I do believe in time travel. Time travel to the future. Time flows like a river and it seems as if each of us is carried relentlessly along by time’s current. But time is like a river in another way. It flows at different speeds in different places and that is the key to traveling into the future. This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. He realized that there should be places where time slows down, and others where time speeds up. He was absolutely right. And the proof is right above our heads. Up in space. —“How to Build a Time Machine,” Stephen Hawking, Daily Mail
Can we finally, please, please, dispense with this whole hero business once and for all?
note to our most recent political dynasty: just because you like Bob Marley that doesn’t make you a “secret Rastafarian”;
and there is nothing secret about the “Wakey Bakey Cafe” (nor should there be)
The tradition of the commonplace book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association….Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of all your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books. But each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession. —“The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book,” Steve Johnson, Steverberlinjohnson
Obama and the Jews: charm offensive!
in over-priced real estate, the new old is new and the new new is slightly old (don’t think, just buy);
eat these dogs
The art of the Persian dub has an unexpected lineage. When the talkies first came to Iran in the 1930s, distributors continued to treat them like silent movies, interrupting the films with occasional “he said, she said” text panels in Farsi. But literacy was rare, so professional reciters would pace up and down the theater aisles, belting out reductive translations. Another strategy for domesticating foreign cinema was splicing. When a cowboy entered a saloon, for example, the doors swinging in his wake might fade to a popular and sultry singer belly dancing—not to fool viewers into thinking she was a stage act inside the local Texas juke joint, but to mash up that difference. Then the film would wipe seamlessly back to the Western drama of the cheats at the poker table. No one complained about incongruence or bastardization—the downtown audience was quite happy with the pastiche. —“The Golden Age of Middle Eastern Westerns,” Abou Farman, Utne Reader
Moammar Gadhafi and the Jihad against milk chocolate, fondue, and intolerant Western European nations;
watch your wallet around ole Rob Zimmerman (or don’t);
what Michael Lewis won’t tell you about making it in the business world: it’s probably not his “financial prowess” that your boss wants you to idolize
1970s Italian action video
