January 2009
49 posts
a peculiar distinction
The Swiss Army knife is the product that has been the centerpiece of Victorinox’s business. Originally the sole supplier, since 1908 it has shared the contract with Wenger. A compromise between the two companies gave Victorinox the right to advertise as the Original Swiss Army Knife, while Wenger lays claim to the title of Genuine Swiss Army Knife. (#)
those words did not use to be synonyms
“Tim recognized that you want the core audience to feel, for a while, that the film is theirs,” John Shea, the head of integrated marketing at MTV Networks, says. “So he gives them content that feels bloggy and street — like they’re behind the curtain.” (#)
Sundays are the best
elsam:
keyholez:
I could not possibly disagree with this sentiment more. I actually howled out loud when I read it.
UNFOLLOW. World views so different have no business intersecting.
WHATEVER I HOPE YOU ENJOY CHURCH I’LL JUST BE HERE WEEPING AND RENDING MY CLOTHES
Sundays are the best
elsam:
Low-obligation, high-potential. Inbuilt indolence (thank you, deeply culturally ingrained Lord’s Day!) so on top of Sundays being unfettered and shapeless, you can end up feeling pride for doing anything at all.
I made lasagna and cleaned my room. I feel like I’ve mastered life.
I could not possibly disagree with this sentiment more. I actually howled out loud when I read it.
Park Slope talismans
At Brooklyn Industries, I saw a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a bird dressed like a Mexican wrestler. (See also.) I went into a store called Cog & Pearl (& Windmill & Cupcake), which was full of little bags and wall-hangings decorated with squirrels and squids. I passed by something claiming to be Monkey Whistles and Motor Bikes.
We‘ve compiled such a peculiar...
hedge-fund bugbear
leoncrawl:
keyholez:
The shorthand epithet I’ve heard people “in the financial world” use most often to snidely refer to ignorant, gullible retail investors?
Dentists. Sometimes “dentists out in Minnesota.”
Possibly unrelated, but at least one editor of the New York Times Book Review— I think it’s more than one, actually— has said that when he imagines his audience, he imagines a dentist.
...
"You've gotta hear this. Are you sitting down?"
I hope that this phrase — “are you sitting down?” — has some kind of lost historical origin story. Once, a long time ago, someone heard something, and he or she was not sitting down.
He or she suffered horribly, famously. And thus.
hedge-fund bugbear
The shorthand epithet I’ve heard people “in the financial world” use most often to snidely refer to ignorant, gullible retail investors?
Dentists. Sometimes “dentists out in Minnesota.”
“Where would we be had the authorities allowed BSC, LEH, AIG, WB, F, GM, C et al...”
– Jared Dillian, The Daily Dirtnap, vol. 1, no. 7, 1/9/09
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership →
best asset manager EVER
“So we live on a planet in which out of hundreds of millions of of people fed...”
– NNT
“[T]he median price of a home sold in Detroit last month was $7,500, according to...”
– Dow Jones via CR
I hate to say it, but this sort of thing is always...
Harper’s Weekly, 1/13/2009:
…[S]ix candidates for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee debated at the National Press Club, where they discussed ways to appeal to younger voters. “We have to do it in the Facebook,” said incumbent Chairman Mike Duncan, “with the Twittering.”
queering Excel
My preference is to “typeset” my spreadsheets in the font Georgia, but my boss insists on Tahoma, mocks me for trying to “rebel”, and demands that I “conform”. He is also rather particular about graph formatting.
This has the strange consequence that when I produce things for his consumption, I feel like I’m performing in drag.
So THAT's what Kenneth was talking about... →
sunplusnightplusjess:
I guess most people have already seen this? Anyway, I imagine the whole movie must be equally spectacular…
(via Brother Ben)
The fascinating thing about the Teen Witch “shout-out” on 30 Rock was how…extraneous it was. Absent the Teen Witch context, Kenneth’s little rap isn’t particularly funny, so I have to think that the entire point of the...
here is the URL for the future, okay?
http://my.barackobama.com/thefuture
mortgagez: things obama has in common with hoover
mortgagez: 1) depression
mortgagez: 2) THEY SUCK HAHAHAHAHA
Plane Crashes Into Hudson River →
fiatluxemburg:
elsam:
“The plane, according to the news report, may have hit a flock of birds.”
