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S. L. Price writes about his initiation into the newspaper business. "I was, as everybody there can attest, an instant master—at overwriting, at missing deadlines, at trying to invest my stories with an importance they didn’t deserve. But with another daily paper in town, I had to hustle or lose, and fear of humiliation was only one reason I got better. The fact is, battling on a beat is one of life’s few, clear-cut, post-athletic competitive venues. Each morning, readers open up a newspaper to see who won the game. Each morning, sportswriters open up a newspaper to see which writers won the…
Mitochondrial DNA research reveals some interesting facts about the Black Death.
The New York Times is ending its TimesSelect program, which charged subscribers $50/year for access to "premium" content, meaning most of their regular columnists. We're going to hear a lot of piffle about how the Times only had about 250,000 subscribers because the content was so widely pirated, but I think that's horse-hockey.
By putting Dowd, Brooks, Rich et al behind a pay portal, the Times effectively reduced their impact on public discourse. The rise of awareness of Salon and Slate in the same period wasn't simply because they were publishing good work (although in the case of Slate…
It's stupid because I stood there looking at the subwoofer, thinking to myself, "Now, how should I get this thing out of the box?"
I knew what needed to be done, but, in the end, laziness toppled sense and I proceeded to (very carefully) disregard everything I know about lifting things: Bend your knees, keep your back straight, etc.
I didn't feel a thing when it happened. In fact, I thought to myself, "Hey, this is easier than I imagined."
It wasn't until I had the PSB SubSeries 5i out of its box and on the floor in front of me that, with an "Aw crap" and an "Oh that…
On the advice of Gavin J. Grant, who is guest-blogging Blog of a Bookslut, I read Margo Lanahan's "Singing My Sister Down" this morning. Now I can't stop thinking about it.
This might be the hottest day of the year. It feels like a hundred degrees out there. It's really hot. On what might be the hottest day of the year, all of our bus and subway systems — connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and, of course, New Jersey — were absolutely crippled.
Just like me. But not by a subwoofer.
The heaviest, most explosive thunder I've ever heard, accompanied by the brightest, most shocking lightning I've ever seen, erupted through the early morning, setting off car alarms and waking entire neighborhoods. I got up and pee'd. Not on…
It was no surprise that Charlie Haden and Kenny Barron struck such rich chords Tuesday night at the Blue Note, the first in a series of duet concerts that Haden, one of the great bass players in jazz, is headlining—six nights, four different pianists—at the club in Greenwich Village. Haden is best known as the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, but it’s a mistake to tag him as a “free jazz” musician, in the usual sense. Above all, Haden is a romantic—he loves ballads and waltzes, he plucks a thick, juicy tone—and Barron is a lush balladeer. A few moments in the opening set didn’t…