culture & literature — #
In celebration of the life and work of Maurice Sendak, behold Stephen Colbert’s interview with the man
8 May 2012
6 May 2012
culture & music — #
Sasha Frere-Jones remembers Adam Yauch
The ideal memorial is written from distance, a generous calculation of merit that proceeds honorably without abandoning accuracy. I have to apologize right now for being unable to give you that—Adam Yauch was a part of my childhood, an ambassador to America from our New York, which is now gone, as is he.
23 April 2012
culture — #
Brilliant: Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012
To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.
19 April 2012
culture & art — #
Genis Carreras has designed posters that summarize various philosophies using basic graphical shapes
12 April 2012
technology & culture — #
Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out
Facebook, a company with a potential market cap worth five or six moon landings, is spending one of its many billions of dollars to buy Instagram, a tiny company dedicated to helping Thai beauty queens share photos of their fingernails. Many people have critical opinions on this subject, ranging from “this will ruin Instagram” to “$1 billion is too much.” And for many Instagram users it’s discomfiting to see a giant company they distrust purchase a tiny company they adore — like if Coldplay acquired Dirty Projectors, or a Gang of Four reunion was sponsored by Foxconn.
9 April 2012
culture — #
I applaud Janet Reitman’s recent Rolling Stone article on Dartmouth hazing for at least attempting to present a more nuanced picture of Dartmouth’s “whistleblower” compared to other national publications. I applaud it for raising the points about sexual assault and Dartmouth’s continued issues regarding gender relations. As with the other articles, I applaud any spotlight on hazing. Dartmouth is an imperfect place, as are all the Ivies and indeed all colleges.
But I strongly disagree with Rolling Stone’s decision to take Andrew Loshe’s story and turn it into a symbol and vanguard for Dartmouth’s culture and Dartmouth’s soul.
8 April 2012
culture & education — #
Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses
On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. “I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,” he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” as well as an “intoxicating nihilism” that dominates campus social life. “One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,” he said. “Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.” Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.
5 April 2012
sports & culture — #
Grantland: Soccer’s Heavy Boredom
Soccer is boring. One of the misconceptions non-soccer fans have about soccer fans is that we don’t know this. The classic Simpsons parody of a soccer match — “Fast kickin’! Low scorin’! And ties? You bet!” — hangs on the joke that the game puts Americans to sleep while somehow, bafflingly, driving foreigners wild with excitement. Calling the game for Springfield TV, Kent Brockman practically grinds his teeth with frustration: “Halfback passes to the center … back to the wing … back to the center. Center holds it. Holds it. [Huge sigh.] Holds it.” One booth over, the Spanish commentator is going nuts: “Halfback passes to the center! Back to the wing! Back to the center! Center holds it! Holds it!! HOLDS IT!!!”
education & culture — #
‘A Test You Need to Fail’: A Teacher’s Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students
Because what I hadn’t known—this is my first time grading this exam—was that it doesn’t matter how well you write, or what you think. Here we spent the year reading books and emulating great writers, constructing leads that would make everyone want to read our work, developing a voice that would engage our readers, using our imaginations to make our work unique and important, and, most of all, being honest. And none of that matters. All that matters, it turns out, is that you cite two facts from the reading material in every answer. That gives you full credit. You can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero.
technology & culture — #
From the sign of the times dept: Encyclopedia Britannica to stop printing books
12 March 2012
business & culture — #
“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” — Simon Sinek
1 March 2012
business & culture — #
Slavery Footprint will help you calculate how many slaves you have working for you.