Pop Sins

"At one point, the executive producer, Jim Bell, commissioned a blooper reel of Curry’s worst on-air..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:48:14 -0400

“At one point, the executive producer, Jim Bell, commissioned a blooper reel of Curry’s worst on-air mistakes. Another time, according to a producer, Bell called staff members into his office to show a gaffe she made during a cross-talk with a local station. (Bell denies both incidents.) Then several boxes of Curry’s belongings ended up in a coat closet, as if she had already been booted off the premises. One staff person recalled that “a lot of time in the control room was spent making fun of Ann’s outfit choices or just generally messing with her.” On one memorable spring morning, Curry wore a bright yellow dress that spawned snarky comparisons to Big Bird. The staff person said that others in the control room, which included 14 men and 3 women, according to my head count one morning, Photoshopped a picture of Big Bird next to Curry and asked co-workers to vote on ‘Who wore it best?’”

- From Who Can Save the ‘Today’ Show?

"For his part, Judge Rankin was the fourth judge assigned to the case. The first three all had to..."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:34:19 -0400

“For his part, Judge Rankin was the fourth judge assigned to the case. The first three all had to recuse themselves because of ties to Sidwell.”

- My favorite paragraph in a seamy tale about bored rich people fucking other bored rich people.

"It might sound like a good idea now but, when you explain to Stanford that you have in fact already..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:36:07 -0400

“It might sound like a good idea now but, when you explain to Stanford that you have in fact already published your first work of short fiction—your letter of recommendation!—they probably won’t admire the way you play with genre.”

- Caity Weaver channels Dear Prudence!

These screenshots represent unsold tickets for Wizards (20-42)...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:49:00 -0400

These screenshots represent unsold tickets for Wizards (20-42) home games. Grey sections are sold out, light blue sections are mostly full, and dark blue sections are mostly empty. The top screenshot is for the Wizards game against the 76ers (24-39) on April 12; the bottom screenshot is for the Wizards game against the Heat (48-14) on April 10.

Joel Osteen talks to Arthur Schopenhauer

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:43:46 -0500

OSTEEN: Arthur, I want to talk to you about the power of “I am.” What follows these two words will determine what kind of life you live. “I am blessed,” “I am strong,” “I am healthy.” Or: “I am slow,” “I am unattractive,” “I am a terrible mother.” The “I am’s” that are coming out of your mouth will bring either success or failure. Many times we use the power of “I am” against us. We don’t realize how it’s affecting our future.

Here’s the principle. What follows the “I am” will always come looking for you. When you say, “I am so clumsy,” clumsiness comes looking for you. When you say, “I am so old,” wrinkles come looking for you. It’s just like you’re inviting them. Whatever you follow the “I am” with, you’re handing it an invitation, opening the door, giving it permission to be in your life. Now, the good news is, you get to choose what follows the “I am.”

SCHOPENHAUER: I am sometimes dissatisfied with you in your capacity as a philosopher.

OSTEEN: Ha-ha. Every time you laugh, it boosts your immune system.

Whole thing over at BookForum

"[T]herein lies one of the greatest divides between the haves and the have-nots of twentysomethings..."

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:06:13 -0500

“[T]herein lies one of the greatest divides between the haves and the have-nots of twentysomethings in this city. Can your parents cover some of your living expenses while you take one low-paying—but potentially career-building—internship after another?”

- From “The Age of the Permanent Intern.”

"The second post was written disjointedly, on trains and on strange couches and while sitting in a..."

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:26:00 -0500

“The second post was written disjointedly, on trains and on strange couches and while sitting in a lecture hall at Yale Law School, half-listening to panel discussions about impact investing in emerging markets. As such, it wasn’t one of those posts where you have something to say, and then you write it down, and then you press “publish”; instead, it was one of those posts where you write a bit, and then you do a podcast, which gives you another idea, which you squeeze in somewhere, and so on. The perfect blog post is exactly one idea long; in that respect, this post was far from perfect. I just didn’t want to spend all week writing about Maria Popova, so I tried to get everything covered in one fell swoop.”

- The second paragraph of Felix’s mea culpa has absolutely nothing to do with why he said something stupid, as evidenced by the fact that he stood by what he said through an extensive public lashing and only changed his position after a private email conversation. And yet, the first link I saw to his piece, from a dude blogger, featured this bit of commentary: “Very sympathetic to @felixsalmon’s second paragraph here.” So tell me, fellow dude bloggers, what other failings can be ameliorated by one’s busyness and importance?

The D.C. Metro System Had a Horrific Meltdown Last Night

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:21:07 -0500

I almost can’t believe this:

The next two hours were spent in the dark on the train. An hour in, panic started to set in. In our car, one woman had passed out. We heard people pounding on windows in other cars, we heard glass breaking and people screaming. More than two hours in, folks in our car forced open the emergency door to get some air into the car. Some to actually exited and walked the tunnel. Mind you, we were in the dark somewhere under the Anacostia River. Inside the temperature was close to 90 degrees. Most people managed to get their coats off, and in some cases, even shirts came off, I was dripping with sweat, but tried to keep breathing and conserve my energy and keep calm. I did not talk much, and kept my eyes closed while standing face to face and body to body with the other sweaty passengers.

About two and a half hours, someone threw up in our car. The car also smelt of urine. I’m certain more than one person had pissed themselves. The car smelt rank, and the situation was getting out of control. Multiple emergency doors were forced open, and now passengers were wondering around in the train tunnels in the dark. The train operator came by our car, asked us to help him get the door closed and said not to open it again. He said several other doors were open and had to be closed. He had police and firemen with him. They were trying to round up everyone and get them back on the train before the fire department would give permissions to the power company to restore power to the third rail.

