October 2011
11 posts
3 tags
Alright—if I blog housemate chatter, I too must be...
All three of us are in the common room, chatting.
Me: Eddie, you come out of your room so rarely, I forget how nice and funny you are.
Jess: ..That's.. a back-handed compliment...?
Me: More like a front-handed insult.. or chiding.
Jess: That's true.
Eddie: (says nothing.)
6 tags
The Paradox of the New Elite →
IT’S a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.
At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.
The two shifts are each huge and...
4 tags
Girl on a Swing
I saw a girl on a swing in her yard today, from the bus It was by the roadside of a highway lots of cars whizzing by Now I have to stop and think about how you imagined the girl to look like Could be any number of girls swinging through your minds based on who you are where you come from or what you know of me and who I am and where I come from or where I’ve lived Let me tell you now that...
4 tags
“Politics without principles,
wealth without work,
pleasure without conscience,...”
– The seven social sins, quoted by Gandhi in Young India (1925). Read them off a poster in the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles, this weekend. Every statement hit home. The problems of the world, summarized.
3 tags
Checking In, Checking Out
In just a few hours, I will be on my way to the West Coast! More specifically, Los Angeles. I hear the high will be NINETY-FIVE degrees tomorrow. Yikes!
Here’s to coming back to Boston with tan.
8 tags
Apple's 'Get a Mac,' the Complete Campaign Hodgman... →
All considered, Steve Jobs shaped the way we communicate, the way we inform and entertain ourselves—the way we live life. Because of his work, even if people aren’t using iPods or MacBooks specifically, we ‘ve come to share a set of expectations on what the devices or programs can and should provide for us: how they should look, how easy they should be to use, what kind of functions...
6 tags
3 tags
Andrew Bird as Dr Stringz - YouTube →
This makes me so happy. Who says children’s music is bad, or that it has to be?
7 tags
Berkeley Bakes Cupcakes But No Fresh Ideas : NPR →
Here, here, Ms. Martin. Here, here. We all could do better.
Can I just tell you what makes me upset?
That students going to an incredible school like UC Berkeley can’t come up with a more original way to make a point or have a more intellectually honest discussion about that point.
This is at least the third of these affirmative-action whine fests involving baked goods put on by...
4 tags
September 2011
5 posts
4 tags
“Robin was trying to get someone to not like her anymore, so she was like...”
– Overheard at Mr. Sushi, Arlington, MA, at 6.57pm. Girl was telling this really loudly to her roughly 8-year-old kid brother (?!) while sitting next to her boyfriend/older brother (?!?!).
See, people—misdirection… sometimes backfires. 