Posts with no comments make me sad.
Even my name and email information have been mercilessly purged from the comment boxes! Who am I? This is just cruel.
Requests for help that get sidetracked when the first commenter fails to play along make me sad.
Off to develop algebra high impact practice.
Lindsay Beyerstein and Digby are two women who come to mind right away.
Argh. My internet reading has grown compressed and stupid, in keeping with my generally depressed avoidance of the news. I still read Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kevin Drum (imagine a world where Drum was a fair representative of the centrist end of the Democratic party. Wouldn't that be great? There's lots of stuff I disagree with him about, but boy, if that was the timid liberalism I was reacting against, political arguments would be much less despair inducing) and Crooked Timber. And the comments here. I check Bitch every so often, but she (and her co-bloggers) hardly post.
No! No! Seize the opportunity to liberate yourself!
6: I endorse this, although I haven't actually been reading either much.
I read McMegan, largely for her comments section, to get a sense of the sort of thing that people who think of themselves as moderate libertarianish conservatives/Republicans are thinking. And then I get sad.
Requests for help that get sidetracked when the first commenter fails to play along make me sad.
There was no sidetracking. I was just getting things kickstarted so that your post wouldn't languish. Just like with the post below. And it WORKED!
Although I do seem to have gotten the tone of this thread stuck on "sad".
Naked Capitalism (www.nakedcapitalism.com). Many guest posters but run by the awesome Yves Smith, financial industry veteran (Goldman Sachs alum, former head of M&A for Sumitomo bank), author of the John Emerson-worthy book Econned , and, yes, woman. If your relative has any left-econ tendencies I guarantee he will love watching all the Wall Street pieties shown up an insider.
Yves smith is female, great. I keep my bookmarks on delicious, don't keep much locally.
Naked Capitalism is great.
Off-topic, but writing this insanely unctuous article seems like an incredibly bad way to deal with a lost love, and also like good Unfogged fodder.
You can always use your RSS reader as a preview and click through to the websites for the articles you want to read.
The only indispensable things I read are Savage Chickens (a web comic), Mind Hacks, and the IOZ.
I cut back on reading Digby during the last primary when I grew annoyed at her anti-Obama posts. I don't know if this suggests I dislike reading those I disagree with, or if she isn't as persuasive to those who disagree with her as I wouldn't expected, or that particular topic was a bad one for her. I've slowly returned.
6 is good. Pandagon might be suitable depending on your relative's tolerance for profanity and general smart-assedness. Obsidian Wings is still pretty solid despite the absence of Hilzoy.
For your personal list Andrew Sullivan is worth a read, assuming you can forgive his descent into madness during the early Bush years - he's mostly recovered and is one of the few big real conservative bloggers (as opposed to radical reactionary fantasists who call themselves conservative).
Also Slacktivist is good though I rarely read him due to being too stupid to add him to my regular rotation.
"would've"
Damn, fickle autocorrect.
Also, a conservative I like to read is Reihan Salam, who has various blogs and/or columns (a policy blog at The National Review, columns at The Daily Beast and Forbes).
14: my favorite part of that article is when she helps him realize that his true life's dream is to live on a horse farm. Any number of 12 year old girls could have told him that!
If we're getting off women only...
Rortybomb is indeed great. The best financial blog right now -- Naked Capitalism was best in the first two years of the financial crisis but Yves is so thoroughly pissed by now that the site has moved into McManus territory.
The American Scene (www.theamericanscene.com) may be the best "thinking conservative" web site. Got Conor Friedersdorf and Jim Manzi. On that front, The American Conservative (www.theamericanconservative.com) can also be very good -- a mixed bag, but Daniel Larison's Eunomia is wonderful.
Calculated Risk (calculatedrisk.blogspot.com) is a very good econ blog. So is Mark Thoma at Economists View (economistsview.typepad.com), a liberal angle usually but highly substantive.
Most days I would not be much upset if the Internet were reduced to ZooBorns and PVP.
Teo's slacking
He's just busy boning Sierra Club service trip participants. Give him a break.
I myself can't do without TPM. I like Katha Pollitt, though I read her only sporadically.
(Is this Uncle R. we're talking about or the other one?)
I pictured her having a vodka and soda
He lost me.
