped. The result isn’t pretty.
Tim Burke asks the question on my mind:
Is there any purpose or meaning that the word “societal” has which is not equally well served by “social”? Is “societal” just one of those words that makes you sound more policy-wonkish? Or does it really have some more specific meaning than “social”?
Are there other examples of unnecessary […]
I’m feeling a bit swamped today, but thought these posts worth a note:
Kieran Healy on cloning: "I’ve half-joked before that, purely because of this basic point, sociologists should welcome human cloning with open arms. Technically achieving the sort of things many people imagine they could do with cloning —recreate a lost child or relative, produce […]
I about choked on my coffee when I read what Stirling Newberry had to say about Kevin Phillips.
But KP is neither truly a historian, nor an economist. Where his book falls short in filling in these themes - he could have used Wallerstein, Fischer, Sen, Clark, Sachs, Stiglitz - and to be honest Newberry […]
I don’t feel like I have a lot serious to say today, so here are some of the lighter links that have piqued my eye:
Slate’s Lucinda Rosenfeld on the Gap: "The company has launched an interior redesign campaign in select locations, but this store was still marching to its old Swedish-minimalist-meets-middle-school-gymnasium drummer: pale wood floors, […]
Who gives better advice… Tyler Cowen or Neko Case?
The Globe has a story on "office-isms," those catch phrases that have become commonplace at the workplace. The thing is, the catch phrases the author cites strike me as far from the most memorable corporate catch phrases floating out there. "Out of the box" is my favorite (not to be confused with "outside the box"), […]
I was talking to a workmate, who’s several years younger than me, and I made some joke about using a slide rule. After looks of incomprehension, I confirmed that she in fact didn’t know what a slide rule was. References to the bookworm nephew in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons didn’t work either. Is this really not […]
I joined the crowd at Drinking Liberally over at Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge last night. It’s a great idea, and the folks I talked to were all nice and refreshingly excited about politics. They have nights in Boston (city center) and JP, too, as well as other towns, so check out their site.
Meanwhile, I’m […]
In perusing Democracy Arsenal, I came across this odd assertion:
But let us suppose I was a citizen. Would I enlist in the United States army? Let me be clear: Not bloody likely. For one thing, as Angryman rightly senses, I am chicken. There. I said it. (On reflection, my […]
My friend Paul has been talking to a music supervisor in preparation for a film project, and his stories are fascinating. What a labyrinthine, irrational market film music rights comprise. Boston, apparently, was asking a cool million for Boys Don’t Cry to use "More Than a Feeling" (the filmmakers declined). Bruce Springsteen, meanwhile, liked one […]
What’s worse…
Laddie culture?
…or hipster laddie culture?
Easy on the back lighting!
Source: AP, via Boston Globe