Observations from the Balcony

An open response to James, Gabe, Larry, the peeps over at SFSite and any one else who has weighed in on the topic. The easy answer is that there isn’t a right answer. If both choices represent a path then trodding either path will bring a writer to the final destination of completing a work. [...]

These pictures are cool and freaky all at the same time. That dog is totally humping his leg. Via

This video is hilarious See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Clay Shirky is not just questioning Tolstoy, he is questioning the culture of literature. He asks, What’s so great about War and Peace? Maybe it does have themes of power, fate, and personal responsibility, but it is really any more enriching than, say, a season of The Wire? And Shirky is [...]

Soon the metal screens collapsed and the pretty gardens and tidy streets were buried under the sand. Doors and windows creaked on their hinges, cracked window panes stared sightlessly across the desert. A new ghost town had been born.

http://gorillaartfare.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/match01_round3_hurricane.jpg

Using data from the Wonderlic test More infor here and here about the Wonderlic test

It could be a fantasy football draft in any office in America — only these trades are real. This is the office of Traffic, a Brazilian company leading a new, and controversial, wave of investment in Brazilian soccer. Armed with 20 million reals of their own money (about $12 million) and [...]

The religion of art has been appropriated from artists by collectors and dealers. How and when I do not know; but at some point the idealist and the consumer began to walk hand in hand. The idea that works of art confer nobility upon those who trade them is simply an [...]

On May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death. Via

Via …each of these works utilizes 100 unique commemorative photographs culled from the internet. The final compositions are arrived at using both the mean and the median, splitting the difference between a specific norm and an ideal one. this photograph is the result of digitally averaging every Playboy centerfold foldout for the [...]

Brown’s trademark capes often worn during his raucous performances were among two of the sale’s top three lots, with David Letterman band director Paul Shaffer successfully bidding Brown’s medical bracelet, estimated at $200 to $300, up to $32,500 including commission. A black satin “James Brown” full length embroidered cape fetched $47,500 and was bought by an [...]

Wow! In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis—and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade…Since 1913, the length [...]

A very interesting article on laughter Some really thought provoking stuff here. Theorists and scientists…have shown that laughter from tickling is not quite the reflex response we often assume it to be. For a start, it is next to impossible to raise a laugh by tickling yourself (whereas you can easily make your own leg jerk by [...]

fear and Loathing Las Vegas was one of the first adult books that I’d read and Thompson has always remained a favorite. Will Leitch writes of his meeting with Hunter S. Thompson during his last days. He didn’t have anything left, but, dammit, even his nothing had something.

according to The L magazine