This is an update from “the plane, according to the news report, may have hit a bird or birds.”
Second bird?
On whatever channel it was that people at work were watching, one reporter kept using the phrase “at least two bird strikes”.
mortgagez: hammer + sickle is very outdated
mortgagez: i wonder if modern revolutionaries pick different tools
me: i'll ask
me: that's a good point
me: laptop and...cash register?
me: to be perfectly honest i don't even really get the hammer
me: too artisan-y and pre-industrial
mortgagez: but aren't soviet factories basically conveyor belts where constructivist people smack blocks of metal with hammers?
me: not just soviet factories, all factories
mortgagez: good work, men. the country's need for misshapen iron slabs has been met for another year
Ad on TV: What you did at that meeting was pure poetry! You caught a million-dollar accounting error!
Me: Please. If someone came to me with a million-dollar accounting error, I'd bill them for wasting my time.
nostalgie de la boue
yearning for the mud : attraction to what is unworthy, crude, or degrading (#)
I refuse to google this before posting; I don't...
Steampunk + emo = steamo
UPDATE: … = steampunk = emo
“Shane Co, a privately held jewellery retailer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy...”
“Abraham Lincoln was wearing a black bespoke suit from Brooks Brothers when he...”
– Details Men’s Style Manual, p. 103. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to plumb the depths of this mystery fully, but Wikipedia calls the notion that Lincoln died wearing Brooks Brothers a “myth”. It does agree that Brooks Brothers stopped making (off-the-rack) black suits...
“After he was through, Jones made his way out into the nearly empty downtown....”
– The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert on Van Jones, who advocates “greening the ghetto”. A useful distinction! And a well-placed accent mark. But what of the Clipse, who claim to represent “the upper echelon of street hip-hop”?
“…although mammals were present during much of the 185 million years of the...”
– Harry J. Jerison, “Evolution of the Brain”, Encyclopedia of the Human Brain v. 2 p. 251. An underrated aspect of humankind!
“An architecture that was completely open to manipulation by others, without any...”
– Cosmides & Tooby
I distrust the emotional underpinnings of people's...
He’s an okay writer, I guess, but fundamentally I believe that people read his writings in order to feel better about their pre-existing opinions, not to learn anything new or, dare I say it, be challenged. “There goes Krugman, stickin’ it to ‘em again!” Half-smile, page-turn. It’s nice to be able to say that your extremely conventional pet beliefs have the...
Ten Surprises for 2009
Byron R. Wien, Chief Investment Strategist of Pequot Capital Management, Inc., today issued his list of Ten Surprises for 2009. Mr. Wien has issued his economic, financial market and political surprises annually since 1986. The 2009 list follows:
1. The Standard and Poor’s 500 rises to 1200. In anticipation of a second-half recovery in the U.S. economy, the market improves from a base of...
“It is important to keep in mind that a mechanism that was capable of producing...”
– Tooby & Cosmides, “The Psychological Foundations of Culture”, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford UP, 1992), 73.
“(listen) I’m a shark / y’all just koi fish / (what else?) octopus / (what else?)...”
– Juelz Santana.
elsam:
I like to hear this as “coy fish”.
I’m partial to “Straight out the pot, I’m ready / Straight out like rock, I’m ready / Or, more proper, / I’m straight out like hot spaghetti”, which follows a long, stupid discussion of how Juelz has to...
prepare yourselves
As the “Boomers” continue to age, we will be subjected to infinity trend pieces about their old-people sex problems.
Happy New Year!
Anton Zeilinger:
Some day all semiconductors will break down and therefore all computers, as, besides historic instruments, no computers exist today which are not based on semiconductor technology. The breakdown will be caused by a giant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by a nuclear explosion outside Earth’s atmosphere. It will cover large areas on Earth up to the size of a continent....