Monthly Archives: October 2012

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After Sandy


Rob Delaney — After Sandy

If you were following coverage of Sandy last night, you may have seen photos of nurses and firemen transporting babies from the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) at NYU’s hospital. If you didn’t, you might consider looking them up. They’re very moving. They show courageous emergency and medical personnel doing what they do best, and it’s beautiful.
Continue reading →

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Truth, Lies, and ‘Doxxing’


The Real Moral of the Gawker/Reddit Story

Yet, how do we as a society weigh the moral costs of shining a spotlight on someone, however “bad” their actions are? What happens when, as a result of social media, vigilantism takes on a new form? How do we guarantee justice and punishment that fits the crime when we can use visibility as a tool for massive public shaming? Is it always a good idea to regulate what different arbiters consider bad behavior through increasing someone’s notoriety – or censoring their links?

via Truth, Lies, and ‘Doxxing’: The Real Moral of the Gawker/Reddit Story | WIRED

 

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No Logic in “Etymological”: A Response I Actually Sent


Simply beautiful, irregardless of what you think:

Today I got an email from someone who watched the “irregardless” video and was appalled (though in the gentlest and kindest manner possible) that I said “irregardless” was a word. It’s not logical! Just look at that sloppy coinage: “ir-” and “regardless.” Why, it should mean “WITH regard to,” not “without regard to”! Who in their right mind is going to use “irrespective” and “regardless”–both perfectly serviceable words–to create a synonym of each word that looks like it should mean the opposite of what it does?

I drafted the reply I wanted to send and saved it to my Nobody Knows The Trouble I Seen folder. Midway through my real response, though, I changed my mind: this guy needed to see the NKTTIS response. Something about the tone of his letter was bothering me. It was not, as these letters usually are, arrogant. It was sad.

Read the Full Thing Here: No Logic in “Etymological”: A Response I Actually Sent | harm·less drudg·ery

 

harm·less drudg·ery

Today I got an email from someone who watched the “irregardless” video and was appalled (though in the gentlest and kindest manner possible) that I said “irregardless” was a word. It’s not logical! Just look at that sloppy coinage: “ir-” and “regardless.” Why, it should mean “WITH regard to,” not “without regard to”! Who in their right mind is going to use “irrespective” and “regardless”–both perfectly serviceable words–to create a synonym of each word that looks like it should mean the opposite of what it does?

I drafted the reply I wanted to send and saved it to my Nobody Knows The Trouble I Seen folder. Midway through my real response, though, I changed my mind: this guy needed to see the NKTTIS response. Something about the tone of his letter was bothering me. It was not, as these letters usually are, arrogant. It was sad.

English is a little bit like…

View original post 664 more words

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Word


“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

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T.E. Lawrence on Joseph Conrad


I agree with T.E. Lawrence (speaking about Joseph Conrad’s writing):

“He’s absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was: I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes (…they are all paragraphs: he seldom writes a single sentence…) goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after it stops.”

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RIP: Russell Means


Russell Means AIM Activist For the world to live Europe must die.

Mother Jones 1980 cover

THE ONLY POSSIBLE OPENING FOR a statement like this is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate thinking”: what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people. Continue reading →

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Moment of Zen


There is nothing more idiosyncratic in NYC than that first time in fall when you glance down a side street as your crossing the intersection and see the leaves falling in the autumn sun. Just makes you *sigh* and think:

Man this is one beautiful place!

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Someone Like You


As long as I live…this performance will haunt me. It is like she is singing about me, like I broke her heart, she delivered this so incredibly…I want to be in the front row…and thankfully YouTube lets me!

 

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Hey Android & Samsung:


Yeah work that out. I’m REALLY tired of getting every bit of email from Gmail with TWO notifications. Cease & Desist, or so help me I’ll… oh right, well I really won’t do anything. But when I figure out where to turn this off, I’m going to shake my fist at you really hard.