December 2011
22 posts
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From Bound for Glory at Last in The New York Times
Oklahoma has always had a troubled relationship with her native son Woody Guthrie. The communist sympathies of America’s balladeer infuriated local detractors. In 1999 a wealthy donor’s objections forced the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City to cancel a planned exhibition on Guthrie organized by the Smithsonian Institution. It wasn’t until 2006,...
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Sarah Shourd at The Daily Beast
The irony that has often been pointed out is that Shane, Josh and I, as journalists, activists, and educators, are the type of Americans that the Iranian government supports and even celebrates in rhetoric. The reason I moved to the Middle East was because I wanted to do solidarity work with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, a choice that stemmed from my long-term...
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“I think that the backlash against their support was a lot more swift and severe...”
– Mashable chief architect Chris Heald • Discussing how he received a call from GoDaddy regarding his decision to move 50+ domains to a different service in a boycott of their now-reversed stance on SOPA. Apparently he wasn’t alone. So the real question, then, is whether it’s too late for GoDaddy to...
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“Though I would support the idea of a 30-hour workweek in some circumstances, I...”
– Wendell Berry (via azspot)
‘The understandings of the greater part of men,’ says Adam Smith, ‘are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations… has no occasion to exert his understanding… He...
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Watchoccupyallstreets:
Memo Leaked, Banks Plan Attack On Occupy Wall Street
The banks will use $850,000 to conducted surveys to try to smear the OWS movement. They believe the OWS movement should be ‘treated as a competitor’.
This only proves that the 1% are, in fact, afraid of us.
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Alan Jacobs has some doubts that everyone could make a living like CK:
It would be really gratifying if this model (not unlike the one Cory Doctorow has been using for a few years now in the book trade) works for a lot of people; but I have a suspicion that it will work best for artists and entertainers who have the ability to generate a distinctive aura of shared trust with their audiences....
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No justice for Bradley Manning →
All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses - if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them - he’d be better off today.
Indeed, if Manning had merely murdered the nameless, faceless “other”, as his Army colleagues on the notorious Afghan “Kill Team” did, he would not have had his right to a...
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PULPHEAD NOTES: The Editor and the Writer →
johnjeremiahsullivan:
Q. You were an editor for about ten years before you started writing professionally. Do you feel being an editor has generally helped or hindered your writing process?
It helps up to a certain point. As an editor, you’re learning the whole time — learning tricks, acquiring…
“The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had...”
– A Statement From Louis CK on the success of distributing his latest comedy special online for $5.
Good job, internet.
(via ryeisenberg)
Just goes to show how reasonable pricing and wide accessibility can effectively combat piracy.
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“The best defense against democracy is to distract people.”
– Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky) 