28: 14's dude in love with the bride. This was part of his vision of the wedding day that would have been theirs. I can't really say why that image is what pushed M/tch over the edge, but I'm sympathetic nonetheless.
I found this January post of hers really interesting, it concisely explained why some things I had believed were wrong.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/volcker-does-not-get-it.html
Her takedown of The Big Short was also pretty interesting.
28: From the column linked in 14.
I cut back on reading Digby during the last primary when I grew annoyed at her anti-Obama posts. ... I've slowly returned.
As you realized that she was right about everything?
So I'm another digby endorser, though the various co-bloggers, while still interesting, aren't as good as she is.
29: Vodka and soda is a vile excuse of a cocktail.
But really he lost me way before that. I mean, I feel sorry for the guy, his situation is a painful one, but geez:
"The present I humbly send her today is this column; this public note, this irrevocable display of affection and support and gratitude; this worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to me and the time she said yes to him. No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage."
Ugh.
33: It really would make the groom wonder if he was marrying a women who was attracted to idiots. And you don't need to think about that too much on your wedding day.
33: Seriously, I don't want to tie this into the abuse conversation, but I had to wonder how welcome this present this would actually be for her. I mean, it sure seems she dodged a bullet but having something like this written about me would make me feel queasy and awful and put-upon.
33: Yes, a better present would have been not writing the column. And not telling her about this present would have made it even more thoughtful.
I was reminded of a Magnetic Fields song:
I`m overjoyed to hear about your wedding
I`m writing you to wish you every blessing
I`m overjoyed to hear about your wedding
I`m writing you to wish you every blessing
and I`m so happy I could cry
It could be worse. He could have just written a column that said, "You're getting married, but I still remember what you look like naked and have plenty of incentive to keep going over the memory repeatedly."
38: I dunno, isn't that pretty much what he said?
32.1: I still don't think Hillary would've been a better choice, and, based on what we knew, Obama had the potential to be much better. So, no.
39: More or less, but being a bit subtle is a small help.
Couldn't he have had the simple decency to just send her a mopey mix-tape?
Speaking of columns . . . shorter David Brooks: Democratic policies have built long-term growth and wealth but that's no reason I should stop being an apologist for the GOP.
1) Go to Crooked Timber from list on our left
2) Use the blogroll on the right at CT, either randomly or selectively
3) Use one or more of the blogrolls you will find on the 2nd level of blogs.
3) Repeat or alternate with Obsidian Wings, as desired and including or excluding duplications. That blogroll is at the left
4) Follow embedded links, and add new blogs you find interesting. Experiment with their blogrolls
5) I think you may still need a general news page. I use a customized Yahoo.
6) On occasion, and if you have any life remaining, google subjects of interest with "blog" added to the search field, example, "octopus porn blog" will take to an entire community of Ukiyo-e fans. From there to Noh
You're welcome.
45: That's actually pretty much the system I used to use -- the internet's just seemed kind of drab and grey lately.
I want to live on a farm one day, a farm filled with horses and wireless connections where I can write.
And if I had a farm
With wireless connections
And if I had a horsey
I'd ride him on my farm
And we could've both together
Written stories o'er the wireless
I'm going to K.-I.-L.-L. one of us baby give me time and I'll figure out which
Me upon my horsey on my farm
14 & etc.: Imagine how awesome it will be for the next woman who goes home from a date with him (for kicks, let's just say it's a decent first date) and Googles him.
Alternatively, he can use the column as his personal ad.
Umm
I guess you replace "octopus porn" with "hokusai" in 45.6, but even that didn't get me a set of Ukiyo-e blogs and sites. It did give a variety of interesting looking blogs. Travel & art; math and the great wave.
Ok, ok, there is ukiyo-e available there.
based on what we knew
Based on what you knew. In fact, in retrospect, it's pretty clear that digby was on to something.
And she wasn't particularly anti-Obama or pro-Hillary, either. She just didn't hate Hillary, and suggested that Obama was more-or-less the same sort of politician. A lot of folks couldn't forgive her for that.
I'd be curious to see if she ever said something about Obama that, as events turned out, was more negative than the actual reality.
48: I hope his new girlfriend isn't one of those sad New York women!
