January 2012
16 posts
HARPER'S MAGAZINE—Into the Harper’s Archive: On... →
“Our February cover story, “Killing the Competition,” by long-time contributor Barry C. Lynn, is on the emergence of new digital monopolies. “Because of the overthrow of our antimonopoly laws a generation ago,” Lynn notes, we “find ourselves subject to the ever more autocratic whims of the individuals who run our giant business corporations.” The piece has been excerpted here, and the full...
'Ralph Nader Responds to Obama's State of the... →
“Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. “[Obama] says one thing and does another,” Nader says. “Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There...
Rahm's Army →
“It’s tough times in the Windy City. Unemployment’s high, especially for black youth. The church-run social-service agencies are jumping. Conditions are ripe for recruitment to the mayor’s new army of rent-a-protesters to counter the growing mass resistance to neighborhood school closings. Chicago political machine hustlers like Englewood’s Rev. Roosevelt Watkins III,...
Shame of a nation →
“After a decade of No Child Left Behind and three more years of Race To The Top, Black and Latino teenagers in U.S. schools are performing at academic levels equal to or lower than those of 30 years ago. According to a studyby the Education Trust (one of the main supporters of NCLB), reasons for the low performance include:
Lowered expectations for students of color
Growing income...
A Letter From Susan Bernofsky, Translator of... →
“In 1905 Robert Walser packed his bags and left behind his native Switzerland for the bustling metropolis of Berlin. The fledgling author, twenty-seven years of age, had just published his first book of fiction, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze (Fritz Kocher’s Essays), and moving to Berlin was the obvious next step for him to take in the pursuit of a proper literary career. Just a year before he had...
An Excerpt From “Killing the Competition: How the...
By Barry C. Lynn, from Harper’s
Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up—every so often—a wonder.
But these days, we see a different kind of fear in the eyes of America’s entrepreneurs and...
more than 95 theses: Czeslaw Milosz, from "From... →
ayjay:
My generation was lost. Cities too. And nations. But all this a little later. Meanwhile, in the window, a swallow Performs its rite of the second. That boy, does he already suspect That beauty is always elsewhere and always delusive? Now he sees his homeland. At the time of the second mowing. Roads winding uphill and down. Pine groves. Lakes.
“Anti-π activists celebrated Tau Day. ‘People find themselves almost...”
– Findings—By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi and tauday.com
Samuel Beckett - Nohow On
c-d:
PDF
Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho
seedy: E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 →
c-d:
Here [PDF]
This centennial edition of E. E. Cumming’s Complete Poems, published in celebration of his birth on October 14, 1894, contains all of the poems published or designated for publication by the poet in his lifetime.
At the time of his death in 1962, E. E. Cummings was, next to…
“All education begins with reading and writing: and it is principally by means of...”
– Wyndham Lewis, ‘The Democratic Educationalist State’ from The Art of Being Ruled (1926)
Vaslav Nijinsky by Paul Iribe →
From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model →
An educator from the Scandinavian country that ranks among the world’s leaders in school quality visited New York and explained his nation’s success.
November 2011
1 post
The Brutal Truth About Penn State →
“The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children. That is all they are about. The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the possibility that people lied to a grand jury about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the likelihood that most of the people who had the authority at Penn State to stop the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky...
September 2011
11 posts
6 tags
KUTCHER RELATIONSHIP NEWS OVERSHADOWS OTHER...
US—Ashton Kutcher cautioned his Twitter followers not to make any assumptions about his marriage assuaging the public with a well-timed photo-op showing him wearing his wedding band.
“Guys,” he tweeted, “we’re cool. Bruce is cool and Demi is cool.” Then launched into a promotional stream of texts about a tiny camera.
The Internet world breathed a collective sigh of relief as rumors were...
4 tags
TECH REPORTER ELATED WITH CLEVER TITLE
INTERNET—A tech reporter for a spammy e-news site is elated with the clever title he came up with for a recent post. He recounted the tale of creating, “Watch out iPad: Even indirect Fire can cook Apples” to pals at a local dive-bar.
“I was just getting some coffee when that gem of a title came to me,” the 20-something told friends for the 58th time that evening. “I mean, I know I’m a smart guy,...
4 tags
67-YEAR-OLD "RESCUED"
LOS ANGELES—The family of a 67-year-old Lake Hughes man celebrated his return Friday after he plunged off the side of a mountain while driving through the Angeles National Forest, then survived for six days eating bugs and leaves and drinking creek water.
