May 2012
50 posts
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Ben Kafka, 'The Administration of Things: A... →
This article traces the history of the radical idea of an ‘administration of things’ from its origins in utopian socialism to the present.
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A History of Blue →
‘What is the color of honey, and “faces pale with fear”? If you’re Homer - one of the most influential poets in human history - that color is green. And the sea is “wine-dark,” just like oxen…though sheep are violet.’
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Twenty-Five Minimalist Book Covers →
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Breast is Best? →
On breastfeeding and the control of women’s bodies.
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Mary Norris, Pencilophilia →
‘By bringing pencil sharpening out in the open, David Rees has lifted a taboo: he has given us all permission to express our love of pencils, to abandon ourselves to pencilophilia—a love that till now has always been slightly embarrassed to speak its name.’
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Jonathan Franzen, 'Farther Away' →
Robinson Crusoe, David Foster Wallace, and the island of solitude.
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Ken Doyle, Safecracker →
‘Q: How did you learn to be a safecracker? A: In 1978 I took a correspondence course to learn the basics of locksmithing. The ad in the Popular Mechanics classifieds said, “Be your own boss.”
The course consisted of about 70 lessons. I’d study each lesson and practice the particular skill required, like how to fit a key, lock disassembly, rekeying, etc.
Q: What does it mean to fit a key? ...
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National Kitchens →
From Kook en Geniet to Indian Delights - the making of South African cuisines.
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Photographs of Life in the British Raj →
‘A shoebox full of images capturing life in India at least a century ago has been discovered in one of Scotland’s national collections. All 178 of the plate glass negatives were found inside a size-nine Peter Lord shoebox by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, in Edinburgh.’
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The Descriptive Camera →
‘The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene.’
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A Map of Subterranean London →
In London Subterranea Stephen Walter ‘has painstakingly charted the buried rivers, Tube lines, bunkers, sewers, government tunnels and other hypogeal secrets of London. He’s also included mysterious and underworld elements, such as unsolved murders, ley lines and pagan burial sites.’
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Literary Paint Samples →
Graham Greene, Lo’s Socks, and Wine-dark…
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Colour Photographs of Mongolia, 1913 →
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Neil Gaiman, 'My Hero: Maurice Sendak' →
‘Sendak, who died this week, did not make books for children. He just made books. His linework was elegant, sometimes even cute, but always honest. He was wise, and he never patronised any readers, adult or child. I devoured interviews with Sendak: he was a grumpy, Jewish, brilliant, wise contrarian and he didn’t mellow as he aged. But then, he had never created mellow books. His...
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Vintage Cuban Film Posters →
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Mark Dery on 'Floating Worlds: The Letters of... →
‘As the friendship deepens, a mythical beast called the Stoej-gnpf takes center stage. Hippo-shaped yet sleekly froglike in its more acrobatic moments, with a black pelt and the usual beady Gorey eyes, it lumbers along on all fours or swings from a trapeze or scoots along on roller skates or gazes dolefully, like Hamlet, at a distinctly stoej-gnpf-y skull. As its name suggests — the name is...
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Cuban Book Covers →
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Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197 →
‘I receive an enormous quantity of books every day—novels, new editions of books I already own—so every single week I fill up some boxes and send them off to my university, where there is a big table with a sign that says take a book and run.’
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Good Neighbours →
‘The Neighbourgoods Market’s success has grown partly as a result of an increased interest in the provenance and production of good, ‘whole’, food among Cape Town’s middle classes. This is excellent. But how do these customers – who desire to live and eat ethically – drive past such incredible poverty every Saturday, without thinking twice about the people who live there?’
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The Flowchart of J. Alfred Prufrock →
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Fatema Ahmed, 'Livingstone’s Last Election' →
‘it was Livingstone who sounded like a statesman, and far from unlikeable. He began with the Labour Party’s gains across the country, spoke of George Osborne’s economic policies putting us back into a double-dip recession, and said that ‘today’s teenagers are the first generation… who face a worse prospect than their parents’. No national Labour figure has made the same points so plainly....
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Elif Batuman, 'The Phantom Matzo Factory' →
‘A lot of people don’t know that, for nearly thirty years, Istanbul had its own working matzo factory, or that Istanbul still has its own non-working matzo factory. Known in Turkish as the ‘doughless oven,’ located in Galata, on the northern bank of the Golden Horn, it has been given over to the arts. I recently went there to see ‘An Attempt at Exhausting a Place,’an...
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What are you worth? →
The value of different body parts.
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Ampers-Fan →
‘The dark horse of the keyboard, the ampersand exists to join things together, yet remains set apart. Whilst everyone can read and understand the ampersand, or the & symbol, how many of us know where it came from?’
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Reality Hunger: On Lena Dunham's 'Girls' →
‘hunger, in all its manifestations, drives Girls. As with all lost generations, there seems to be a profound sense of lack among Hannah’s friends. Hannah showcases her appetite for attention, sex, and food, none of which prove exclusive to one another.’
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