Responsibility without conviction is weak, but it is sane. Conviction without responsibility, in the current incarnation of the Republican Party, is raving mad.
When you watch an event in real time, anything is possible. Someone could die. Something that has never before happened could spontaneously happen twice. When there are three seconds on the clock, not one person in the world can precisely predict how those seconds will unspool. But if something happens within those three seconds that is authentically astonishing and truly transcendent — well, I’m sure I’ll find out about three minutes after it happens. I’m sure someone will tell me, possibly by accident. You can avoid the news, but you can’t avoid The News. Living in a cave isn’t enough. We’ve beaten the caves. The caves have Wi-Fi.
Chuck Klosterman: Why the DVR robs sports of all of their drama - Grantland
A brilliantly simple essay that, even though I rarely watch sports, puts into words something I’ve felt for a long time.
Source: grantland.com
Everything is on fire, slow fire, and we are all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.
It underscores the value of what we do — trustworthy, aggressively reported professional journalism, which is an increasingly rare and precious thing… And it gives us a second way to sustain that hard, expensive work, in addition to our healthy advertising revenue.
This is the best reason I’ve seen for charging for content, and frankly the only one that really matters. If your content has real value, you can (and probably should) charge for it. We may not like it at first, but if we get our money’s worth, and there are tiered options that keep it accessible, than how can anybody really lose on this model? I will be happy to pay a monthly or annual fee for access to the place I go first for news. And when I do, I hope that the content and the use of online media tools will continue to explore and expand what top flight journalism can do in the new century.
Source: The New York Times
I walked out and I knew I had found it, what I had been looking for all my life, in all the blood and the fucking and the right arm and the fast move, in everything I had done and everybody I had had to deal with. I knew I had found it, but up till now I had never had the full thing… I could have flown with the hawks and the swans if I had wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stand there.
To The White Sea by James Dickey
I’ve just finished reading this novel and I am in awe…
That’s not a reboot - that’s a show on The WB!
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard, and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of “The Tonight Show.” But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet, a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the “Tonight Show,” I believe nothing could matter more.
Conan O’Brien Says He Won’t Host ‘Tonight Show’ After Leno - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com
I’ve never been prouder of Conan O’Brien, or so disappointed in NBC.
Source: The New York Times
Q. If you could ask only one or two questions to get a sense of a person, what would they be?
A. “If you had to name something, what would you say is the biggest misperception that people have of you?” Then the follow-up question I usually ask is, “What’s the difference between misperception and perception?” After all, perception is perception.