Imagine how awesome it will be for the next woman who goes home from a date with him (for kicks, let's just say it's a decent first date) and Googles him.
Yeah, this is some prizewinning awfulness:
"No matter what my romantic future holds, I know there will be no retreat from the standards she has set. Like the song says, surely someone will one day dare to stand where she stood. I can't wait."
although as liberal as possible, since this is the communist wing of Geebies.
Is this serious?
A Very Public Sociologist Blogroll, which is maintained assiduously, is at the right.
British, but for various reasons I think the British are more useful to a socialist than almost any US site.
53 was me. 52 points out more prizewinning awfulness.
The wonderful Lizzy Skurnick gives the spurned non-groom what for.
56: Oh, LORD. Then the maniac wrote Skurnick an absolutely crazy email that Jezebel has published as a Crap Email from a Dude.
51: If all she was doing was warning us that we'd be disappointed by an Obama presidency then she was (trivially) correct. My memory was that she was arguing almost exclusively against Obama, with occasional defenses of Clinton tactics.
The second time I read it I realized you've spent the last 20 years or so looking (and failing, evidently) to find someone or something in a relationship. And the third time I read it I realized why that was. To spend so much time and energy and apparent relish being so bitter and judgmental about someone you don't know and a relationship you know nothing about: How sad for you.
56: This sort of thing is why generations of men limited the occasions on which they expressed emotion to deathbeds.
That's actually pretty much the system I used to use -- the internet's just seemed kind of drab and grey lately.
For me I found that when my life got busier I no longer had the energy to want to get to know new people online. So my blog reading cut back to just blogs where either the blogger or commenter were familiar.
In many ways it's very nice, but I definitely feel like I am getting a narrow and specific range of ideas.
- the internet's just seemed kind of drab and grey lately.
Blurry Photos, all B & W and tilted, most indecipherable and nothing else! Click on screen to get new photo
last link from 54
Louis Proyect also has a great linklist at his right, is American, and been at this leftist stuff awhile, so has good educational and starter material
60: I thought it was because expressing emotions takes effort.
57- I can't seem to find it on the main CEFAD page. Link?
To the OT: I'm glad I'm not the only one who could never get into feeds. OTOH, I've mainly just tried Bloglines. Maybe there are superior services out there?
I still read Henley and Making Light, but 'round these parts that's more confession than recommendation.
63: Oppressing women and subaltern peoples takes effort, too, but we those guys did plenty of both.
64: Sorry! They call it that, but do not tag it as such.
The crazy man's initial response was this salvo on Twitter.
I still read Henley and Making Light, but 'round these parts that's more confession than recommendation.
What could possibly be wrong with reading Henley? (Not that I've done it in a while).
65: Effort that was possible because of all the energy saved by not expressing all those emotions.
68: Only to do so one has to wade through many of his co-bloggers posts.
60: 56: This sort of thing is why generations of men limited the occasions on which they expressed emotion to deathbeds.
A favorite Iris Murdoch quote (Jake Donoghue speaking in Under the Net).
I felt an impulse to make her, even at this late stage, some sort of rash proposal. .... I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.
This sort of thing is why generations of men made the world a better place because they limited the occasions on which they expressed emotion to deathbeds.
You inadvertently left off a bit there.
69: There's a reason that I'm such a firestorm of productivity.
Lizzy Skurnick's piece is great. His response made me lose what little sympathy I still had for him. What a douche.
Also, what did the tweet say (can't access here at work and don't want to wait)?
Gee, I can't imagine why this crank has "been dating for almost two decades"
Tweet:
O no he didn't! He's like NEGGING ME NOW! Hilaire @PDandrewCBS Gee, I can't imagine why this crank has "been dating for almost two decades"
I don't know Skurnick, but that post was very nicely done.
From the comments on Jezebel:
Gallant: Send your ex a nice set of silverware or some wineglasses, maybe with a note saying how happy you are for her.
Goofus: Write a public guilt trip about your ex on her wedding day, including anecdotes about how you had to lie to your dying father about your break up because it was JUST TOO SAD.
Use of Goofus & Gallant = automatic WIN.
