Category: Gleanings

On my mind this week in Ann Arbor

• David Kipen weighs in on the book review v. blogger (not really a) controversy (via TEV)
• Roger Ebert pays tribute to Studs Terkel on Terkel’s 95th birthday.
• My friend Matt Haughy essays on 7 ways to run a successful online community. I’m going to need to remember these (via Kottke.org).
• Jewish Daily Forward: “Judaism and the culture of outburst.”

• The Guardian UK: What the heck is the matter with men? (via my friend Eli)
• I’m going to try and check out the Urban Fairie Doors while I’m here in town.

• NY Times: A new poll finds that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans believe global warming is a threat. At last.
• Huffington Post: Are book review sections in newspapers going extinct? (via BB&H)
• Roger Ebert’s first pictures and comments since his stroke.
• Business 2.0: Startups to watch in 2007 (via Get Satisfaction).
• Playbill profiles the longest runs in Broadway history
• SF Gate: Green Cab is a new taxi cab company based in San Francisco using only hybrid cars.

• NBC’s controversial airing of excerpts of Cho Seung-Hu’s video confession before killing 33 people at Virginia Tech last week.
• World Changing: Why Earth Day has served its purpose and must be put to rest.
• Salon.com: A group of Southern Chefs is raising money to rebuild the New Orleans house and kitchen of Willie Mae, the queen of Creole cooking.
• Times Online: Will the May 5 release of Spiderman 3 be the salvation Sony needs (via Arts Journal)?
• New Statesman: Is there such a thing as “authenticity in popular music? (via AL Daily).
• Variety: Last week, Dave Chappelle performed a 6-hour stand-up comedy set, the longest in the history of the Laugh Factory, where the feat took place (via Kottke.org).
• A short history of the pocket hankerchief (via AL Daily).
• Information Week: Rolling Stone magazine is planning a social network (via Largehearted Boy)
• The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival begins this week

• Salon: Korean students at Virginia Tech fear racist attacks after identity of shooter is revealed.
• NY Times: Hilary Clinton’s Wellesley College classmates reflect on what her presidential run means for their generation of women.
• The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil (population 11 million) has banned outdoor advertising, including billboards and all signage over a certain size. I’d like to see that the morning after (via Boing Boing).
• LA Times: Kirsten is slated to play Debbie Harry in a Blondie biopic. Fits are being thrown.

• LA Times: Thanks to global warming, a new study predicts that drought may become a permanent condition in the American Southwest. Super. (via Sam Felder).
• Where do companies get their names? I could read these all day (via Kottke.org).

• New York Magazine: What does making the cover of the New York Times Book Review say about the hopes for your book (via TEV)?
• Bookslut interview with New Yorker political writer Hendrik Hertzberg (via Eat the Press).
• Pranks.com, a blog dedicated to “pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking.” (via Laughing Squid).

• NY Times: Beyond Universal Studios and the Hollywood Sign, Los Angeles wants in on the cultural tourism business (via Personism).
• Slate: If the CD is dead, why do some many companies want in on the CD business?
• Chronicle of Higher Ed: Where do college truisms like “Publish or Perish?” or phrases like “Boola Boola” come from (via AL Daily).
• Book Forum profile of Ralph Ellison (via AL Daily)
• Green Drinks is a worldwide happy hour for the environmentally minded (via Steve Rhodes)

• NYT: Al Gore is probably not going to run for president again but he’s keeping plenty busy anyway.
• CJR: “Are women really opting out of the work force or is that a big fat myth?” (via Kottke.org)
• Baltimore Sun: Baltimore’s 70 year old Senator Theater (which I saw hundreds of movies at as a college student and was featured in the film Avalon), has been declared a city landmark and therefore saved from the auction block or the wrecking ball. Wahoo!
• NYT profile of writer Rebecca Walker, who is estranged from her mother Alice Walker.
• Welcome to the world of nano foods

(via My buddy Eli)

• The Signifier is a webzine for people born in the 1980s (via Ben Brown).

• R.I.P Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
• SF Chronicle: “The Castro District Faces an Identity Crisis as Straights Move in”
• Cintra Wilson’s annual Oscar Wrap Up is always a pleasure.
• Salon asks “Will the Internet Make Cookbooks Obselete?”
• New York Times report on the plummeting honeybee population. Experts are baffled.
• Cruel Game is a game of assassination except its all about being nice to one another. Neato
• T-Minus 6 days and counting to SXSW. Look out Austin, we’re a comin’!

On my mind and in the reading queue this week…

• According to the New York Times, Harvard Univeristy is about to appoint its first female president in its nearly 400-year history. The president-elect is Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian and dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study.
• Similarly, The Supreme Court’s first female justices have a word or two to say about the role of feminism in their lives.
• Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs calls for the music industry to stop putting Digital Rights Management restrictions on its downloadable music. Depending on how the major labels respond, this could be huge.
• Heard of the slow food movement? How about the slow reading movement?