Monthly Archives: September 2006

Used to be an athlete, now he is an aesthete

By spider | Published: September 28, 2006

aesthete  \ES-theet\, noun: One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature. Beijing, with its stolid, square buildings and wide, straight roads, feels like the plan of a first-year engineering student, while Shanghai’s decorative architecture and snaking, narrow roads feel like the plan of an aesthete. — “Sky’s the Limit in [...]

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I’m a Mac

By spider | Published: September 22, 2006

37 signals says: “What do 50 Cent, Hugo Chavez, and Steve Jobs have in common? They realize the value of a good rivalry.” Controversy sells. Conflict sells. But what is just imporant is ‘human drama’. In other words, what people find compelling is the human narrative, manifested through bitter competition, love/hate, victor/loser. Rooting for 2Pac [...]

Posted in commentary, personal | 2 Comments

You said we were make believe and I thought you said ‘maple leaves’*

By xtina | Published: September 22, 2006

The internets is so funny. Sometimes I experience meta-jealousy about the cool lives that peoples lead. I think of my quotidian struggles that revolve around developmental milestones, diapers, and spills. Then a writer who makes interesting cultural commentaries on life, the universe, and everything makes a little err and I swoop in via email with [...]

Posted in commentary, propaganda, public spectacle, rhetorical question, xtina | 2 Comments

Jealousy.

By spider | Published: September 21, 2006

Facebook executives told their Microsoft peers they couldn’t do an 8 a.m. conference call  because the company’s 22-year-old founder and chief executive, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, wouldn’t be awake, says a person familiar with the talks. Microsoft executives were incredulous.

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Not good.

By spider | Published: September 19, 2006

What does James Lovelock – the scientist who predicted the ozone hole – think we have in store ? By 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return.

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Stuck in the belly of the beast

By xtina | Published: September 16, 2006

A self-perpetuating nightmare.

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Can I say that here?

By xtina | Published: September 14, 2006

Have I been silent on the O.M. blog for so long? Can it be? Yass, the new computer that we put together earlier this year took a giant dump and died on us. So we wuz without a computer for weeks, on the the other side of the digital divide. Our internet connection was fine [...]

Posted in commentary, personal, xtina | 2 Comments

The real ‘Path to 9/11′

By spider | Published: September 13, 2006

From the thoughtful minds at In These Times, an unusual analyasis of how 9/11 impacted us. An exerpt: Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert—first in rhetoric, later in fact—a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into [...]

Posted in politics, education, media | 1 Comment

On the sad state of the Oakland Raiders

By spider | Published: September 12, 2006

The following is the series of text messages exchanged last night as I witnessed the once-proud Raiders fall flat on their collective face on national television, where they proceeded to get shut out by the Chargers, losing, jeezuseiytchcryse, 27 to nothing. 7:19 Tracy: Do you think the men in black will be victorious? 7:24 Me: [...]

Posted in personal, poetry | 1 Comment

On dirty money

By spider | Published: September 8, 2006

From a New York City rental agent: The more we talked, the more agitated he became, “I spent all my time showing junk apartments that they could get on their own. If I gave them one website or one phone number, they could rent it themselves. We were basically advertising no-fee apartments. It felt unethical. [...]

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