74-76: I wouldn't have responded at all, much less quite that way, but I wouldn't have committed the original offense. (I would have been stabbing myself in the stomach with a chisel for that seeing-the-ex feeling.) That said, that tweet (one shudders) doesn't seem that horrid an example of, as some coaches say, taking what the defense gives you.
Not quite what I was getting at, SK, but I'm glad you don't feel too bad about it.
(Is this Uncle R. we're talking about or the other one?)
Technically a cousin once removed, so not Uncle R.
although as liberal as possible, since this is the communist wing of Geebies.
Is this serious?
Entirely serious. This particular uncle has been a member of the communist party for probably forty years.
75: Thanks!
For a second I was confused and thought that was your reaction to Skurnick's piece.
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If we're still stuck on sad. Originally a novel by... Hardy? the elder Amis?
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80: It's okay, neb. I know you're just masking your shrewish bitterness.
On the one hand, I have a general sympathy for people in obvious emotional distress even when they express it poorly. On the other, FFS, dude! I sure hope he felt better after writing that, because nobody else did, at least until the mockery started. When the most positive thing about what you wrote is that invites people to mock your pain it's time to step back and think a bit about how you'll do things differently in the future.
Anyone know if Cohen's legal reporting is any good? I don't think I've ever seen him. I mean, I'm sure he's no TOTENENBERG!, but is he at least competent at his main line of work?
http://www.apostropher.com/blog/
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/
Skurnick is great, not just here. Her poems are nice IMO, too bad she stopped.
The point about self-obsession that I just don't understand-- some true unfortunates are so damaged as to be unable to look outside themselves. This guy is not like that. If there's any perception of other people, there's recognition of an occasionally hostile social environment. There are people who wish you ill for some reason, maybe a real one, maybe a small one, or maybe for no reason at all. What, everybody loves you because you "mean well"? Kids have more sense than that.
85: I'm not usually one of the suspenders-wearing young fogies (cough Douthat cough) who are all "the dead souls of Generations X and Y fence off their emotions with snark to insulate themselves from the suffering inextricable from authentic living, as elaborated in G.K. Chesterton's I Am So Goddamned Catholic I Crap Incense, which is why we need to reduce the capital gains tax," but, you know, I think Generation X, at least, is getting a little long in the tooth to rely on snark for its response to every solitary expression of emotion that erupts through the policed personalities of our commenting selves. Studiedly abjuring implications of sexism, racism and the forlorn hope that the people who don't love us would change their minds is public-minded, but I don't mind when people let that last mask slip a bit.
In unrelated news, my copy of Ernst Jünger's On Pain is here... and the cover's all creased. Fuck you, Amazon.com.
Entirely serious. This particular uncle has been a member of the communist party for probably forty years.
Wow. Way out of my league, then. Estes is an anarchist, and Proyect and most of the rest are SWP/WSP Trotskyist whatevers. Hell, I had to google Schachtmanism the other day, and I still don't understand it. That is so embarrassing.
Meanwhile Adam Kotsko on the masterpiece that is Inception. SEK is just so very wrong, and he doesn't understand Ulysses either, for reasons touched on by Kotsko. Nah-Nah.
We need new blogwars. Many of the main blogs are still debating healthcare. Brain damage is imminent.
To: neb, an unmarried bachelor currently pursuing a doctorate degree at this time
From: The hoi polloi
We know and are aware that you yourself would prefer that we avoid redundant and repetive expressions. However, though, as normal, everyday people, we talk like we talk.
68- partly 70, partly because mentioning those two blogs together might insinuate a possible tendency towards being a geek.
88: She once posted a poem she wrote in college that ended, "I sucked your dick; be nice to me." Ah -- and here it is.
If I'm understanding 89 correctly, the right response is that snark is not appropriate to everything, but it is certainly useful as a rejoinder to a screed sent to an ex on her wedding day THAT DOES NOT MENTION ONE SINGLE GODDAMN ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE SUPPOSEDLY BELOVED.
(And that we spell repetitive correctly and accurately.)
Studiedly abjuring implications of sexism, racism and the forlorn hope that the people who don't love us would change their minds is public-minded, but I don't mind when people let that last mask slip a bit.
It's not the "letting the mask slip" that's blameworthy in Cohen's case, it's the unbridaled narcissism.
"Bridled Narcissism" would be a good name for a race horse.
