Posts by matt

I’ve been rediscovering my slow cooker. While my boyfriend was visiting over the last week, we made bananas foster, chicken and dumplings, and sloppy joes, all in the crockpot. (Let’s just say it was not a week of healthy eating.) Given the effortless deliciousness that came out of the crockpot after a few hours of cooking, I started to wonder if anyone had made a blog devoted purely to slow cooker recipes. Did I even need to ask?

After gobbling up last week’s stellar NYT Mag cover story from David Leonhardt, I Kindled Paul Tough’s book about the birth of Harlem’s Promise Academy, Whatever It Takes. The book is stellar. Tough’s NYT Mag piece from 2006 gives a nice intro, but it ends by recounting the successes of KIPP charter schools. Whatever It Takes is in many ways a chronicle of the academic underworld, the students beyond KIPP’s reach. And it’s a fascinating primer on how education in America is transforming.

Did anybody notice this ingenious little political maneuver in Tennessee last week?

Republicans stood poised to take control of the Tennessee General Assembly for the first time in nearly 140 years. Even Gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp roamed the halls. … When lawmakers returned from break, now an hour into session, they tackled the Speakers position. Representative Jason Mumpower of Bristol received the first nomination. Republicans hoped to end the nomination process there, but after more political wrangling, allowed Democrats to submit a candidate.

What happened next some may describe as the political play of the decade as all 49 Democrats backed Kent Williams, a Sophomore Republican from Carter County, a district just miles from Mumpower’s hometown.

Found at Political Animal.

Even more fun than reading predictions for 2009: reading predictions for 2008. NYMag’s predix for the biggest business stories of 2008 royally missed the mark (e.g. Goldman Sachs will end the year at $300/share … ouch). ReadWriteWeb’s predix mostly bombed (Hakia goes mainstream? massive Facebook/Google decline? Twitter and Tumblr acquired?).

(I found this by searching Fimoculous.)

This really is Lovecraftian:

In an alarming yet little-noticed series of recent studies, scientists have concluded that Canada’s precious forests, stressed from damage caused by global warming, insect infestations and persistent fires, have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering.

This fact might be the best illustration I’ve seen of the unexpected consequences of climate change. “Inexorably rising temperatures are slowly drying out forest lands, leaving trees more susceptible to fires, which release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.” What a catastrophic chain of events. How frightening to imagine that global warming is powerful and sinister enough to co-opt the very forces that ordinarily keep it in check.

Rob Spence wears a prosthetic eye. It’s the 21st Century. Ergo, Rob’s new eye is going to include a video camera.

Unnerving Story of the Day™ is sponsored by Ratchet Up and the letter Um.

Was it Write Like Tom Friedman Day at the NYT on Christmas, Paul Krugman?

Just didn’t want to let that one go unremarked.

Soooo happy I gave myself a Kindle for Christmas.

The device came in handy immediately. I’m staying with my boyfriend Bryan in Minneapolis over the holidays, and the UPS guy arrived with the package very shortly after he left for work. As soon as I left Bryan’s apartment to go upstairs and sign for it, I realized the door had locked behind me, leaving me in Bryan’s robe and slippers, with no keys and no cell phone. But I did have a Kindle. Which meant I had Web access. I surfed to Ask MetaFilter, found lock-picking advice, and managed to get back in. Score.

Twenty-four hours later, I’m into the first chapter of The Rest Is Noise, and on the fifth chapter of The Four-Hour Work Week.

Gripes: Like everybody else, I’m not really a fan of the paging button positions. Also, when you start typing notes, they should auto-save. I’ve been done in a few times by the combo of these two: I’ll start typing a note, then accidentally hit the back key and lose what I’ve written.

The “locations” concept is smart, but I wish there were more cues about where locations start and stop.

Loves: Having a virtual library is already world-changing. I never imagined how cool it would be to instantly shift between different texts as I enter different information-seeking modes. I have always been a juggler of multiple books — there are times I want to read fiction, times I want to read non-fiction, times I want to read fluff. In the analog world, this is disorienting; it’s hard to pick up where I left off with one book after having read another. On the Kindle, freed from a cacophany of book darts and dog ears, this feels wonderfully natural.

It is the same sort of epiphany the iPod invoked for me. Carrying a bunch of books around at once, it turns out, is every bit as much of an experiential leap as carrying tons of music around was in 2001.

I love the way the notes I take are both integrated into the book and separate from it. I never used to take notes on books because I hated having to skim all the pages to snatch fragments of the insights that occurred to me as I was reading. Suddenly, I’m taking all kinds of notes. (This works especially well with cheesy self-help books like The Four-Hour Work Week, which require you to do all sorts of exercises.)

I love that you can read for hours and the battery bar will not budge from 100%.

I’ve named my Kindle “Inkless.”

Update: I extra-super-duper love the fact that I can use Google Reader from my Kindle. Yes, I could do this on my phone, but this is even nicer.

A comparative media studies class at MIT has published Des Imagistes, Ezra Pound’s out-of-print poetry anthology, as a website. And it’s sort of beautiful. (Bookslutty.)

This feels like a significant cultural artifact. So disturbing it’s impossible to look away. I’m about to go wash my eyes out with soap.

(If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame Taylor.)