Friday, March 16, near High Drive and 31st. If I’d been thinking—instead of distracted by the pretty sunset—I would have tried to include Jupiter and Venus in the frame. They were just to the left and maybe 6–8 degrees above the horizon. Shot with an iPhone 4S, naturally.
Charles Murray’s latest book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, has been getting a lot of attention of late. In it, he argues that the upper and lower classes have diverged so far that they no longer share core values and beliefs—and that a new upper class of super-wealthy, over-educated elites has cloistered themselves in a social and cultural bubble.
So. Are you in that bubble? Take the quiz and find out—and be sure to report back. For what it’s worth, I scored a healthy, middle-America, God-fearin’ 75.
File this story under “Duh.”
The European Chess Union, in what surely is a calculated response to this stunning turn of events, isn’t taking any chances: they’ve placed restrictions on cleavage.
It’s somehow fitting that today, Pi Day (3.14—get it?), we write our 400th blog post. Why? Because 400 is both a self number and a Harshad number.
As for the fact that we’re a creative design firm and 400 just happens to be the HTML status code for a bad client request? Never crossed our minds.
Lowercase or capital letter after a colon? Depends. When it’s used within a sentence, the first word following the colon is lowercased unless it’s a proper name.
There are two kinds of people: those who generalize and those who don’t.
When a colon introduces two or more sentences, however—or when it introduces speech in dialogue—the first word following it is capitalized.
CK was faced with an impossible choice: Should he complete his evening ensemble with the charcoal jacket in hand-finished merino wool? Or should he throw caution to the wind and wear the grey pinstripe with Jacquard stitching?
Shot with an iPhone the evening of Friday, March 9, from the alley between Second and Third Avenues, just east of Washington.
An alert reader sent in this item today:
We breathlessly await confirmation of its authenticity.
Here’s a welcome dose of common sense regarding phone protection. Best line: “Our fear drives us to insane lengths to protect our devices, taking marvels of industrial design and mutilating them with rubber bumpers and dusty screen protectors.”
Fact: I’ve had my iPhone 4S since the day it was released. The first half of its life was spent encased in one of those rubber bumpers; the second half free and unencumbered. Today, neither scratch nor ding besmirches its pristine beauty. Save your money.
We’re a little late to this story. Apparently, the AeroShot has been on college campuses (where else?) since January. And while the idea of inhalable caffeine should give pause to anyone concerned about the state of today’s misdirected youth, I’m frankly more alarmed that one of the AeroShot’s creators is reported to have described the device as “an appealing alternative to sugar-laden energy drinks.”
Um…dude. Have you heard of coffee?
Retronaut has quite the collection of Soviet space posters. Do stop by and take a look.
What do fact-checkers and anesthesiologists have in common? It’s not a joke. David Zweig explains.
In a rather long (11,000 words!) and rambling review of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, Evgeny Morozov links Apple’s design ethos with the Bauhaus, ponders the late Jobs’s many paradoxes—I’d prefer to call them glaring inconsistencies—and, without much effort, shoots down the rather ridiculous notion of Jobs as some sort of Zen philosopher.
And over at the New York Review of Books blog, Tim parks wonders when writing became a career choice—with the promise of “a lifetime of literary festivals, shortlists and prizes, readings, seminars, honorary degrees, lectures, and, of course, writing….”
Not only did photographer Timothy Allen trek to the Bulgarian Balkans in the dead of winter, he was kind enough to share some some amazing photographs of the Buzludzha monument when he got back.
The good news: the New York Times is sharing its photography archive via a Tumblr page called “The Lively Morgue.”
The bad news: even if they post 10 new images every weekday, it’ll take ’em till the year 3935 to get the entire print collection online.
Faster, please.
“In general, 55 percent of people think it’s OK to talk on the phone while on the toilet. But among those whose left hand does most of the work when they applaud, only 40 percent think it’s OK to talk on the phone while on the toilet.”
That, and a whole lot more, from correlated.org.
There’s only one thing wrong with this story: the words “against all reason.” Based on the voting numbers so far, it’s patently obvious that the wisdom of the Slovaks knows no bounds.
One thing’s for sure: Chuck Norris will cross that bridge before he gets to it.