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Being "always on" is being always off, to something.

The Devil at 37,000 Feet
Topic: Technology 7:37 am EST, Dec  8, 2008

William Langewiesche, in Vanity Fair:

There were so many opportunities for the accident not to happen—the collision between a Legacy 600 private jet and a Boeing 737 carrying 154 people. But on September 29, 2006, high above the Amazon, a long, thin thread of acts and omissions brought the two airplanes together. From the vantage point of the pilots, the Brazilian air-traffic controllers, and the Caiapó Indians, whose rain forest became a charnel house, the author reconstructs a fatal intersection between high-performance technology and human fallibility.

From the archive, an eyewitness account:

"We’ve been hit," said Henry.

"Hit? By what?" I wondered.

And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life.

And something completely different:

Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. "Look at that," Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. "She doesn't know what hit her."

The Devil at 37,000 Feet


What the Rise of Southern Football Says About America
Topic: Sports 7:37 am EST, Dec  8, 2008

Darren Everson, in WSJ:

The South is dominating college football like never before, but its ascent isn't just a matter of good coaching. How a population boom and a growing economy have helped turn a regional obsession into a national juggernaut.

From the archive:

In a small town in Japan, Kirie comes upon her boyfriend's father silently videotaping a snail. He seems unaware of her presence and she thinks no more of it.

Later, the man's obsession with spirals becomes more and more bizarre, ending in his suicide in a washing machine which turn his body into a spiral.

Soon other inhabitants become possesed with different forms of spirals, one student seems to be mutating into a snail, another's hair becomes strangely medusa-like.

The entire town becomes possessed.

This is what happened at the CIA: A culture of process destroyed a culture of excellence. There are many outstanding people at the agency, in both the Directorate of Intelligence and in Operations. The agency's obsession with the intelligence process crushes these people daily. Those who flourish in this environment are those who can sit through long meetings without falling asleep. The people who can peer through the darkness and see the truth are either sucked into the surreal world of modern management or shunted aside.

The best way to fight terrorists is to go at it not like G-men, with two-year assignments and query letters to the staff attorneys, but the way the terrorists do, with fury and the conviction that history will turn on the decisions you make -- as an obsession and as a life style.

The hulking timbers illustrate Gehry's obsession with "big wood" ... which probably says more about who we are today than it does about ... the occasional burst of pseudomedieval pomp ...

The obsession of parents and policy makers with quantifiable achievement has created a world in which measured results are all that matter.

We are sliding towards an irreversible obsession with totally visual communication.

What the Rise of Southern Football Says About America


Only Yesterday
Topic: Society 7:37 am EST, Dec  8, 2008

Michael Schaffer, in Obit Magazine:

For most people who weren’t counting on a paycheck from Lehman Brothers, the central drama of the 2008 collapse has been the more personal matter of their retirement savings and their property value. Unfortunately, those two things constitute the bulk of most families’ net worth.

The rug has been yanked away. But how to say farewell?

On a society-wide level, the year’s vibe also involves having to wrap our minds around a future where we’ll just have less -- less money, less power, less flexibility.

Clinton led a true superpower, the sort that had the economy to go with its armaments. A central facet of American life in the coming decade will be accepting the demise of that status. That we might not be such a country anymore creates a kind of vertiginous feeling, like stepping out a window in your childhood home only to realize that the balcony that’s been there all your life is gone.

From the archive:

In the 21st century, we "shy away from death," and we tend to think of a good death as a sudden one.

Not so in the 19th century. Dying well meant having time to assess your spiritual state and say goodbye -- which is difficult to do if you're killed in battle.

And of course:

Today I write not to gloat. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you, You're cool... Fuck you, I'm out.

Finally:

Every 20 years or so, the end of America is nigh.

Only Yesterday


Rampage
Topic: Sports 7:37 am EST, Dec  8, 2008

David Samuels, in The Atlantic:

Quinton Jackson wears a steel bicycle chain around his neck, has a tattoo of a black panther on his enormous bicep, and has a tendency to howl like a wolf. He is also born-again, the loving father of four children -- and known for delivering the hardest blow in the history of professional sports. Now, in attempting to defend his Ultimate Fighting Championship title, he is also trying to hold onto his sanity. An intimate portrait of a mixed martial artist -- and of the growing American fixation with the warriors who earn their living beating each other bloody.

From the archive:

I’ve decided to start prude-proofing myself via a series of daily micro-immersions in sex and violence.

Not everyone will want to face this much misery.

"Look, let me go back in there and face the peril."

"No, it's too perilous."

"I have girlfriends that love gratuitous violence, blood and gore and people getting carved to pieces," she said.

"If the industry won't protect our children from gratuitous violence and indecency, then we must act."

The violence in Vice City is completely tuitous.

Rampage


Documents and Disorder
Topic: International Relations 7:53 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

"Will we get to the bottom of the KGB?" Mr. Brent asks.

"Of course," replies the historian. "But the KGB has many bottoms."

Recently:

This was the largest two-day advance since 1987, and, more importantly, the rest of the entire list is populated by the Great Depression.

Also, from the archive:

Having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, he asked, what did the turtle rest on?

Another turtle.

And that turtle?

"Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."

Documents and Disorder


Burning Down His House
Topic: Business 7:52 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

Is Lehman CEO Dick Fuld the true villain in the collapse of Wall Street, or is he being sacrificed for the sins of his peers?

From way back, via earlier this year:

He was a relentless boozer, a sucker puncher and a chippy chaser, and the sum of his personal ugliness overwhelmed whatever good he did ...

From the campaign archive:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”.

He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself.

But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

Burning Down His House


Bound for Zero
Topic: Business 7:52 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

Next year will be the Year Zero for the global economy.

Recently, Peter Schiff:

"We need a serious recession in this country, and the government needs to get out of the way, and let it happen."

Bound for Zero


A Fairer, Faster Internet Protocol
Topic: High Tech Developments 7:52 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

Bob Briscoe, in the latest IEEE Spectrum:

There’s a profound flaw in the protocol that governs how people share the Internet’s capacity.

A Fairer, Faster Internet Protocol


Depression Lust, and Depression Porn
Topic: Society 7:52 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

Virginia Postrel:

Brilliant. Blogging Queen Arianna Huffington gets free writers. You get therapy. Readers get Depression Porn. How can Tina Brown ever compete?

From the archive:

After years of relentless ugliness, beauty is the new subversion.

Recently, Stephen Colbert:

I felt so dirty. I felt like a piece of meat. I find being a piece of meat very exciting.

Depression Lust, and Depression Porn


Pop Psychology
Topic: Society 7:52 am EST, Dec  5, 2008

Virginia Postrel:

In these uncertain economic times, we’d all like a guaranteed investment. Here’s one: it pays a 24-cent dividend every four weeks for 60 weeks, 15 dividends in all. Then it disappears. Unlike a bond, this security has no redemption value. It simply provides guaranteed dividends. It involves no tricky derivatives or unknown risks. And it carries absolutely no danger of default. What would you pay for it?

From the archive:

More clothes to wear, bigger cars to drive, more space to live, more power, more influence -- the plague of gigantism has hit us. In our mad rush to the big, we should remember that dinosaurs were not the most successful form of life on this planet.

Pop Psychology


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