Malcolm Gladwell writes about the perils of profiling in the New Yorker:One afternoon last February, Guy Clairoux picked up his two-and-a half-year-old son, Jayden, from day care and walked him back to their house in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario. They were almost home. Jayden was straggling behind, and, as his father’s back was [...]

Posted in Politics/Law 2 Comments »

My favorite thing about Letters to McSweeney’s is the occasional flurries of correspondence spurred by one strange letter. For example, if you click here and scroll down to “billectric”’s letter from Friday, January 20th. From there scroll up and enjoy the responses it garnered.

Posted in Etc, Links 4 Comments »

RICHMOND, Jan. 25—The state Senate all but guaranteed on Wednesday that Virginia will hold a November referendum on whether to amend its 230-year-old Bill of Rights to bar same-sex marriages.

The Senate voted 28 to 11 to follow the House of Delegates in approving the amendment. Though each chamber still must pass the measure adopted by [...]

Posted in Politics/Law

Netflix, I live in Boston, Massachusetts. So why does my return envelope say “Closest Return Location” and yet bear an Oregon address? I call foul!

Yes, Netflix, it’s been a rough few months for us. First the mail carrier started stuffing your envelopes into my mail slot, cracking eight or ten discs in a two month [...]

Posted in Life, Tech 3 Comments »

NBA great and New York Knicks General Manager Isiah Thomas is getting sued for sexual harassment and discrimination. That’s not great. The most interesting part of the story is probably this: The lawsuit also alleges that Thomas told Browne Sanders he was pushing for more home games at noon on Sundays. His plan, according to [...]

Posted in Etc

Oh man. So on SNL they had this Young Chuck Norris music video. Which I thought was basically just a weird joke related to the whole Chuck Norris Facts phenomenon that has been all over the internet lately.

But apparently it’s ALSO a parody of this horrifying, creepy, superpatriotic music video that is sung from the [...]

Posted in Music, Television, WTF 7 Comments »

The Washington Post’s Lisa de Moreas has a nice column about the cancellation of West Wing.

The first four seasons of the West Wing were pretty much as good as network drama gets. Great writing, great acting, great directing, and intelligent, issue-based plotting all contributed to a show that deserved its four straight Emmys as TV’s [...]

Posted in Television 4 Comments »

My friend Paige directed me to the pretentious 17-year-old’s guide to dating. In addition to being funny, this reminded me that I often enjoy McSweeney’s’s (is that apostrophe work right?) daily pieces. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an RSS feed for those pieces. Anyone out there have any information that could help me?

Posted in Links, Tech