Iced Borscht

FRIDAY NIGHT LINKS

MC — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:43:45 +0000

A Recap of the 2013 NFL Season, Based on Nothing But the Outrageous Predictions of NFL Players

Dogs Experience Runner’s High

Lost Lands Found by Scientists

Scientific American blogger advocates book burnings

“The Reverse Peephole” is an ace Seinfeld episode

The “Women’s Lib” issue of Wonder Woman

U.S. Seizes Top Bitcoin Exchange

World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Together

Book Shopping Cart, at the Moment

MC — Wed, 15 May 2013 02:05:29 +0000

I’ve been in a literary dry spell for a while. Bought a Gore Vidal book and barely touched it. And I haven’t bothered to finish a few other things sitting around. Can’t get motivated to properly dig into this quite yet either.

But there are a few newly available titles trickling into the market right now, and they have my interest piqued.

A few of them:

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, by Douglas Rushkoff

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, by Radley Balko

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker

The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure, by Kevin Williamson

The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia, by Roger Kimball

The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, by Jesse Walker

Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

Thoughts, anyone? I like the title for Kimball’s book, which apparently came out last year. Reminds me of the name I gave to a tag/category cloud on this site long ago, i.e. the Permanence of Fatuousness.

UPDATE: Got the Kindle version of Williamson’s book. So far, so good. Very engaging read early on.

Related articles

San Francisco

MC — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:19:05 +0000

Recently returned from San Francisco. Some pics, below.

On the Playlist Lately

MC — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:04:27 +0000

Recent Tumblr Finds

MC — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:42:34 +0000

Related articles

TuesLinks

MC — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:59:34 +0000

David Hillshafer: The Mass Murder Problem

Eighteen Beautifully Bizarre Places You Should See

Golfing America’s National Cemetaries and Parks

Google Searches Show The Seasonal Trends Of Mental Illness

Jack Shafer: Who’s Afraid of the Koch Brothers?

Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood: Black Pudding

Obama To Grads: Reject Voices That Warn About Government Tyranny

People Who Talk Frequently Talk About Themselves Are More Prone to Depression

Ray Harryhausen Has Died

The Hoover Institution’s Arctic Security Initiative

Top 10 Strangest Things in Space

Wisconsin Family Discovers Fully Stocked Fallout Shelter in Their Backyard 50 Years After it was Installed at the Height of the Cold War

Afternoon Links

MC — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:18:34 +0000

Daniel Kalder: “Rider Publishing, an imprint of Ebury at Random House, acquired rights to Crossing the Border, a memoir by Jang Jin-sung – former ‘court poet’ to Kim Jong-il, and will publish next spring…Jang was so trusted that he met Kim Jong-il twice. The first time, Jang explained in an interview with the BBC last January, ‘I was overwhelmed and full of emotion. But at the same time I thought the image I had received of him – through brainwashing – was very different to how he appeared in person.’ Kim gave the poet an gold Rolex worth $11,000 (£7,000) and granted him the ‘sacred immunity’ that only the microscopic minority who spent 20 minutes in the presence of the god-dictator received. Now Jang could not be prosecuted without special permission from on high. At the second meeting, ‘We sat at a performance together, and he kept on crying while he watched it. I felt his tears represented his yearning to become a human being, to become an ordinary person.’”

More Kalder: “One of the things I like most about European graphic novels is the wide range of genres on offer. Some of these are very different from what you can find in American comics, where you very rarely encounter historical epics. In France though, you can find stories set in the Middle Ages, Ancient Rome, Renaissance Italy, Byzantium or set in the Middle East during the crusades. Indeed, my understanding is that the French are crazy for stories set during the crusades.”

UrbDezine San Diego: “Purge the term NIMBY from your language and your thinking. It stultifies any further understanding of community concerns, or how to reach a compromise. Every criticism or opposition to a high density project is now labeled as NIMBYism, with little further discussion of community concerns. Community stakeholders typically have great knowledge of their neighborhoods though they may not use formal planning terms.”

Yahoo Sports: ”If [Tim Tebow] wants to make it in the NFL, he needs to change. He needs to learn the game. He needs to become a backup at some team that has an established quarterback, like New Orleans or New England. He also needs to stop being a media presence. Tebow is a wonderful human being: polite, gentle, compassionate and giving. But he also never met a camera he didn’t like. He wants to be a public figure so that he can spread the gospel he believes in. That’s fine and it’s even OK that he has used football to do it. However, he is now at a point where being in the public eye detracts from his ability to make it as a football player. Teams don’t like the sideshow Tebow brings. The Jets tried to trade him this offseason and found no takers.”

Nearly Everyone in America is Freakishly Stupid, Edition DCLXVI

MC — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:21:03 +0000

The idiot clamor of the Humorless Class has reached an intolerable apex.

To wit: psychotically stupid web site Jezebel is attempting to characterize Sean Tejaratchi, one of the most clever/open-minded/likable people in the Twitterverse, as sexist.

So I guess it’s official — almost everyone in America has lost their mind.

*****************UPDATE! Tej responds in kind, and the results are scintillating.*****************