Category Archives: Random

‘What if sending an e-mail is an excuse to not think through a problem — a hope that we can grab a bite of someone else’s attention and make them do our thinking for us? What if we send a half-baked note when what we need is to risk personal contact via phone, through setting up a lunch or just by walking to the other side of the office? Maybe we send an e-mail when we want to pretend, to ourselves or someone else, that we’re being productive.’

‘Rather than thoughtfully discussing race, Americans love to reduce racial politics to feelings and etiquette. Racial debate, in public and private, is trapped in the sinkhole of therapeutics.’

I wonder if people in other countries watch American sitcoms and think we’re all constantly visiting each other at work.

‘Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.’
– Oscar Wilde

‘The U.S. government needs to realize that smaller government is a meaningless goal, but efficient, effective government—one that uses cost-effective methods to perform tasks appropriate to its mission—is something worth striving for.’ — http://bit.ly/pj6pgC

Has anyone ever actually listened to the lyrics to ‘Ignition’? I’m concerned that R. Kelly doesn’t know what the idiom ‘playing the field’ means…

Ahhh, Europe: Where blackface is still funny — http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110915-37617.html

‘You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.’ — Karl Lagerfeld

Berlin population statistics are really interesting. I can’t believe that in a city of 3.5 million people, only 1.5 million of them have a full-time job.

Aside from the political bias, Fox News is just kind of a dick.

Wow, Bush Sr and Reagan sound incredibly sane on immigration in 1980. When did it become impossible to talk like this? — http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7224779/bush-and-reagan-on-immigration.thtml

“American television studios almost concede before they start: ‘Well, it won’t be good, but at least it’ll be good-looking. We’ll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things. So at least we’ll have achieved that base standard of entertainment.’ … I think that’s hugely misguided. The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.” — http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2011/09/06/311922/hollywood-for-ugly-people/

‘Nearly 6% of commuters bike to work in Portland, the highest proportion in America. But in five out of the past ten years there have been no cycling deaths there. In the nearby Seattle area, where cycling is popular but traffic calming is not, three cyclists, have been killed in the past few weeks.’ — http://www.economist.com/node/21528302

Eating while wearing headphones inevitably gives you the impression that you’re a REALLY LOUD CHEWER

I’m going to Albania for a week in October! Anyone else been?

I spent the whole day biking in the sun and listening to LCD Soundsystem’s last-ever concert on my iPod. Is it wrong that I sooooorta feel like my experience was better than actually seeing it live?

I’m trying to come up with another blog post on the problems with international aid just so I can use the headline ‘trainers by the truckload, trainers by the ton’

Do airlines seriously kick minorities off of planes just because one other passenger complains?! — http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/sustainable-security-for-people-of-all-races/244473/

Headline of the day: ‘Chinese Anti-Graft Officer Stabbed 11 Times, Ruled Suicide’

Isn’t it time for us, as a species, to get rid of the ‘s’ in ‘towards’?