Mark Charan Newton

From the Guardian.
When we look at a book, its cover tells us what to expect. A pink paperback featuring a smiling young woman is most likely a female-centric summer read, whereas a gun on a black background is probably a murder story. A few simple aesthetic rules narrow our options, make life easier and ensure [...]

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Took me ages to find this graph. I remember studying data from sources like ice-cores sediment at university. Now, I occasionally subscribe to theories of ol’ Friedman, but that does not mean I deny things like this:

Source: IPCC, Working group I, Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), Third Assessment Report (TAR), page 3.
Guess I should read [...]

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“On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show”
by Charles Bukowski

they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age
as we go along
holding dead hands.
and we would say
rather than delude the knowing:
a damn good show,
but hardly enough for a horse to eat,
and out on the [...]

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Batman action figure. Yes I did take it out of the box.

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Michael Chabon gets serious about genre at the LA Times.

Where did this bias against work created for a popular audience come from?

In all fairness, it came from the fact that the vast preponderance of art created for a mass audience is crap. It’s impossible to ignore that. But the vast preponderance of work written as [...]

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The benefit of toxic car pollution, I guess: no paint required.

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Awesome post over on Adrian Tchaikovsky’s blog about reading in the genre.

A genuine ignorance of the genre is possible. If you simply don’t read it, fine. However if you claim that, and then write this, people may ask how come, since you reinvented the wheel, all those spokes, the hub and the rim were just [...]

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This month’s National Geographic displayed a picture of a huge ziggurat in the city of Dur Untash, built in the 13th Century B.C., a a vast stepped-temple tower that rose above the landscape, dominating the foreground and horizon. I wonder what the builders of that structure would think if they knew it was there, still [...]

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Gabe Chouinard lights a fire under the ass of reviewers.
I like to start the week off with a bang, so each Monday I will be posting a longer, more indepth piece that will examine varied issues and concerns. The intent is to kick-start a discussion around these concerns; to create an open dialogue with others. [...]

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