"The mark of a
real writer is that she cares deeply about literary joinery, about keeping the lines of her prose plumb. That’s what makes writers writers: to them, prose isn’t just some Platonic vessel for serving up content;
they care about words. Any chief product officer who says “quality online does not equal craftsmanship” is channeling the utilitarian gospel of the managerial class, an instrumentalist vision of journalism that presumes writing, online, is just a turkey baster for injecting content into the user’s brain." Mark Dery, on
writing for the web.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Aug 2, 2010 -
86 comments
Prince and Kelly Clarkson Marry? Idaho No Longer A State? A Pomeranian Blight? Is this flimflamery? No, it is
LIE BLOG, a place for lies.
[via
mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk
on Jul 6, 2010 -
22 comments
An attempt at a
collaborative translation of Plato’s Protagoras. Every day for a few months, Dhananjay Jagannathan will post roughly a page of the dialogue, side by side in Greek, in his own translation, and in Jowett’s classic 1871 translation. He's invited readers to comment and offer suggestions to improve the translation. Jagannathan's goal is to communicate Plato in English the way readers of his would have interpreted his Greek.
posted by unliteral
on Jun 30, 2010 -
11 comments
“People talk a little more of the war, but very little. As always hitherto, it is impossible to overhear any comments on it in the pubs, etc. Last night, E[ileen] and I went to the pub to hear the 9 o’c news. The barmaid was not going to have it on if we had not asked her, and to all appearances nobody listened.”
On
May 28, 1940, George
Orwell began keeping a
war time diary. Printed in “full and in chronological
order” by the
Orwell Trust, 70 years after he wrote
them, with selected historian’s notes. Pre-war entries are a little duller, focusing on topics like
recipes (
macon!), the weather, gardening and farming.
(Previously)
posted by stratastar
on Jun 18, 2010 -
21 comments
Andrew Shane Huang is a 35 year old hardware hacker, known to some as
bunnie, and others as that guy who
hacked the Xbox and went on to
write a book about it.
Finding the hidden key to the Xbox was
an enjoyable distraction while he worked on getting his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT as
part of
Project Aries. Since then, he has
written for (and
been written about) in
Make Magazine, has
giving talks on the strategy of hardware openness and
manufacturing practices in China, as experienced with the development of the opensource
ambient "
internet-based TV" called
Chumby. When he's not busy on such excursions, bunnie writes about
hacking (and more specifically,
Chumby hacking),
technology in China, and even
biology in exquisite detail on
the bunnie studios blog (
previously).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 17, 2010 -
36 comments
Restoring Journalism Maureen Tkacik talks about her life as a journalist, the nothing-based economy, and the future of journalism. She suggests abandoning authority and productively channeling narcissism. (via
2p &
dd)
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Jun 12, 2010 -
18 comments
Your Old Crap Website -
This blog is to celebrate the time when web design wasn’t limited by web standards and convention, and when the office geek was given full reign to set up the website on his own since the bosses probably couldn’t see the point in having one.
posted by Artw
on Apr 24, 2010 -
45 comments
Wired Reread: "In the fast paced world of tech, we often lure ourselves into believing that everything is different now, and old rules don’t apply. Well, quite often they do (if not always) and checking out our collective tech-past can help us get a perspective on the present."
posted by sveskemus
on Mar 24, 2010 -
43 comments
Never Seen Lost is a blog by 'papa durbin' aka
John Durbin, detailing his journey through watching the final season of Lost. The twist: he has never seen any other Lost episodes, and he attempts to understand whatever occurs as best he can. There is, however,
some contention about whether the author is truthful about his lack of background in the show.
posted by jouir
on Mar 1, 2010 -
127 comments
Asia Snapshots "is a blog that examines topics in Asia through the perspectives of interesting people interviewed by a group of bloggers in Mainland China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and more." Meet
Gao Qingrong and family, who along with seven other households are part of
an organic farm co-op in Anlong Village, Sichuan. Or there's
the tale of how one of the bloggers met Jun Jun, a male prostitute in Beijing; an encounter with
Silang Laji, a road maintenance worker in Kham, a Tibetan region of China; and
Gege, an enterprising journalist in Chengdu.
Via
posted by Abiezer
on Feb 28, 2010 -
4 comments
Hi, I'm Vincent "Vinny" Van Gogh...artist, mad man, dead guy.
I live with James T Kirk and Jesus in the City of Industry--where we pretty much just watch TV all day.
This is my blog about it.
posted by Lutoslawski
on Feb 8, 2010 -
28 comments
My Life With Death : is the personal blog of a funeral home "first responder."
It occurred to me this morning as I sat before my employer being lectured about my "availability" on my days off, that my life is singularly joyless. I have effectively traded in my own life for other people's deaths.
posted by grapefruitmoon
on Feb 5, 2010 -
32 comments
Blood and Milk is the blog of international development worker and writer
Alanna Shaikh, who consults on global health development and writes for publications such as the
UN Dispatch. Her views, based both on her work in the field and her study & understanding of sociology, international relations, and other such subjects, tend to be contrary to most other opinions on international development:
voluntourism isn't helpful,
development work is mired in a culture of nice,
don't bother starting an NGO (or, if you will anyway,
here's how to succeed),
global health doesn't need innovation, and
microfinance is a disappointment. Also, here's
how to tell if your health project is doomed, and
Haiti doesn't need your shoes (some people
vehemently disagree). Educated well-researched iconoclast, or pessimistic Mary Contrary?
posted by divabat
on Feb 4, 2010 -
20 comments
"In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was
wrong."
posted by Groovytimes
on Jan 22, 2010 -
51 comments