The man was noticeably agitated when questioned about his spirits, stating to reporters on the scene, “I’m 67, motherfuckers. Do you think I...
3 tags
MELON-RELATED DEATHS SPAWN NICHE MARKET
COLORADO—With 13 confirmed fatalities so far, a series of listeria illnesses linked to recalled Colorado cantaloupes has become one of the deadliest food-related outbreaks in decades.
Listeria, commonly thought of as a passing condition with people only being able to name a handful of melons, has hit hard in this quiet, melon-obsessed town.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” local gravedigger Kent...
5 tags
Obama Questions Existence of University
MIDWEST—President Obama continues to have trouble in Pennsylvania and Ohio as a majority of voters in those battleground states said that he does not deserve to be reelected, according to two Quinnipiac University polls released on Wednesday.
“QUINN-E-PEE-ACK?” the President enunciated incredulously as he contorted his face into what reporters are calling ‘utter disgust’. “That’s a real place?...
3 tags
SAT Cheating Changes Journalism
NEW YORK—A college student flew home to New York to impersonate high schoolers who paid him to take the SAT on their behalf, and even took the exam twice in one weekend under different identities, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The college student, no better prepared to take a meaningless and regionally biased test than the high schooler’s paying him, expressed little remorse in a statement to...
4 tags
Palin Heckler Misses Opportunity
CALIFORNIA—A heckler who got into a heated exchange with Bristol Palin at a Southern California bar and restaurant last week has apologized for the incident.
Palin had just finished riding a mechanical bull at the Saddle Ranch & Chop House when Stephen Hanks shouted, “Do you ride Levi like that? Your mother’s a whore.”
“I deeply regret saying those things,” the heckler told...
4 tags
Baby Dies, Parents Have Regrets
WINDSOR—The baby who in March was hours from being pulled off life support at a Canadian hospital but was rescued by a pro-life group that brought the boy to the U.S. for treatment, died Tuesday night in the comfort of his own home in Windsor, Ontario.
“It’s a shame, really,” a self-proclaimed “Pro-Lifinista” croaked out between sobs. “We only had a few days together in Windsor and that sick baby...
3 tags
Local Man Fools No One
CHICAGO—Local man, and generally nice guy, Ryan McCarthy just ate that fucking week-old cookie that had been taunting him for the better part of an hour.
“It’s loaded with preservatives,” he told no one/the dog, as if the ‘freshness’ was the issue and not his recent heroic efforts to become a fat piece of shit.
The dog, noticing that there was no longer any object being stuffed into McCarthy’s...
4 tags
Fatalist Wallows in Self-Pity
EARTH—A huge, dead satellite tumbling to Earth is falling slower than expected. Fatalists upset by the non-apocalyptic consequences of the satellite’s re-entry are protesting the delayed annihilation of mankind.
“It’s not fair—it’s that simple,” a man dressed in nondescript earth-tones calmly told reporters.
He looked up to overcast sky and frowned a little. Hours from now he would be wiped...
4 tags
Gov. Perry Contemplates a Beverage
TEXAS—Frontrunner Rick Perry, the most popular target for attack aside from President Obama, woke up with some bruises Friday morning at his Texas compound after fending off pointed jabs from his Republican presidential primary competitors the night before.
“I will fucking kill everyone,” Perry told reporters as he dramatically removed the ice-pack from his eye, leaned back in his rocking chair,...
July 2011
1 post
“15. Cultural revolution
Walter and he had been young in that now-forgotten era...”
– from The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 1 (1952) by Robert Musil (1880-1942). Translated by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike (1996).
June 2011
1 post
Wayne Rooney has had a hair transplant, but who...
bendawson:
ryanananaykroyd:
Chicharito?
Fabio?
Park?
Kuszczak?
Berbatov?
Obertan? ;)
Nightmare Ant had a hand in this one.
May 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
“I am kind of artisan novelist. A writer of novellas I certainly am not. If I am...”
– Robert Walser from “Eine Art Erzählung,” 1928-1929
February 2011
2 posts
December 2010
4 posts
“However, I do not know whether they had forgotten about me, whether they thought...”
– Bacacay, ‘The Events on the Banbury’, Witold Gombrowicz, pg. 192
“There are many people – happy people, it usually appears – whose thoughts at...”
– (via wwnorton)
October 2010
3 posts
September 2010
23 posts
“In the greater scheme, of course, the creative writing programme is not one of...”
– LRB · Elif Batuman · Get a Real Degree (via ayjay)