Once the train operator got all passengers back on train and all doors closed, the power came on. The train operator said we would be moving forward, but at a very slow pace, as there might be stray passengers wondering around in the tunnel.

They took a good 30 minutes to get everyone off who needed medical assistance. I got home close to 9 p.m. that night.

"It’s a wonderful irony that one of the most popular sports blogs in the world was named by a gay..."

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:50:07 -0500

“It’s a wonderful irony that one of the most popular sports blogs in the world was named by a gay Brit who hates sports”

- Deadspin: An Oral History

"Frequently, when I travel outside of the USA, my trips to the local McDonald’s are the most..."

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:03:26 -0500

“Frequently, when I travel outside of the USA, my trips to the local McDonald’s are the most genuinely foreign-feeling and disorienting part of the trip. I went to Paris last year. There are probably ten restaurants within walking distance of my old Williamsburg apartment that are varyingly obsessive imitations of Parisian bistros, Parisian bars, Parisian brasseries. If they were hung in museums, the wall texts next to them would say ‘School of Keith McNally.’ But there is not a single place in New York that serves a Croque McDo.”

- Jeb Boniakowski has made this day great. When I traveled to Azerbaijan in 2004, having never visited a city bigger or more diverse than Orlando, the McDonald’s in Baku was a haven of dull familiarity for me, and a pricey extravagance for my host brother.

Why Is Salon Publishing a 9/11 Truther?

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:28:00 -0500

Yuck:

What concerns me about the repudiation of the Hookers is that the 9/11 Truthers are being tarred with the same “crackpot” brush. Yes, many of the September Eleventh conspiracy theories are implausible, and too often veer, as conspiracy theories unfortunately tend to do, toward the anti-Semitic. But unlike with Sandy Hook, 9/11 conspiracy theories flow from a scientific fact: whatever the 9/11 Commission Report might claim, fire generated by burning jet fuel is not hot enough to melt steel. As with JFK’s “Magic Bullet,” the official version asks us to pretend that the laws of physics do not exist. This opens the door for alternative versions, however ridiculous, that must at least be considered—even if, as was probably the case in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, the cover-up was well-intended, and not the case of an evil shadow government doing evil shadow-government things.

Via David Graham

"Maybe when Kennedy has his own personal demons under control he’ll be ready to reclaim his..."

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:18:54 -0500

“Maybe when Kennedy has his own personal demons under control he’ll be ready to reclaim his family’s political legacy. Until then, legalizers have to deal with one more high-profile recovering addict who’s working out his personal control issues in public.”

- Doug McVay of Common Sense for Drug Policy dings Patrick Kennedy for his anti-pot crusade.

Video

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 03:01:29 -0500

Remember this password?

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:44:12 -0500

After my grandfather died, his children were privately relieved that he had died first. My grandmother managed not just the household, but their finances, to the extent that when my grandfather wanted to buy a new pickup truck in his early 60s, he felt the need to ask my grandmother, as the cost would be more than his weekly allowance. My grandmother in turn did the math and determined they could afford it. OK, he said. Now what? Now you go to the dealership in Orlando, and pick out a truck you like. You aren’t going to come with me? No, my grandmother said. But she did call ahead to the dealership, where a friend worked, and asked him to take care of my grandfather.

I recently switched computers and can’t remember all my passwords and now I wish to God that I had someone to call ahead to the Internet dealership and work this all out.

"Let us set aside the bizarre assertion that marriage has survived until now, as an institution,..."

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:53:48 -0500

“Let us set aside the bizarre assertion that marriage has survived until now, as an institution, because it is so fun and that anything that is more fun threatens its very existence.”

- Amanda Hess on that scary Atlantic story about how online dating is going to destroy all the marriages.

When can we have a national conversation about this?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:39:27 -0500

Der Spiegel:

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.

“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.

“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.

They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

"While many of Obama’s transparency failures concern national security, not all of them do. In..."

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:06:41 -0500

“While many of Obama’s transparency failures concern national security, not all of them do. In October 2011 a panel of science journalists convened at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss the transparency record of federal agencies. After introducing six science journalists, panel moderator Seth Borenstein, a writer for the Associated Press, introduced the representative from the Obama administration. ‘You’ll notice that it is an empty chair,’ Borenstein said.”

- I wrote a long, depressing thing about Obama’s transparency record. You should read it.

"Thousands of man-hours went into designing and implementing a program that was useful on one day and..."

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 12:51:36 -0500

““Thousands of man-hours went into designing and implementing a program that was useful on one day and one day only, and on that day, it crashed.””

- The story of Romney’s incredible GOTV fail in a nutshell.

"For all its intellectual attainments, the Left keeps losing. It simply cannot make common cause with..."

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:58:17 -0400

“For all its intellectual attainments, the Left keeps losing. It simply cannot make common cause with ordinary American people anymore. Maybe this has happened because the Left has come to be dominated by a single profession whose mode of operating is deliberately abstruse, ultrahierarchical, argumentative, and judgmental—handing down As and Fs is its daily chore—and is thus the exact opposite of majoritarian. Maybe it has happened because the Left really is a place of Puritanical contempt for average people, almost all of whom can be shown to have sinned in some imperialist way or other. Maybe it is because the collapse of large-scale manufacturing makes social movements obsolete. We do not know. And none of the accounts under review here get us any closer to an answer.”

- Regardless of your politics, Thomas Frank’s essay on the failure of Occupy Wall Street is damn interesting.

Photo

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:27:53 -0400