February 2012
27 posts
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Common Cooking Mistakes →
Fantastic list of common cooking mistakes, with photos and directions for what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future!
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I work for Uncle Sam and I'm Proud of It. →
Could not have expressed it better.
The Man Who Wouldn’t Die →
“The Rasputin of the Bronx” - who knew?!
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For Asians and Latinos, Stereotypes Persist in... →
A good point …
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How Companies Learn Your Secrets →
“Your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information — like when you’re going to have a baby.”
Fascinating, but creepy, all in one snazzy package. Combines fascinating information regarding how our minds works with the practical marketing approaches products and stores use to capitalize this information and alter our shopping habits.
Select quotes —
“Habits...
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“[Re]reading is not purely a matter of escapism, even though that is one reason...”
– - Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
Update - as the commenter pointed out, I originally misattributed the source and had a typo in the quote. Obviously, I must have been distracted at the time. They’ve been corrected.
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“As far as common sense can tell, every good idea ever achieved is the product of...”
– Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
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“All books want our attention, but not all of them want the same kind of...”
– Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
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“We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order...”
– Tim Parks, in E-books Can’t Burn
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“We all already know what we need to do if we want to get back to reading slowly...”
– Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.
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Sex and the Single Girl: Why American Culture is... →
The article doesn’t really live up to its title, but it does have an interesting observation on the resurgence of articles/books exploring the topic as if it is still a novel and bizarre state of life. Quotes include the following —
“I think a single woman’s biggest problem is coping with the people who are trying to marry her off.” (quoting Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and...
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“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was the...”
– Nicole Krauss
(I’m not certain why, but this quote has captured me from the first time I read it. Seems appropriate for Valentine’s Day, even if a tad sappy.)
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“One must be ready for what a book has to offer in order to experience the most...”
– Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.
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Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted... →
Hilarious, but poignant story from The Onion a few years ago. Quoted in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.
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David Ogilvy on Writing
Advertising legend David Ogilvy sent an internal memo to all employees of his advertising agency. Entitled “How to Write,” the memo contained the following advice:
People who think well, write well… .
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way...
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“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a...”
– Alan Bennett
Dickens v. Lawyers →
“One form of wickedness Charles Dickens decried still haunts us, proud and unrepentant: the lawyer.”
I meant to post this article yesterday, in honor of Charles Dickens’ birthday (200th anniversary). Alas, the toils of the law distracted me from this fine commentary!
One’s a Crowd →
Living alone can make it easier to be social.
“All signs suggest that living alone will become even more common in the future, at every stage of adulthood and in every place where people can afford a place of their own.”
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Television: I'm Sick of Waiting for TV Shows to... →
Excellent article on the unfulfilled promise of too many television shows. We should stop wasting our time hoping that shows that could be good will actually get better.
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“Browsing is the opposite of ‘search.’ Search is precise, browsing is...”
– Sadly, I cannot access the entirety of the original article by Leon Wieseltier, but the quote comes from this link.
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Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in America →
Thought-provoking article on a number of serious problems facing the criminal justice system. Few solutions proposed, though. But a good start to identify the issues.
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January 2012
28 posts
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“Hide yourself under the shadow of His wings; rely upon His care and power; look...”
– John Newton
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On The Importance Of Commas →
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The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet... →
A Q&A with Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts. I purchased this book earlier this week. My co-worker sent me the article today asking if I’d seen it. She’s an extrovert of extroverts, I’m an introvert of introverts. We’ve had many discussions of our differences. :)
Here are some highlights —
“It’s also important to understand that...
What Google's Larry Page Doesn't Understand -... →
“Google’s new initiative could be very valuable for users. Their integration of social into search could produce very relevant results. For many customers, leveraging user information to unify an experience across Gmail, Documents, Search, News, and YouTube could yield the best functioning products Google has ever made. Unfortunately for Google, when we hired the company to deliver all...
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National Public Rodeo - Vanity Fair on NPR →
My highlights.
“Over the past few years, NPR, which to the millions of commuters and housewives and shut-ins who listen to it every day sounds like a sea of tranquility, has undergone nearly constant turbulence. In 2008, facing a bad economy exacerbated by poor management, it underwent the first layoffs in its history, lopping off about 100 heads, and cancelled two of its programs....
The Stalking of the President →
Guiteau said he wanted to kill President Garfield in an American manner. He passed up several opportunities before he thought the time was right.
____
I’ve wanted to read Destiny of the Republic, and this short article makes me even more interested in that history. What an intriguing assassination and a tragic diagnostic aftermath to the shooting.
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“Saying no, thoughtfully, may be the most undervalued capacity of our times. In a...”
– Tony Schwartz, in “‘No’ is the New ‘Yes”: Four Practices to Reprioritize your Life”
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The Business Case for Reading Novels →
Fascinating!
“Over the past decade, academic researchers … have gathered data indicating that fiction-reading activates neuronal pathways in the brain that measurably help the reader better understand real human emotion — improving his or her overall social skillfulness.”
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In Search of Serendipity →
Insightful thoughts on serendipity being more than pure luck (it’s coupled with sagacity), and the unforeseen consequences of a web-based world in which we streamline information by searching for it rather than stumbling on things we didn’t know to look for, the accidental discoveries of life that propel us to new innovations … .
“Today’s world wide web has developed to...
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Andes Mint Cake - follow-up
I finally got around to making the cake I posted a link to a few months ago.
Here’s the result —
Quite a bit different than the inspiration, sadly. Still, I try! And it tastes good, at least. A few tips …
Don’t leave the cake layers in the pan too long. Let them cool to the touch, but not get completely cooled before removing them and letting them finish on a...
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Martin Luther King Jr. and the Art of Misquotation →
An interesting observation on the nature of misquotations, and the bane of the misquoted (famous enough to be misquoted!). Also, a provocative aside regarding the lost art of memorization.
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“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
– Well, that’s true.
J.K. Rowling (via sometimesafantasy)
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“It takes great courage to be honest. You have to be willing to make yourself...”
– Peter Bregman, here.
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“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy...”
– ~Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. (via dailydoseofstuf)
Not a bad idea.
The Science Behind the Smile - Harvard Business... →
Quite interesting —
“As it turns out, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy and how long that happiness will last. They expect positive events to make them much happier than those events actually do, and they expect negative events to make them unhappier than they actually do. In both field and lab studies, we’ve found that winning or losing an election,...
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I hope this proves true of me --
hours:
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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The Joy of Quiet →
Many useful points. I particularly was drawn to the discussion of “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”