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The New York article I blogged a few days ago got quite a response from Kassia Krozser at Booksquare, It’s Only The End of Rose-Colored Glasses: Noted statistician Philip Roth estimated, fifteen years ago, “…there were at most 120,000 serious American readers—those who read every night—and that the number was dropping by half every decade.” [...]

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I just made a contribution to Planned Parenthood.

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Among the variety of things in my RSS reader is Robert Reich’s blog, and today he has an excellent set of observations about the coming socialism in America corporate welfare salvation of the world economy: What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get A Blank Check From Taxpayers Why should Wall Street get [...]

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Not to mention the future: Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind – ChronicleReview.com So let’s restrain the digitizing of all liberal-arts classrooms. More than that, given the tidal wave of technology in young people’s lives, let’s frame a number of classrooms and courses as slow-reading (and slow-writing) spaces. Digital technology has become an imperial force, [...]

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Fascinating article in New York Magazine, as a reader, as an editor, and as a new owner of a kindle: Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing As We Know It? Debbie Stier, Miller’s No. 2 at HarperStudio as this little imprint is called, has been collecting videos for their blog. “You want to [...]

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I don’t know this author, nor am I familiar with the website, but this is a wonderful rundown of what white privilege looks like in the U.S. presidential campaign: White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election | BuzzFlash.org White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is [...]

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Or rather, living through the plague: Thursday 14 September 1665 (Pepys’ Diary) Then, on the other side, my finding that though the Bill in general is abated, yet the City within the walls is encreased, and likely to continue so, and is close to our house there. My meeting dead corpses of the plague, carried [...]

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Last night I attended a wonderful event organized by the new Common Cod fiber guild. The room was absolutely packed, evidently far outstripping the organizers’ expectations. The speaker was the downright effervescent (and very cute) Franklin Habit. I look forward to seeing where this guild goes!

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The Canonical Bacon Page Any conversation on the internet will eventually include bacon in some way. And then be forwarded immediately to John Scalzi.

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First-person reflections on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul over at Showers of Blessings But I was appalled at the disproportionality of the display of force throughout the week. It started with forcible entries to four or five homes Saturday morning to arrest RNC WC members and to execute search warrants. Police reportedly used [...]

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