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Boing Boing
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Fan-readings from my essay collection "Content"
Mathematician/physicist Jan Rubak has done me the honour of recording readings of six of the essays from my nonfiction collection, Content and uploading them to the Internet Archive. He's a great reader, too! - In Praise of Fanfic - Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia - Amish for QWERTY - Free(konomic) Ebooks - The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights - When the Singularity is More Than a Literary Device: An Interview with Futurist-Inventor Ray Kurzweil All 28 essays are available as free downloads (and there have been a ton of conversions to everything from Braille to OpenDoc) and, of course, there's a beautiful physical object for sale, too. Content readings (Thanks, Jan!)...
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The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn,
The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn, "playfully explores the etymology and history of hundreds of idler-specific terms and phrases, while offering both a corrective to popular misconceptions about idling and a foundation for a new mode of thinking about working and not working" is now available on Amazon. The publisher asked me for a blurb to put on the back cover. Here's what I sent them: The Idler's Glossary is wonderful! I opened it, set it over my eyes, and took a delightful two-hour nap. Thank you so much. Here are a few examples from this worthy tome, which is illustrated by the stupendously talented Seth: bootless: Must every non-useless, non-unprofitable activity involve wearing boots? Quite the contrary, wouldn't you say? Let's start using "slipshod" to mean any activity which is not an end in itself. See: FLIP-FLOP, SLIPSHOD. bored: Being bored [a term which appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, among the smart set in the 1760s] is the condition—which Guy Debord called the "worst enemy of revolutionary activity"—of being too restless to concentrate, but too apathetic to bust a move. Fortunately, unless one's boredom becomes magnified to a sort of frustrated world-rejection, it's just a mood... and soon passes. Also note that Lin Yutang says that "philosophy began with the sense of boredom," since both involve dreaming wistfully of an ideal world. See: ACEDIA, APATHETIC, ENNUI, SPLEEN. bum: Like "queer" or "bitch," this term for a wandering mendicant has long since been re-appropriated, as in the song, "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." As opposed to the guy who sits in the same spot every day asking for a hand-out, the bum [from the German for "saunter"] roams freely throughout the city, the country, the planet: He is king of the road. See: BEGGAR, LOAF, SAUNTER. cadger: Cadging, the ancient art of imposing upon the generosity of others, is an essential skill for the would-be idler, since poverty is the easiest way to obtain a great deal of free time. According to Henry Miller, who calls it "mooching," when performed without squeamishness or reservations, cadging is both exhilarating and instructive. So long as a cadger [from the Scandinavian word for "huckster"] is generous in turn (though not necessarily in kind), he ought not to be considered a deadbeat, freeloader, or sponger. See: BEGGAR, SCROUNGER. The Idler's Glossary...
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Dr. Housing Bubble Interview
I hope Boing Boing readers enjoyed yesterday’s interview with Charles Hugh Smith. Today I’m posting an interview with another of my favorite bloggers, Dr. Housing Bubble. I discovered the good Doctor’s blog back in early 2006 and have been a faithful reader ever since. At the time my wife was a real estate agent and the two of us became puzzled, then obsessed by the bizarre socio-economic implications of the then still-inflating housing bubble. This obsession led to discovering great blogs like Patrick.net, Professor Piggington, Peter Viles excellent blog at the LA Times, and of course, the subject of today’s interview., Dr. Housing Bubble. The Doctor blogs anonymously. Perhaps this is because of his “Home of Real Genius” posts where he highlights -- and loudly cackles about -- some of the most ridiculously overpriced real estate listings on the MLS. If staying incognito helps him do his work, I’m all for it because his blog is such an amazing resource. There is a tremendous amount of erudition, expertise and a profound understanding of both history and economics that go into his writing. Dr HB can take complex and daunting economic theories and lay them open with a surgeon’s skill making them easily understood by all. This guy is good, really good. When he’s on a roll (which is frequently) I’ve actually found myself getting jealous that I didn’t think of that first or even worse, wishing I was as smart as he is! I suppose that’s the best style of compliment I could give the good Doctor, isn’t it? (Jealousy being such a visceral emotion...). I encourage you to check out his blog and to check it out often. The Q&A starts after the jump....
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The government subsidies behind Cindy McCain's family fortune
(I admit the reason I'm posting is this is because the image is funny.) John McCain has made no bones about his disgust for greed. But as Senior Editor Radley Balko reports, his wife Cindy's fortune comes from a government-created entity that’s anti-competitive and full of lobbyists and special interests. Radley Balko on the Government Subsidies Behind Cindy McCain's Family Fortune from Reason Magazine - Hit & Run...
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Mister Jalopy interviews the folks at Illuminati Motor Works
Mister Jalopy interviewed the folks at Illuminati Motor Works, who are competing in the Automotive X Prize (1 Gallon of Gas, 100 Miles - $10 Million: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car"). Here's the MP3 file of the interview. Mr Jalopy interviews Illuminati Motor Works...
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