“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.”—Richard Ford, whose dyslexia forces him to listen more closely when people are talking
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Six Degrees of Aggregation | Michael Shapiro | Columbia Journalism Review | May 2012
Jonah Peretti on Arianna Huffington: “She makes her weak ties feel like strong ties.” And that, he recognized, “creates a large network of all kinds of people who feel close to you. That’s really important for power.”
20-somethings go home to regroup | Sonia Krishnan | The Seattle Times | 19 May 2012
Because that is how they got here. Cannonballed from university life into the recession. Rejected from jobs they never imagined they’d want.
“You have got to have original content in tone or voice, otherwise you’re spinning your wheels. Don’t give me two paragraphs on the Giants game. Tell me what’s wrong with that pitcher’s arm.”
Mainstream criticism today misses an authoritative voice that can demolish sacred cows and build a case for unappreciated artists—or, maybe to put it another way, a critic who is respected rather than scorned for his or her idiosyncratic tastes. Attaching the contrarian label to Kael suggests a willful attempt to dismiss her judgments and criticisms as arbitrary; different just for the sake of being different. And in so doing, the reviewers avoid having to grapple with what she actually represented.
Pacifists in the Cross-Fire: The Kabul Hospital That Treats All Sides | Luke Mogelson | New York Times | May. 20, 2012
What is our responsibility to the Afghans who are maimed, burned, disabled and disfigured by a war we started and can’t seem to end?
Can London Afford the $14.5 Billion Price Tag of the Summer 2012 Olympic Games? | Michael Joseph Gross | Vanity Fair | June 2012
London must set aside, and pay for, 40,000 hotel rooms, including 1,800 four- and five-star rooms for the I.O.C. and its associates, for the entire period of the Games. London must cede to the I.O.C. the rights to all intellectual property relating to the Games, including the international trademark on the phrase “London 2012.”
