Tim Parks, blogging at NYRB, writes a thought-provoking piece positing that there may be something to the idea that a reader may opt not to finish a novel when they are, in essence, quite full and satisfied — and that authors should accept and embrace this. It’s a fascinating idea considering how rarely endings of …
Tag Archive: culture
May 11 2013
Women in Tech Put Up with a Lot of Crap Too
I thought this might be of interest to my readers and to a lot of folks in the skepto-atheosphere: Dan Benjamin’s panel-discussion podcast The Crossover in recent months has done a couple of episodes that focused on the unique challenges faced by women in the tech and inter-webs industries. They’re both very insightful and illuminating …
May 11 2013
Thank You For Enduring the Bullshit, Star Wars Kid
I loved Star Wars Kid. When his video was cruelly put online for all to mock, I only saw myself. I mean, I'm human, I laughed and cringed. But I also saw both the wish to be something greater, something from fantasy, as well as the desire to actually make something, to use my enthusiasm …
May 04 2013
Big Bucks to be Made When Middle School Becomes an Urban Warfare Training Academy
From Liz Halloran at NPR, we get a story of the Rocori school district in Minnesota which is spending $25,000 on, wait for it, bulletproof white boards. “The timing was right,” Rocori school board Chairwoman Nadine Schnettler tells us. “The company is making these in response to the Newtown shooting, and has been making similar …
May 01 2013
The Problem Wasn’t the Internet
When Paul Miller of The Verge began his year-long hiatus from the Internet, I rolled my eyes. I looked to me to be a kind of attention-getting gimmick, intended to raise his profile and lend him an air of sophistication. My assumption, however, was pure prejudice, having known nothing about him as a writer or …
Apr 06 2013
You’re Gonna Hear it in the Recording
Billy Joel reminisces about producer Phil Ramone, who just recently died, and his anecdotes and reflections about him make clear in conversation what you can already hear in recordings. For example: Phil perceived that recording hadn’t been fun for me for a very long time. The process was like pulling teeth. I don’t want to …
Apr 06 2013
Internalizing vs. “Sharing”
James Shakespeare on social media, which he calls “the curse of our age”: The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focused on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of something, even if similar …
Apr 05 2013
Ew, Your Comments are Sticky
This bit from a Financial Times piece, ostensibly about how social media is improving people’s writing skills, explains so much: “Major Memory for Microblogs”, a recent article in the academic journal Memory & Cognition, found that people were much better at remembering casual writing like Facebook posts or forum comments than lines from books or …
Apr 02 2013
Bluster v. Nuance
Oh, hi, Internet. Angus Croll: Writing online is so nearly effortless that reading (not to mention reflection, deliberation and thought) has become a chore in comparison. It’s easier to jot off a patronizing, indignant or self-aggrandizing missive than it is to take the trouble to read the whole article or give fair consideration to the …
Apr 01 2013
Well-being for Virtually Nothing
The coming generations will make less than those that came before. Jerry Brito says, well, so what? Today…we are in a position to derive much of our happiness from pursuits internal to our minds. We do this by blogging, watching House of Cards on Netflix, listening to a symphony from iTunes, tweeting with friends and …
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