• Article on preventing runner’s knee.
  (tags: jogging article)

I’ve fallen in love with Philip Roth. Here’s a metaphor for you: a glass of wine so perfect you sip it slowly and carefully, resting it on the table after every drop to consider it afresh, swish it around and marvel at its taste and texture, savor its interplay with the ingredients of your meal. That’s Philip Roth for me right now. I love his books so much I want to put them down.

I want to live in Roth’s America. I don’t actually mean I want to live in Jewish New Jersey, but Roth’s Jersey is an apt stand-in for an America I recognize completely, riven by an endless battle between disappointment and hope. At least in his recent novels, you can read America into his protagonists as well: they’re giants with mythical qualities and deep, deep flaws, and antagonists whose motives are often (not always) sympathetic and understandable.

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Snarkmarket turns three today. In that time, we’ve racked up 1,608 entries and 2,419 comments from a mind-warping passel of the best commenters in the world. We’ve got 357 subscribers to our feed on Feedburner, and we utter a daily hymn of praise to each of them.

My most fervent hope is that one day, this blog leads these people to Andrew Adamson.

To extend what I think is a fun tradition, here are the titles of the draft entries left incomplete over the last year …

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A beta version of The Django Book — a guide to the Web application development framework Django — is being released free online, chapter by chapter. OK, nothing new there; I think it’s now illegal in 38 states to write a book about technology without either blogging the writing of it or posting it under a General Public License. What’s interesting is the system that the authors have cooked up for allowing comments on every paragraph. It could get totally overwhelming, if not implemented just right, but I think they’ve implemented it just right. Sweet.

I can’t tell you what I find so incredible about it, but I spent about 45 minutes just staring at this Flash program yesterday, and I don’t regret a minute of it. Turn down your speakers before you visit.

Another year, another anthology of science articles. The book is, as always, a highly recommended purchase. And if you’re not already a subscriber to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, well, what are you waiting for?

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Atlantic contributor Marshall Poe asks MeFi, “If The Atlantic Monthly (or Harper’s, or The New Yorker) were founded today, would it be Metafilter?”

Item #602 on this Web page is my new favorite thing. It is — brace yourself — a staple-less stapler. Put your tongue back in your mouth. Buy one today! I got mine here.

Rabbit (giant MOV file) is a stunning animated short film by Run Wrake. (MeF.)

This American Life is podcasting.