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Liz Harris (the musician Grouper) beautiful line drawings.

“So I’m painting these pictures, not of the actual world, but of us watching that world.”

‘Modern societies don’t advance if they don’t create new things. So human beings start asking new questions when they encounter a cultural object or idea: what about this can I identify (i.e. what about it is “old”), and what aspects of it are new (i.e. novel enough to create demand for it)?’ ‘The questions arise: What specific aspects of the past are appropriate fodder for new hybridizations, or what methods of hybridization are privileged over others? Most importantly, why is this?’

Many of my best posts in 2011 went largely unread, probably because they were massively long text posts that went up somewhere around 1:00 am when everybody was asleep. I routinely break my own rules for writing a blog people might read. Here’s a list of twelve of my favorite posts (one from each month) that went mostly under the radar. They’re a bit longer and a bit more thougtful than the usual fare. Some months were awfully difficult to narrow down to a single post. (For other months, it was tricky to find a single post worth rereading.)

1. Get organized. 2. Start an emergency fund. 3. Rebalance your 401(k). 4. Develop a debt plan. 5. Be optimistic.

‘Hence, fanboy: a derogatory term that means someone who is blindly and irrationally devoted to a product that I believe is inferior to what I bought when faced with a similar choice, and whose opinions and arguments can therefore be completely disregarded.’

‘There are lots of loud, pointless headlines about companies getting money from venture capitalists or angel investors. What I’d love to see more of in 2012 (and beyond!) is headlines about how a few small successes with users are a demonstration of a small company outperforming and out-innovating the biggest companies in the tech industry by being focused and disciplined in their execution. That, actually, is my most favorite Foursquare feature.’

‘so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people’

‘I do not mean to be unsympathetic here. It is regrettable to find ourselves in this untenable space, where all our politicians cower and we are bereft of suitable standard-bearers. I would like nothing more than to join my friends in support of Ron Paul and exhilarate in a morality unweighted by the ugly facts of governance and democracy. But the drug war is not magic. It is legislation passed by actual politicians, themselves elected by actual by Americans. Unbinding that war demands the same. The fervency for Ron Paul is rooted in the longing for a redeemer, for one who will rise up and cut through the dishonest pablum of horse-races and sloganeering and speak directly to Americans. It is a species of saviorism which hopes to deliver a prophet onto the people, who will be better than the people themselves.’

‘Use these tools running on M-Lab to test your internet connection and perform diagnostics.’ Test connection speed, see if your ISP is throttling/blocking certain apps or traffic, or is traffic shaping, etc. etc.

A suburban dad. A fictional television blowhard. And now a political money launderer. How one funny guy became three.

‘When you have huge numbers of people flocking to one spot with the agenda of getting messed up and hearing something crushing and spectacular, the race to please them stands a chance of rushing out on limbs and creating new things. You don’t hear much of that in Skrillex, or among many of his peers; so far, there’s just a lot of collisions and amplifications of sounds we’ve already heard. But that’s what people said about our mess-headed emo and hardcore scenes at the start of the century, and they rapidly became their own weird world.’

I was working on some of my photography class homework (Find something cool to do with a disposable camera), and I found this on the internet. I got it from Flickr user Matthew McVickar (www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmcvickar/sets/72157594153681...) THERE HERE!!! I had my camera delivered by a friend during the 2011 National Bible Bee! I got a lot more than I expected, and I was so happy with the results! Enjoy!!!

Good profile.

‘Imposing these restrictions to win an election will embitter a generation of students in its first encounter with the machinery of democracy.’ On top of the disillusionment they’ll already be feeling, this will be a hell of a thing.

Fuck this guy: ‘“I don’t see myself as a man of great wealth,” he said. “To say that I’m enjoying a millionaire’s lifestyle — well, I can tell you, I guess a millionaire’s income doesn’t go very far these days.”’

An incredibly well-done dissection of the ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou’ soundtrack, replete with hyperlinks.

‘It's no longer acceptable for us to not take responsibility for our Congress anymore. If we want it to be better then throwing bums out, and replacing them with new bums doesn't seem to be doing the trick. Let's work instead to educate whomever is in Congress, and the professional class around them. Let's do more of the stuff that works, and less of the stuff that doesn't.’

What to do in the short and long term about SOPA.

‘The problem is that this is exactly what the competition are doing — they are competing with the iPad rather than solving a problem that hasn’t been solved yet. They’re always one step behind because they’re simply trying to re-create the solution that Apple has created for their vision of a touch tablet device.’

Worth looking into, perhaps.

‘Anthropologist Mary Douglas has a nice definition for dirt, saying it is “matter out of place.” A fried egg on the plate is fine, but a fried egg all over my hands is dirty. Hyde continues to say that dirt is always a byproduct of creating order: to create a place for things means that there will be situations where things will be out of place. And this is why Louis CK’s comedy is dirty: the thoughts, as dark and natural as they may be, are put out of place. The secrets are told on stage in front of others, but it’s through that vocalization that we begin to understand ourselves and our relationship to the world we live in.’

Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs

‘A letter back then might simply ask one question. The reply would answer it. Just that. A letter might describe a single event, or pass on a single piece of news. I’m pregnant. Your father is dying. I was sent on patrol last night, and I survived. I love you. I still love you. I no longer love you.’

‘So it was as proponents of the Hollywood-funded bill curmudgeonly shot down all but two amendments proposed by its opponents, who fought to dramatically alter the document to preserve security and free speech on the net. But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.’

“It really seems like this list of things you thought were good is just your opinion.”

‘The vast majority of the formally codified doctrines that the West shows aversion to are, in my opinion, absolutely contradictory to Islam. Instead of being concerned with Shari’a law in general, I think one should be concerned with precisely who is interpreting it and how.’

On Beyoncé's ‘Countdown’. ‘I’m so torn by this. On the one hand you have one of the most dynamic pop songs of the year. Something that roars with polyphony. One listen through and you feel like you could live in this shit, Matrix-like, deluding yourself in its universe endlessly. And on the other hand you’ve still got Beyoncé‘s mind-numbing conflation of feminist empowerment with consumerism and a conveniently male-approved sexuality.’