“He reassured me by telling me that when he looked back on his career, all the work he was most proud of was done under circumstances just like that, where it seemed impossible, where there wasn’t enough time, there wasn’t enough money, and everyone had set the bar really high for themselves.”
From a Variety article on Pixar (via Flackette).
“His description of the root causes of this financial crisis are about what you’d expect from a man who invoked The Great Gatsby to explain the mentality of the murderer of 4,000 people.” — Matt Taibbi, on Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria
You have to admire Taibbi for his liberal outrage. Even if you don’t agree with him, his turns of phrases is a mastery of the intellectual smackdown.Then again, maybe I should admire Zakaria for carrying the kool-aid for his corporate masters.
History, after all, will not be kind on the latter.
Reading this article on the new Voigtländer 50mm f1.1 Nokton, I was surprised to find out that the English translation of the Japanese word bokeh is “mild dementia.”
Definitely a Backstroke of the West moment there.
Check out the “mild dementia” on these two:
I have a friend and web developer who thinks I’m really smart, but he doesn’t think much of his own abilities. During a particular coincidence of both opinions, he asked me if I’d hire him if I was in a position to make such a judgement:
Me: Of course. Me: Why do you ask this?
Him: I was just thinking that one day you will be atop the web Him: And I want to be part of it …
Me: In general, the thing I find is the #1 thing necessary for success is will. And you have will. Me: Smarts is a result of will, not vice versa. Me: So sure I’d hire you.
He tweeted that and someone liked that.
As someone who has leaned on his “smarts” a number of times to the detriment of his own personal development, I truly believe what I said. Every day, I’m starting to realize my inner Socrates:
It seemed to me … that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence… I reflected as I walked away: Well, I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems to me that I am wiser than he is to the extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
I remember watching the second presidential debate in 2004, pissed with John Kerry. “Why?” someone asked.
“Because his answer to the abortion question fits right in line with the image of him as a flip-flop.” I replied. “He doesn’t have to answer the question about spending itself, and sure there are nuances to that issue you can’t address in the debate, but he can answer with strong language the morals that guides his decisions; the commonality we all have to minimize unwanted pregnancies. Some pro-lifer is going to see that answer and their perception of Catholicks and think he’s a hypocrite.”
Four years later, we have Obama:
I’m sorry I missed this word.
From DoubleX:
I agree that the Kirk/Spock dynamic was the richest in the film. But there’s another key relationship that I thought was even more fascinating—the one between Spock and Lt. Uhura. First off, it’s fantastic that Uhura finally feels like a major character, even though she still hasn’t graduated to wearing pants, and even though much of her role here is to provide romantic relief from the bromance and the action scenes.
(The rest of the article is similarly hilarious.)
Voilá!
I am forever reminded of the French section of my Latin I class when reading the first lesson, J— pronounced this “Vee-O-La!”
If it isn’t obvious from the repeated mentions of me almost failing French I, I’m glad J— was called to read that day.
Some words sound dirty.
For instance did you know that you can’t spell socialism without cialis?
From flackette:
“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting” —Edmund Burke
Alas, it seems that the Kindle has backed up my colon!
Media moguls—journalism moguls, anyway—need two sets of skills. They have to be able to select and package material from the world in a way that gives it order and narrative drive and swagger. They also have to forge, through creativity, cunning, and force, a set of arrangements with customers, competitors, governments, advertisers, production facilities, and distribution networks which can generate a lot of money. Even in an era of focus groups and marketing research, any news publication that attracts an audience has to have a personality, which means that it has to bear the stamp of a real person. —Nicholas Lemann on Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolf Hearst, Barney Kilgore, and Rupert Murdoch in “Paper Tigers”, The New Yorker, April 13, 2009
[To a friend on what I liked about her latest blog posting.]
“It’s like the Lauren ad from Microsoft. Using the recession to talk about things holds a lot of serious interest,” I said.
“That’s what I think too,” my friend replied, “But I remember when I used to make references to it in posts for someone else, the editor would always delete them.”
“He hails from a school that’s outdated. The biggest blogs make it personal. Take Orangette—that’s a blog about cooking. Why is it one of the most popular blogs? Or ZenHabits—how did it in two years become one of the top self-help sites?
“When I write personal articles with wide application, they take off on FeedBurner.
“It’s about making it personal, without taking it personally.
“My problem is I always take it personally, 
” I finished.
She laughed. “Well I already know what I’m going to write tonight!”