August 2011
19 posts
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Totally Psyched for the Full-Rip Nine →
“When that earthquake hits, it’s going to shake for a long time,” says Corcoran. “Three to five minutes or more. You’re going to feel lucky to survive. Then guess what. You rode out the quake? Congratulations. Now you have 15 minutes to get above 50 feet of elevation. Fifteen minutes. You’re elderly and not very mobile? Sorry. Your condition does not change the geologic facts. It’s called a...
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God’s Engineer: As celebrity architects create... →
Gaudí considered the Gothic style imperfect, because buttresses are needed to hold up the soaring magnificence. The house of God should stand on its own.
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Upstairs, Downstairs →
These sides were battling just for the right to keep playing in the same league as Manchester City and Chelsea. Sure, being a champion is pretty great. But seeing someone struggle just to survive? That’s human.
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Strange Brew (but It's Working) →
The team has even taken on some of Morgan’s identity: It’s a high-stepping, head-bobbing, shoulder-shimmying juggernaut with an affection for baby oil, naked golf and on-field choreography that stretches baseball’s rules of decorum. “We’re coming at you like a SWAT team!” Morgan hollers, raising his hands and curling his fingers into claws. “Aaaah!”
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Arsene Wenger: 'Am I too intelligent to be a... →
“I believe a big club must have the ambition to win with style … You know, there is a famous saying, that the only way to deal with your life is to transform it into art, every minute of your life. Football is an art, like dancing is an art -– but only when it’s well done does it become an art. If you see me painting, that is not an art. If you see my wife painting, that is art.”
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Europeans Against Multiculturalism: Political... →
It would be much harder for Cameron to acknowledge that British racism, immigration trajectories, foreign policy, and faith-based schools have made major contributions toward minority isolation than it is to say: we got it wrong, now let’s get it right, let’s all be British. Islam provides a soft target for aspiring cultural nationalists.
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Haitian Women Cross Border to Give Birth →
“My husband is Dominican,” one woman offers without being asked. This is an important detail: If it is true, her child is legal. The new Dominican law says that if one parent has Dominican citizenship, the child is Dominican. The nurse doesn’t blink; she hears such claims every day. But she clarifies that the women are of Haitian descent. The two women agree.
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The barra bravas: the violent Argentinian gangs... →
“They use us, we use them, it’s the way it’s done,” he says, with a shrug. “Police get paid, politicians get paid, and everyone wins. When they need muscle they have it, when we want money or access to players then we get it.
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How the Poor Die →
A thing we perhaps underrate in England is the advantage we enjoy in having large numbers of well-trained and rigidly-disciplined nurses. No doubt English nurses are dumb enough, they may tell fortunes with tea-leaves, wear Union Jack badges and keep photographs of the Queen on their mantelpieces, but at least they don’t let you lie unwashed and constipated on an unmade bed, out of sheer...
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Bringing It All Back Home →
Ryan, who always thought like a bullfighter anyway, figured it was time to go for the kill. The prospect of having Allen’s tail and Reggie’s ears in his pocket appealed to his ego. So, each time, Ryan called his catcher to the mound and told him to tell the hitter, “Nothing but heat.” Which is something of a direct challenge in the same way that spitting in a man’s face is something of an insult.
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Building Haiti’s Post-Quake Media →
Information spreads quickly around Haiti, through the famed “telejole” circuit—word of mouth—and the radio. But incisive and credible news is harder to come by.
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The Politics of Language in Central Europe →
The declaration of more than one language per person was not permitted, which by default excluded the phenomenon of bi- and multilingualism from official scrutiny. The logic of this exclusion stemmed from the conviction that a person can belong to one nation only.
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50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice →
It’s sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write “however” or “than me” or “was” or “which,” but can’t tell you why. The land of the free in the grip of...
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Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization →
In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.
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Giving "The Devil" His Due: How the founder of a... →
“I basically just read from the script,” Ferro says. “This guy was believed to have murdered and assassinated all these people, and we released him into our society. It was outrageous.”
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Baby on Board →
Airlines can pull this off because they are the one industry that’s up front about our class system: there’s first, business and economy — and Mexicans have a better chance of climbing two walls to pee in Texas than coach passengers do of passing that curtain to use the first-class bathroom.
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War Is Heller: Why there are no more Joseph... →
Another gauge of his accomplishment is that there are no more Joseph Hellers, no more glorious literary crusaders who can ambush and sack, all alone, immense and intimidating social edifices. That demolition job’s been done, that project is complete.
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Really Creative Destruction →
Just about anything you can find reflects a synthetic culture based on trade. It’s really not even a question of degree. Virtually everything is a product of multiple cultures coming from very different places, and we should be acutely aware of that when we approach debates on globalization and nationalism and cultural protectionism.
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Genealogy Makes Strides With DNA →
In documents that Thomas has found on Edward, various ethnicities are mentioned, including Native American, Italian and “Negro” which, if proven true, will certainly shake things up in a Southern family of people who look very white.
