May 2013
7 posts
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
5 tags
There is, however, a respect in which Obama has become a stranger president than...
– David Bromwich, “America’s Words of Peace and Acts of War,” Huffington Post (this essay explicates this inherent hypocrisy more effectively than any other I’ve read yet)
4 tags
5 tags
4 tags
When I read, I am always at odds with traditional descriptions of space. “Mary...
– Ben Greenman, in an interview with The Rumpus (so nice to know someone else feels this way, too! He certainly describes it better than I have ever been able to.)
April 2013
13 posts
4 tags
1 tag
3 tags
5 tags
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
So the single most stunning fact about the Boston bombing, to me, is how much we...
– Read this: http://jacobageller.com/2013/04/the-single-most-stunning-fact-about-the-boston-bombing/ (via gordonwithers)
Couldn’t agree more.
6 tags
I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to...
– Gabrielle Giffords, “A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip,” New York Times (powerful words from someone who knows a thing or two about politics and (tragically) gun violence)
3 tags
1 tag
4 tags
4 tags
5 tags
Words do have the power to disgust and repulse, though—that, at least, has been...
– Matthew J.X. Malady, “Why Do We Hate Certain Words?”, Slate (use your words carefully - the pen is grosser than the sword)
March 2013
11 posts
3 tags
7 tags
5 tags
9 tags
The moon, the heart, the owl. All of these are ancient trails. I don’t know...
– Jason Molina, in “A Secret of the Heart on a Sleeve” by Scott Pinkmountain, The Rumpus (RIP to one of my all-time favorite songwriters)
6 tags
1 a particle is a thing in itself. a wave is a disturbance in something else....
– Anne Carson in “The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson” by Sam Anderson, New York Times (I would like to be this wise and also a ‘tough old bugger’ at her age)
7 tags
There is so little to remember of anyone—an anecdote, a conversation at a table....
– Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (was reminded of this quote thanks to an Atlantic article; I think some Robinson rereads are long overdue for me)
7 tags
7 tags
I don’t talk about music in my fiction very much, but something curious happens...
– Brian Evenson, in an interview with Blake Butler, BOMB Magazine (so there are others like me…by the way, read anything by Brian Evenson that you can get your hands on)
6 tags
6 tags
The mistake is to suppose that wires and neurons are homunculi that somehow...
– Colin McGinn, “Homunculism”, New York Review of Books (haven’t read Kurzweil myself, and can’t say this review makes me want to…)
4 tags
6 tags
February 2013
14 posts
5 tags
3 tags
4 tags
3 tags
6 tags
Western does not believe it is a coincidence that when social-welfare programs...
– Elizabeth Gudrais, “The Prison Problem”, Harvard Magazine (that last quote is pretty damning)
3 tags
5 tags
My grandfather would come to our house in the countryside, borrow one of our...
– Thom Yorke, “Thom Yorke: What I’ve Learned”, Esquire (of the assorted choice quotes here, this one was my favorite)
5 tags
8 tags
Dating the “planetary UX” to the fifteenth century is something like...
– Venkatesh Rao, “Welcome to the Future Nauseous”, ribbonfarm (sorry for the long quote, but I really could have copied this entire article; a major perception-shifter)
3 tags
2 tags
5 tags
5 tags
Among the Wakashan Indians of the Pacific Northwest, a grammatically correct...
– Joshua Foer, “Utopian For Beginners”, The New Yorker (if you find languages as utterly fascinating as I do, you have to read this - thanks to Byliner for highlighting this and many other essays from 2012 that have given lots to think about this week)
January 2013
21 posts
6 tags
4 tags
I think to admit despair and to revel in it — as many 20th- and 21st-century...
– Ursula K. LeGuin, in an interview with The Millions (my kind of philosophy - I really need to read some more of her books)
5 tags
5 tags
5 tags