February 2012
4 posts
“In the end, that might be the walking stick’s best argument: I’m...”
– Robert Krulwich. “Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides for 80 years.” NPR, Feb 29, 2012.
“Under specifiable conditions, families suffering serious losses will feel less...”
– Robert Merton. “On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range.” In Calhoun et al (Eds.) Classical Sociological Theory, Blackwell, 2002.
“It’s a large sentimental contraption, coming at us, as the first trains came at...”
– James Fenton. “The Abbey That Jumped the Shark.” The New York Review of Books, March 8, 2012.
“The stories of America in the World rather than the World in America stubbornly...”
– Kamila Shamsie. “The Storytellers of Empire.” Guernica, February, 2012.
January 2012
4 posts
“The rare, succulent crabmeat, picked out of the shell, packed, sealed,...”
– Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer. Random House, 1990.
“The Cuban crisis was a competition in risk taking, involving steps that would...”
– Thomas Schelling. Arms and Influence. Yale University Press, 2008.
December 2011
8 posts
“At the end of every magazine article, before the ‘■,’ is the quote...”
– Paul Ford. “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?” New York, July 18, 2011.
Subway Buskers, pt. viii. 116th street 1 train...
“The crowd overflowed from a central city square, forcing stragglers to climb...”
– Ellen Barry. “Tens of Thousands Protest Against Putin in Moscow.” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2011.
Nate DiMeo. “Far Below Lake Michigan.”...
“Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident … The...”
– Paul Virilio. Pure War. Semiotext(e), 1983).
November 2011
15 posts
“She listed the contents of her [go-bag]: a copy of ‘Meditations’ by...”
– Stephanie Rosenbloom. “When Fleeing Disaster, What’s in Their Bag?” New York Times, November 28, 2011.
“The experiential dimensions of risk… can be summarized in the assertion I...”
– Ulrich Beck. World at Risk. Polity Press, 2009.
“In [the video], a student asks a school nurse, ‘What if I want to have sex...”
– Laurie Abraham. “Teaching Good Sex.” The New York Times, Nov 16, 2011. (see also)
“The current crisis of the future is not visible, it is a possibility on the way...”
– Ulrich Beck. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications, 1992.
“In advanced modernity the social production of wealth is systematically...”
– Ulrich Beck. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications, 1992.
“‘I’ve been in State College for 42 years and I’ve never seen anything like...”
– Nate Schweber. “Students Clash with Police After Announcements.” The New York Times, Nov 10, 2011
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/oc... →
Carl Zimmer. “Sleepless in South Sudan.” Radiolab, October 31, 2011.
WatchZygmunt Bauman. “Zygmunt Bauman: ‘No one is in control. That is the major source of contemporary fear.’” The Guardian, September 1, 2011.
October 2011
27 posts
“Society is a reality sui genris; it has its own characteristics that are either...”
– Emile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Karen E. Fields (trans). Simon & Schuster, 1995.
“‘I saw her on the floor,’ Mr. Rao said three days later, sitting at...”
– Michael Wilson. “What a Family Faces After a Murder: The Terrible Mechanics of the First Week.” The New York Times,” October 28, 2011.
WatchBen Solomon. “Viewing Qaddafi’s Body.” The New York Times, October 23, 2011.
1 tag
Subway buskers pt. vii: 110th st 1 train station....
“In one case reported in 1964, a man lost his memory the moment he orgasmed,...”
– Stephanie Pappas. “‘Mind-Blowing’ Sex Can Wipe Memory Clean.” LiveScience, October 11, 2011. Original cite: C.M. Fisher and R.D. Adams, Transient global amnesia. Acta Neurol Scand Suppl, 40 Suppl 9 (1964), pp. 1–83.
“If reading the daily paper is modern man’s form of prayer, then it is a...”
– Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press (1993).
“A 40 year resident of the Upper East Side, Elaine Gifford, said, ‘I...”
– (Surprisingly not an excerpt from The Bonfire of the Vanities) James Thilman. “Occupy Wall Street Marches Against Millionaires On Park Ave.” Gothamist, October 11, 2011.
Bears make you pay attention. They keep the mountains from turning into a blur, and they stop your self from bullying you like nothing else in nature. A woods with a bear in it is real to a man walking through it in a way that a woods with no bear is not. Roscoe black, a man who survived a serious attack by a grizzly in Glacier Park several years ago, described the moment when the bear had him on...
We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. For one job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors, real or anticipated—by an...
