Made Thing

"You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe"

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:29:48 -0400

“You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe”

- Author Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science | Magazine

DRUNK

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:07:48 -0400

DRUNK:

When William Blake came fashionably late to parties he’d blame it on archangels, prophecies broadcast between the leaves of ordinary trees in the orchard: those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained…

dwClickable: Entire Block Clickable Using MooTools 1.2

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:38:00 -0400

dwClickable: Entire Block Clickable Using MooTools 1.2:

So I don’t forget where to find it again.

At Lowe's Home Improvement Center

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:15:20 -0400

At Lowe's Home Improvement Center

From yesterday’s studio shoot.

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:19:31 -0400

From yesterday’s studio shoot.

Book review: Higher Education?

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:23:37 -0400

Book review: Higher Education?:

More on “Higher Education?”, this time from the Wall Street Journal, which pulls this statistical nugget: The administrator-to-student ratio at American universities has doubled since 1976.

What's Wrong With the American University System

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:46:42 -0400

What's Wrong With the American University System:

The Atlantic interviews Andrew Hacker, author of Higher Education?, a critique of the modern university system.

Hacker on tenure:

What bothers us, too, is that over 300,000 professors have it. That’s a tremendous number. What that means is these people never leave. There’s hardly any turnover in the senior ranks—not just at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford but at small colleges in Kentucky, everywhere. You go to a campus and over two thirds of the faculty have been there at least 25 years. They begin to stagnate. In many ways, they become infantilized, embroiled in ideological issues like faculty parking.

“I Will Away,” a Rumpus Original Poem by Keetje Kuipers

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:14:24 -0400

“I Will Away,” a Rumpus Original Poem by Keetje Kuipers:

Terrific use of a loose refrain.

Introducing the Protean theme for Wordpress

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:59:15 -0400

Introducing the Protean theme for Wordpress:

Protean is new Wordpress theme from Landau Reece that allows bloggers to customize their website design for individual blog posts. We think it’s a world’s first, and so we decided we’d give it away for free.

Note to self: upload this to your WP test install to play with later.

Taken yesterday, at my first studio shoot.

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:14:34 -0400

Taken yesterday, at my first studio shoot.

For the design file.

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:29:00 -0400

For the design file.

50 Useful Tools and Resources For Web Designers

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:50:56 -0400

50 Useful Tools and Resources For Web Designers:

I feel dirty every time I link to one of these round-up posts, but there’s some legitimately useful stuff on this one.

"I think avant-garde fiction has already gone the way of poetry. And it’s become involuted and..."

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:35:54 -0400

“I think avant-garde fiction has already gone the way of poetry. And it’s become involuted and forgotten the reader. Put it this way, there are a few really good poets who suffered because of the desiccation and involution of poetry, but for the most part I think American poetry has gotten what it’s deserved. And, uh, it’ll come awake again when poets start speaking to people who have to pay the rent, and fuck the same woman for thirty years. That’s off the record: that’s really nasty.”

- David Foster Wallace, quoted in Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

"Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72" by Charles Harper Webb

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:38:25 -0400

"Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72" by Charles Harper Webb:

Love the use of rhyme in the last two lines.

The Top Idea in Your Mind

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:57:28 -0400

The Top Idea in Your Mind :

I’ve found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding—thoughts like the Nile Perch in the way they push out more interesting ideas. One I’ve already mentioned: thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done. [3]

My friend Bethany started a poem-by-postcard project this...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:35:42 -0400

My friend Bethany started a poem-by-postcard project this summer. She sent me one last week. Now I’m sending one back.

SCARY, NO SCARY

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:30:50 -0400

SCARY, NO SCARY:

One of the creepiest poems I’ve ever read. Well done.

Negative health effects of sedentary work not undone by exercise

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:41:56 -0400

Negative health effects of sedentary work not undone by exercise:

Worth reading only for this comment:

Thank you for this exotic pile of research ordure. You — that is the pea-brained hippogriffs who designed these studies — have managed to finagle reality into some existential nightmare that might make even a dour, gymless rat like Jean Paul-Sartre collapse in despair — even though he was already in despair. Despair squared! Cubed! Mega-Cubed. We’re talkin’ despair. Any decent supermax Prison Guard (surely comparable in moral dignity to the average researcher sited here) could tell you that if you cage a guy for 23 hours a day and then let him out to exercise only to pace on a doily for an hour then Mr. Man (sexist pigs!! where are the comparable women’s studies!!) won’t be superfit. Uh, duh? Of course it ALL depends on length of time “sitting” vs. “working out.” Do they really expect us to parse from these findings that a 23-hour workout following an hour of couch potatoing will not offset the physical effects? We have a technical term to refer to such stacked research: lame. Maybe participants in the studies were forced to watch endless re-runs of “Petticoat Junction” followed by a “workout’ that consisted of bench pressing a case of Almond Joys into their mouth a then a drive in high-speed bumper-to-bumper in Los Angeles traffic for two hours before arriving home only to be flogged with a garden hose by their miserable spouse and given a bowl of steam for dinner followed by a short, brutish sleep on a bed of nails?

Question by May Swenson

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:29:50 -0400

Question by May Swenson:

Incredible poem.

I Write Like

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:25:46 -0400

I Write Like:

Paste a sample of your writing, and machine analysis matches it to a famous writer’s prose style.

My zombie essay returned Margaret Atwood.