“One of my regulars died today. It wasn’t the first phone call I ever received that said as much, but I received a follow-up text that alluded to the fact that he might have taken his own life (that text came an hour later).
“Like any weekday I was at my big boy job, a place far beyond my situation over a decade ago when I began slinging the booze. But this news —horrible fucking news under any context— seemed different.”
He Was A Friend of Mine… by James Thornburg
Publishers found yet another way to apply old paperback paradigms to new eBook technology. HarperCollins decided that US libraries will be alllowed to lend eBooks only 26 times before they are forced to buy a new copy (yes, libraries are being punished because, in theory, books don’t last that long. Not, however, in practice).
“March 5 at dawn, National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16′ X 16′ house 18′ tall with 300 8′ colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted.”
More photos at My Modern Met.
James Fallows writes about the shape of things to come in the journalism industry in a new article for The Atlantic. Besides talking about Gawker’s obscene amounts of traffic (32 million unique hits worldwide/month), he discusses the success of Egypt’s revolution as it relates to New Media.:
“Yet with all these reasons why the media should have failed, in fact they succeeded. A major event in world history was covered more quickly, with more nuance, involving a greater range of voices and critical perspectives, than would have been conceivable even a few years ago. Within hours of the first protests in Egypt, American and world audiences read dispatches from professional correspondents—on Web sites, rather than waiting until the next day, as they had to during the fall of the Berlin Wall. They saw TV news footage—including Al Jazeera’s, which was carried by few U.S. broadcasters but was available on computers or mobile apps. Then the Twitter feeds from and about Egypt, the amateur YouTube videos from the streets, the commentary of contending analysts—all of it available as the story took place. We take this for granted, yet there has been nothing like it before. Even a year ago it would have been hard to imagine how thoroughly, and with what combination of media, voices, and judgments, an event in an Arab capital could have been witnessed around the world.”
(via @brian_frank)
A delinquent oil tanker with a stencil that reads, “this looks a bit like an elephant,” gets removed for auction to the highest bidder.
“But this episode marks a new first: here, his small act of vandalism has resulted in a large suburban eyesore being tidied up. Which is an irony that I hope he appreciates.”
‘No. No. All Pakistanis are bastards. Thieves all of them.’ He was suddenly very angry. ‘I do not have a single friend from Pakistan.’
All colour drained from Asghar’s cheeks and he turned to look out of the window. After a few moments’ silence, the boy spoke again. ‘You are from Iran?’
‘No. I am from Pakistan,’ Asghar said in a cold voice.
A story from the New Voices section of Granta magazine by Ali Akbar Natiq.
John did not believe in Karma, or Fate, or The American Dream.
How could it be otherwise? His mother died of cancer when he was young and his father died afterwards, more slowly, clinging onto the remnants of life for the boy’s sake. But when he finally let go, early in John’s nineteenth year, the large remainder of his mother’s medical bills—and the mortgage—fell on John’s shoulders. Plus interest. —read on »
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.”
Vladimir Nabakov