... the unbridaled narcissism.
Nice.
94, 96: If the poor dumb bastard had mentioned the things about her that he liked or remembered particularly, then the Internet would call him a creepy stalker. Or, if I remember my memes correctly, accuse him of "bodysnarking."
You guys are being so hard on the dude. Just think, when he wrote that column, he was probably blind drunk!
989: There is some snark in Skurnick's piece, but that's not all there is.
There's letting the mask slip a bit, and then there's going on at length through a bullhorn out from under said mask. Use of a newspaper column as your medium of emotional outpouring makes it closer to the latter.
redundant and repetive expressions.
Sometimes I suffer from RAS Syndrome.
103: oh, he wasn't talking to you. Give it another 885 comments.
98.last: I would propose that the whole piece would have potentially worked if it was written x (x>20) years from now as a retrospective about the piece I wanted to write at the time but instead I listened to my better judgment and boy am I glad I did. Publishing anything that personal on the occasion of the other person's wedding is pretty much guaranteed to be a lose.
Publishing anything that personal on the occasion of the other person's wedding is pretty much guaranteed to be a lose.
I dunno, maybe he gets paid $50 by the government every time he's a self-pitying bully in public.
I can't believe how dumb I am. Thought process:
1. Huh, IT tried to put MAPLE on my computer but it looks like they didn't finish.
2. Huh, they uninstalled Google Chrome.
3. Huh, my bookmarks are all missing.
4. Off to meetings!
5. Huh, my background picture is back to the default.
6. .....
7. Wait a minute....
8. .....
9. They fucking erased my entire memory. All my tests, papers, classroom plans, recommendations, etc...gone.
I am so fucking livid at their incompetence. We have a back-up system that involves saving documents one at a time on a schoolwide server, so I had done that with a few documents, but not the bulk of the gigantic number of files that they carelessly erased.
I agree with all the sentiments expressed in this thread, but my bet is that public reaction to the column was overwhelmingly positive (as he himself claimed in his email in 66). I doubt the bride appreciated it, though.
108: Really?! My head would be exploding and I would be on the phone hollering. I cannot even imagine.
109: I doubt the bride appreciated it, though.
But she's like, what? One vote?
Really, if you got no advance warning, 108 sounds like something that someone should lose their job over.
But she's like, what? One vote?
One, person one, vote. (Other people should appreciate your point, but many probably do'nt. Was my basic point. )
One, person one, vote.
The strange comma deployment makes this sound sort of futuristic, like something you'd hear coming over the intercoms in THX-1138: "One. Person one. Vote."
119 to 114 through 118, inclusive. Welcome, Robot Brock Overlord!
Oh, you all should always give me a half hour to re-determine if I was being a double-secret-probation idiot. Which I was.
It turns out the help desk was still logged on, from trying to install Maple. So I was tooling around as them. Sheesh.
I really should back up this computer.
Oddly enough, my info is still missing from my comments box. But my bookmarks are all back! But in dire need of updating, so I'm still glad for this thread.
Off to pick up Hawaiian Punch.
113 is right. Mebbe not lose their job -- everyone cocks up sometimes -- but it's definitely a yelling, swearing, and profuse apology from someone senior situation.
125: Shouldn't something so drastic have been preceded by a couple of weeks of warning, reminders, admonitions to back up things, opportunities to postpone, FAQs, etc., etc.?
re: 126
Sure, but people get sloppy. You do something a dozen times with no problems and you begin to cut corners by skipping the backups and the safety precautions. It's not excusable of course -- and also, why isn't the computer properly backed up, or at least the user profile stored on a server somewhere* -- but these kinds of cock ups by an individual are explicable.
* which would be the bare minimum for basic institutional competence, I'd have thought?
Wait, didn't HG just say that it all turned out fine in the end?
I mean, maybe the whole IT department should be fired anyway. I'm not one to stand in the way of a good firing.
127: I've got a couple of flash keys and back up my work computer to one of those every day before I leave. I have no idea if the network guys do backups regularly nor if they've ever done a restore.
I'm still suffering from the PTSD caused by discovering, about 35 years ago, that a backup program copied one woman's medical records about 50K times instead of getting the 50K women's records it was supposed to grab.
129.2: I don't see the problem.
