February 2012
5 posts
Dashboard/Reader folks: I’m trying out some new formatting business here, so my last post is a little funky formatting-wise. It probably makes more sense if you click through than if you view it in-dash or in-feed.
The dialogic book-fort.
I want the line between text and hypertext to blur. I want my books as portable as texts online and I want my online texts as faithful and tangible as paper and ink. I want to copy and paste paragraphs from paper — I want to look up words and cross-reference sentences. For that, even online texts still behave too much like paper.
*“I start every dance with a box…The box documents the active...
Can critical theory be done online?
Obviously, but how does it look? How do we know what it is? How is it fostered and presented? The LA Review of Books and The New Inquiry seem to be taking a valiant stab at it. From the LA Review of Books’ interview with Rachel Rosenfelt of The New Inquiry:
Do you think there’s a kind of criticism that is more suited to the internet than to print?
It depends on how you define...
January 2012
6 posts
“The overwhelming desire to protect young girls from the corruptions of...”
– What Caitlin Flanagan’s new book “Girl Land” gets wrong about girls.
“We are often told that queer theory lacks “clarity.” But technical clarity and...”
– Queer and Then? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Young people are going through their mirror stage on Facebook, and bending the...”
– Born for Reality: Courtney Stodden and Tavi Gevinson - Hollywood Prospectus Blog
“The central problem of the Ailey repertory is that it presents no problems. Good...”
– Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as Hit Maker - NYTimes.com
Really interesting article.
Seven Questions Over Breakfast with Jon Klassen →
I Want My Hat Back is a wonderful, wonderful book. I want an excuse to buy 12 copies.
“We are frantically digging to keep the tunnel from caving in — digging for air,...”
– The New Inquiry
December 2011
4 posts
2 tags
An (incomplete) guide to Seattle, for broke-ass...
I know that MLA would be cheaper if I still lived in Seattle and could put you up in my basement, but since I moved away, you’ll have to settle for this list.
First off, where you’ll be: the Convention Center is downtown. Downtown is a nice enough place for mall shopping and chain restaurants, but you’re not allowed to judge Seattle on downtown. After dark, downtown just...
"Go on the Useless Presents."
“Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor’s cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow;...
“Sebelius’ reason: Some girls as young as 11 are physically capable of...”
– - NYTimes: U.S. Rejects Plan to Widen Availability of Morning-After Pill
I’ve read this sentence like four times now, and I can’t make any sense of it. Some girls as young as 11 are physically capable of bearing children…so we should make sure they have to? Presumably the...
“Another nice culture jam or whatever would be a remix or mashup of all these...”
– The New Inquiry - Don’t Stop Beliebing
Seriously, this article.
“If you do a close reading of almost any of these pop songs, especially the...”
– The New Inquiry - Don’t Stop Beliebing
November 2011
8 posts
1 tag
“The Occupy movement is both very new and rather diffuse so far, and appears less...”
– Too Much Violence and Pepper-Spray, The Atlantic
This sums up pretty tidily why I think this is tremendously important and moving. We’re going to see this play out over the next few years and election cycles.
3 tags
To mail books to The People's Library
kelsium:
The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
Attn: The People’s Library
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038
(via Occupy Wall Street Library Blog)
“Dancing, in its many forms and contexts, from rent parties and block parties to...”
– Turn on the Heat « Viewpoint Magazine
“If you want to worry about the culture, worry about the cramped unkindness of...”
– NPR: Monkey See
“The story about Cain is easy to understand and has a paper trail, but Cain can...”
– “How Can Can Weather his Scandal” at The Atlantic (via shuffstuff)
Oh good. Even if he was in the wrong, sexual harassment is ideologically consistent with American right-wing thought, so it shouldn’t hurt him too much.
Seriously?
October 2011
8 posts
Debating Occupy Wall Street →
“Perhaps that nebulous, self-denying space is the only one in which new social possibilities have any real chance to incubate.”
4 tags
Coherence
The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence...
“The ideology of meritocracy, though, depends on the fiction that there are no...”
– Rod Dreher » Meritocracy and the guilty lie
A stubborn insistence on the existence (or desirability) of meritocracy is probably a symptom of either a bad imagination or actual greed.
Ada Lovelace Day
People keep noting that Ada Lovelace was the “first female programmer.”
Dudes, the Countess of Lovelace “was the first to express an algorithm intended for implementation on a computer” in 18-fucking-42.
So let’s lose the “female” on this one, because it implies—however subtly—that some dude did it first.
</rant>
And let’s all go learn some...
September 2011
2 posts
In reference to this →
ipomoeaandthestarstealers:
ackb:
lemdi:
it’s another one of those things where I’m just URGH because half of that is reasonable requests and the rest is absolutely ridiculous.
Parents have every right to expect their kids to be welcome at certain kinds of events. Non-parents (and parents!) have the right to plan events where the kids aren’t there, because sometimes parents want to get away...
“Rather than thoughtfully discussing race,” he writes, “Americans...”
– from Jen Graves’s really, really important article, Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
1 post
3 tags
WatchI’ve been thinking about a range of blogs lately, a range of things I need to say. This video covers just about all of them, in a tangential way.
Watch it.
June 2011
5 posts
“The trick with songs, and with good poetry, is to make it sound like...”
– First Drafts: The Mountain Goats’ “Dance Music” in The Atlantic
“Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he’s pretty sure the world is...”
– Jon Carroll in SFGate (via @halvorson)
It’s a long way to heaven / It’s...
May 2011
2 posts
491. Be optimistic. Always pack a bathing suit.
rulesformyunbornson:
(via @JoeGannon)
April 2011
2 posts
“We’re not going to be able to do [anything useful] if we just make stuff...”
– a quote for the ages, Mr. President. (via cnn)
March 2011
5 posts
“And sometimes, and it’s as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a...”
– Neil Gaiman (via The Mavenist)
“Songs are really just interesting things to be doing with the air.”
– Tom Waits
(h/t frageelay)
“The fact that anyone reads anything at all online is a demonstration of an...”
– Erin Kissane
2 tags
“And again I am reminded by dipping into newspapers and novels and biographies...”
– Virginia Woolf
For International Women’s Day, give this a read—a real read—and cry a little. 1929, you guys.
Five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door.
A Room of One's Own →
Because it’s international women’s day, and so many parts of this essay still feel fresh and powerful.
February 2011
7 posts
“I asked, “can I help?” and the mother asked, “can you?”...”
– My best friend Celia is a beautiful human and—it makes me so proud to say this—an absolutely gorgeous writer.