December 2009
53 posts
Dec 31st
79 notes
4 tags
“Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely...”
– Schneier: Is aviation security mostly for show? Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we — and our leaders — need to react with indomitability, the kind of strength shown by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II.
Dec 30th
3 tags
Schneier: Is aviation security mostly for show? →
The best defenses against terrorism are largely invisible: investigation, intelligence, and emergency response. But even these are less effective at keeping us safe than our social and political policies, both at home and abroad. However, our elected leaders don’t think this way: They are far more likely to implement security theater against movie-plot threats.
Dec 30th
4 tags
“These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists...”
– Schneier: Is aviation security mostly for show?
Dec 30th
Dec 29th
23 notes
“cooking, perhaps more than any activity, lets an actor exude absolute physical...”
– Feast by Matt Zoller Seitz
Dec 29th
Dec 29th
52 notes
“Compared with the market-driven, killer-app insta-culture of the Digital Age,...”
– Kurt Andersen on the Large Hadron Collider
Dec 28th
“I’d always prided myself on being comfortable with solitude, but this wasn’t...”
– Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened | Wired.com
Dec 28th
Dec 28th
Dec 28th
Dec 27th
130 notes
“Frankly, we just don’t want anyone else to have it.”
– Can the $11,000 Clover Machine Save Starbucks?
Dec 27th
Dec 26th
13 notes
3 tags
“Modernity in its bloody splendour has tumbled out of the coffeehouse.”
– Michael Idov
Dec 26th
4 tags
“It’s telling that the people credited with the invention of the...”
– Coffeehouses: Bringing the Buzz Back
Dec 26th
4 tags
“It’s no wonder, then, that the coffeehouse became a hotbed of a proudly...”
– Coffeehouses by Michael Idov in The Wall Street Journal, 1 December 2009
Dec 26th
Dec 25th
140 notes
Dec 25th
11 notes
Dec 24th
Dec 24th
Dec 23rd
“The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching,...”
– Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
Dec 22nd
Dec 21st
63 notes
“the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was...”
– Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
Dec 20th
Dec 19th
24 notes
“Conversation reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in some...”
– God’s Debris by Scott Adams [PDF]
Dec 18th
Dec 17th
36 notes
Cuban cigar names come from the stories... →
This tradition of having someone read news and books aloud in factories is kept up to this day in Cuban.
Dec 16th
Dec 15th
141 notes
“the world was staring down a three-headed monster of inequality, instability and...”
– Bill Clinton at McGill for his Honorary Doctorate
Dec 14th
Dec 13th
323 notes
1 tag
“Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it...”
– Theodore Teddy Roosevelt quoted by Hendrik Hertzberg in Presidents and Peace Prizes printed in the New Yorker
Dec 13th
“a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the other”
– Adam Ciralsky on Erik Prince’s Blackwater in Vanity Fair
Dec 12th
Dec 12th
“this philosophical modesty isn’t only the difference between a politician and a...”
– George Packer on Obama’s Peace and War in The New Yorker
Dec 11th
“Working out apparent contradictions, reconciling irreconcilables, finding...”
– Peace and War by George Packer in The New Yorker
Dec 11th
Dec 11th
4 notes
2 tags
Dec 11th
13 notes
“Suddenly they didn’t know how to fight anymore, and it was all about...”
– Copenhagen: Where Africa Took On Obama by Naomi Klein in Mother Jones
Dec 10th
Dec 10th
394 notes
2 tags
“If I had ever been successful in outsmarting the magic, I would have been...”
– DFW All That by David Foster Wallace in The New Yorker
Dec 10th
Dec 10th
2 notes
“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that...”
– All That by David Foster Wallace DFW in The New Yorker
Dec 9th
“She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she...”
– The Stranger // Albert Camus (via canadawhore) (via wahnbriefe) (via fuckyeahexistentialism) (via bigfun)
Dec 8th
137 notes
“irony is at the centre of modern foreign policymaking.”
– The Economist
Dec 7th
Dec 6th
12 notes
Some Things Woody Allen Loves →
• drives out to the country for a picnic • illicit sex during a party • chance encounters • climactic rainstorms • Scarlett Joho’s bobolobos • adultery • mocking the craft of acting • small talk • murder • freshman psych • beautiful women • philosophy 101 bull sessions
Dec 5th
Dec 4th
1 note
Dec 4th
12 notes