I've got a couple of flash keys
I really need to look into this as a quick and easy way to back up on a daily basis. I gather they're fairly inexpensive, though I haven't really looked into capacity.
I'm realizing reading this that in the case of people I know & like & respect, I pretty much automatically take their side rather than the IT department's, and in the case of everyone else, I pretty much automatically take the side of the IT department, which is probably unfair all around.
130: Congratulations, you're going to be a father.
This seems like an appropriate thread for my humble "bleg".
An astrophysicist friend is trying to write about the economics of the university, tuition, etc. I know there's a lot about this at Crooked Timber and there's someone (Mark something?) who's recently written very well about this stuff. Where should I send him? Feel free to comment over there too.
Over there at User's Guide, not at Crooked Timber. That would be weird.
There's endearingly sentimental, and there's narcissistically obtuse. Flippanter has managed the difficult trick of being endearingly sentimental about someone who is narcissistically obtuse.
Flippanter is still a bonehead, mind you, but a bonehead who is actually worthy of the empathy that he expresses regarding Cohen.
Christopher Newfield has written very well from the perspective of the humanities--he focuses on California state system issues when blogging, but has books as well...
133:Do you mean Marc Bousquet at the Valve? He writes about labor issues in a University, amongst other things.
133: Just remember not to trust anything written by administrators, faculty members, or economists.
131: I use 16Gb Sandisks, going for about $35 each on Amazon. With two of these alternating every other day and keeping a "previous version" directory on each, I've 4 days of backup in my pocket. I just copy my daily programming stuff and the occasional email, the company can worry about the company's software.
So, it's not a blog, but one thing I've been reading today that's pretty great is The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. But everyone here already knows that, because it's one of those books that I only sought out after seeing it recommended on the internet about a million times.
I recommend not subscribing to the audio-blog run by the roommate who talks on the phone way too much too loudly.
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I have watched fucking Thai ghost stories without subtitles but I don't know if I have ever encountered a movie as alien and incomprehensible to me as Brian Clough, the early years. As in who the fuck is he, and what is this bizarre activity he manages, and why focus on his beginnings, and wtf language are these people speaking?
But Michael Sheen made it fun.
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Do you mean Marc Bousquet at the Valve?
He also has a website called How the University Works. I think he's wrong about tenure, but I also think he's a must-read on these issues.
Timothy Burke once wrote a great post on why college now costs so much, but it was 5 or 6 years ago, I think, and you'd have to search his archives.
But everyone here already knows that, because it's one of those books that I only sought out after seeing it recommended on the internet about a million times.
I'm finally reading Cloud Atlas, and am delighted to discover that it is as excellent as y'all have made it out to be.
144.last: "Could College be Cheaper?"?
One more for cloud atlas, which I started this week. It's a lot like the Manuscript Found in Saragossa, but with 21st century instead of 18th centure concerns, and a lor less playful despite the many voices and wealth of clever detail.
But I'm really enjoying it as well.
Is the "Link| Comments" bit under the post on the main page displaying weird for anyone else?
He also has a website called How the University Works.
That seems to be one of those webpages that I might be interested in reading, were the site design not so awful that trying to would give me a headache.
143: you mean The Damned United? Watched it the other day when it came on the BBC, ut switched off halfway through when the Brian Clough character (and much of the rest of the cast) started to sound a bit too much like Jon Culshaw doing a northerner.
But really it wasn't that hard to understand was it? Classic sports story of how the young manager of a smalltime club is snubbed by the big boys, vows revenge and gets his team to the champeenship, then gets a chance to head the big boys themselves and proves himself more worthy than the guy that snubbed him. Only this time it was sortof based on real facts and there was no happy ending.
151:I was halfway joking.
The half that wasn't a joke has a lot to do with the differing geographies. Derby and Nottingham are 16 miles apart, and each has a pro football club with a hundred years of tradition and very loyal fans. The only comparison I could come up with in America is college sports, and Bloomington and Ann Arbor are 326 miles apart, and most of the fans aren't from the cities, and states do not generate that kind of tribalism anymore. Americans are also more mobile, I think. Friday Night Lights might compare, but that isn't pro. (But is British football pro? I thought I heard something about day jobs on bottom division teams.)
