- Fun Stuff
- Nick Holmes posts cute and funny things.
I’ve always wondered exactly how potholes are formed. Now I know.- Need some cool wrapping paper? Try rapping paper.
- Thinking about the Monty Hall Paradox always makes my head hurt.
- Do you feel like you’re too old to start getting into shape? Listen to Charles Eugster, who is a champion weightlifter: “I was already rowing six times a week, and there didn’t seem any harm in pushing myself a bit harder to rebuild my muscles. So in my late-80s I joined a bodybuilding club.”
- I, for one, am very happy to get to go to Mars. You can go, too.
- Sports
- I love this photograph of a guy painting the hash marks on Florida Field.
- Agree +1 with this tweet from @drsaturday: “I like Tim Tebow but I don’t think I can convey in 140 characters the visceral hate I have for this commercial.”
- Parenting
- The British newspaper The Independent has published a list of 50 books every child should read. YMMV.
- The website PoshTots has a section devoted to luxury playhouses, which cost upwards of $10,500. Comment unnecessary.
- Don’t Touch the Screen is a podcast for webnerds with kids. (iTunes)
- Ten Jaw-Droppingly Awesome Infographics on Education is exactly what it says on the tin.
Posts tagged “books”
Today would have been the 113th birthday of Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois. He started his writing life as a journalist, but when he was in Paris after World War I, working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, he was encouraged to take a more literary turn by other American writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. His first collection of short stories, In Our Time, was published in 1925.
Both U.S. presidential candidates of 2008 cited Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) as one of their favorite books. It’s about an American teacher, Robert Jordan, who volunteers to go fight in the Spanish Civil War and, after being wounded in battle, contemplates shooting himself to end the pain. But when the enemy comes into sight, Jordan delays their approach so that his own comrades can escape to safety. And then he dies.
The Writer’s Almanac
Across the River and into the Trees
On reading Hemingway to my son
Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Books
“In a 1935 piece for Esquire magazine … Ernest Hemingway listed seventeen books that were among his favorites.” — via kottke.org
- I think it’s safe to say that bluntcard.com is my new favorite ecard site.
- Ferris Club
- Few things are as cool as Batman riding a robotic unicorn over a rainbow full of dolphins.
- There was once a woman who had immortal cells.
- True fact.
- I live in Los Angeles, so I am almost always “near” the ocean. There’s nothing like being in Hawaii, though. I need to be near a big body of water on a regular basis. I need it to reset my psychic metronome.
- To promote his new novel, Doubles, author Nic Brown challenged pro tennis player Tripp Phillips to a tournament. The story of the match is terrific.
- Fantastic feline fun for the whole family!
- Is anything sadder than a sad bear?
2024-06-07: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
How does a bill become a law? A lovely infographic from Mike Wirth Art is a swell way to learn the answer… but nothing beats the original (YouTube).- Make your hidden self a little bit cooler with better Facebook default profile images.
- “These are their stories.” RIP L&O.
- “You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand.” — from an interview with Leroy Stick, the man behind @bpglobalpr
- On June 5, 1910 there were only nine mothers of U.S. Senators still alive.
- Book owners have smarter kids.
- Are you an Asker or a Guesser? (I honestly don’t know which one I am.)
- This is the sort of stuff I love: Battleship Island & Other Ruined Urban High-Density Sites. I need the History or Discovery Channel to do a special on this!
- Derek thinks he’s finally figured out why everything sucks. And it’s actually kind of awesome.
- @sbnation presents an explanation of the recent and confusing NCAA conference realignments.
2024-01-21: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
Small Vices
Reading a book for the second time
Globalization at Mach Speed
A quick book review
#FridayFive: Favorite Magazines
View the Friday Five from February 5th, 2010
Living Under a Rock
With the possible exceptions of my father and (maybe-not-so-strangely-coincidentally) my father-in-law, I don’t know anyone who is as voracious a reader as I am. I also seem to consume an outlandish amount of television and there is rarely a moment in my life in which there isn’t music playing. Oh, and I love movies. Yet,