I would guess that Derby and Nottingham could share each other's glory a little, when their close neighbor beat Leeds or Manchester.
The compactness and intensity of British football as entertainment is something that is difficult impossible for Americans to understand, and so the feeling for what Clough did in the 70s is alien.
There was also the economics. Nottingham, pop 250k, can pay a million pounds for a player in the early 80s?
WTF?
153. Bob, geographically adjacent clubs often usually take rivalry into the realm of pathological hatred. Derby despise Nottingham Forest; Oxford loathe Swindon; the two Sheffield and two Manchester clubs would rip their own eyes out before they'd support the other; Brighton, curiously, have a deep seated enmity with Crystal Palace in Southh London. So, no.
Otherwise:
- 45 is exactly right;
- Skurnick is spot on;
- Heebie is lucky to work in a place where she's allowed to run Chrome and do all that stuff.
Cloud Atlas
Never heard of it. Now on my wishlist!
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MenuPad: Almost good.
Prediction: Soon there will be a suggestion system built in based on previous orders and ratings, like the Netflix algorithm. They will add functions that tell you what other people with similar tastes liked, and recommendations from reviewers. You will also be able to download the recipe for dishes you like right there at the table before the plates are cleared. That's when it becomes the must-have item for foodies.
P.S. I swear I am not a paid shill for Apple.
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135: I wouldn't discount narcissism on my part, though.
It's like Brock never reads the threads.
I don't always read the book threads, it's true. It seemed like the first few were all about Twilight and Harry Potter, and I got bored.
Brock, be sure you get the right Cloud Atlas. It's the one by David Mitchell, but there was another written the same year and that's the one I read, thinking I was doing it on the recommendation of folks here. It's not bad, but not the same.
161: To be clear, that's the one that I've read and unfogged has not recommended.
Speaking of Cloud Atlases* , undulatus asperatus both have a great name and are very cool looking.
*Publication [in 1896] of the first edition was arranged by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson, Albert Riggenbach, and Léon Teisserenc de Bort, members of the Clouds Commission of the International Meteorological Committee--more great names, where are the Léon Teisserenc de Borts of yesteryear?
Those clouds are incredible, I would love to see those. How did you find the link?
It's a lot like the Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Oh, great. Now I'm going to have to read it.
165: Via this TV weather blog post that came up just searching around. They were the first new recognized "cloud type" in quite a while 9in 2009). Just Google image-searching is pretty good as well (although some that come up are mammatus clouds which are their own kind of awesome).
The compactness and intensity of British football as entertainment is something that is difficult impossible for Americans to understand, and so the feeling for what Clough did in the 70s is alien.
That's what I like about English football, four professional leagues, each town its own club, great rivalries, the support there for both the most expensive and probably best top tier competition in the world and for the sort of football anoraking that prefers watching some sixth level semi-professional club yet for all that passion and intesity the national team still struggles to get out of the group stages of a worldcup...
We don't really have that in the Netherlands either; just too small a country to support more than one and a half fully professional leagues; of the bottom league six clubs will actually start the season with negative points for financial irregularities already.
153 Fever Pitch (the book, I've never seen the film they made of it) does a good job of describing the insane tribalism of English football. (Scottish football have separate leagues although are just as mental in their own way, bringing religion into it for extra lunacy. Welsh football isn't such a big deal, except you really don't want to be on a train home full of Cardiff City fans.)
I looked up my local home town team, just to see what their regular attendance is, and it's 500. And they _aren't_ in the bottom division [they are a 2nd Division team].*
Within about less than 10 miles of that small village there's Falkirk FC, East Stirlingshire, Stirling Albion, Alloa, and Stenhousemuir. I don't think you get that sort of density of teams outside the UK [although I may be wrong].
*Although Scottish football is odd, as the rough equivalent of non-League football -- the Junior leagues -- are sometimes better attended than officially bigger league clubs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Junior_Football_Association
164: Oh my god. The second link ("looking") is incredible. Everybody should look at it.
The first link ("very cool") is very cool as well.
Susie Madrak (surburbanguerilla.com) is pretty consistently lefty and although she includes maybe too much personal information, she clearly reads widely and understands the political process (she was/is? a reporter), and she catches many things I would have otherwise missed . . . .
