Jordan Wirfs-Brock's Library tagged "new yorker" →  View Popular

The perfect thing to read on a Monday morning while nursing my crispy neck and serious racoon-face after a long weekend of burning -- I mean beach camping.

www.newyorker.com/...090810sh_shouts_borow - Preview

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Poem by Donald Hall ...
"In August Lauren climbs Mt. Kearsarge,

where I last clambered in middle age,

while I sit in my idle body

in the car, in the cool parking lot,

revising these lines for Kurt Schwitters,

counting nine syllables on fingers

discolored by old age and felt pens,

my stanzas like ballplayers sent down

to Triple A, too slow for the bigs."

www.newyorker.com/...090720po_poem_hall - Preview

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Malcom Gladwell's review of Chris Anderson's book, "Free" mentioned in a link I diigo'ed last week.

Gladwell takes issue with Anderson's agrument -- and seems to really have fun dissecting it:

"If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for 'non-monetary rewards.' Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels? Anderson’s reference to people who 'prefer to buy their music online' carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference. And then there is his insistence that the relentless downward pressure on prices represents an iron law of the digital economy. Why is it a law? Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power. 'Information wants to be free,' Anderson tells us, 'in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.' But information can’t actually want anything, can it? "

And later, I can feel Gladwell getting giddy and all riled up:

"For Anderson, YouTube illustrates the principle that Free removes the necessity of aesthetic judgment. (As he puts it, YouTube proves that 'crap is in the eye of the beholder.') But, in order to make money, YouTube has been obliged to pay for programs that aren’t crap. To recap: YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube’s ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the 'abundance thinking' that lies at the heart of Free. Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year. If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds."

www.newyorker.com/...090706crbo_books_gladwell - Preview

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Elizabeth Kolbert (swoon!) writes a profile of Van Jones (swoon again!). Jones' optimism is a much needed dose of refreshment at a point where I have to admit I've become a little disillusioned about "new environmentalism."

Here's a favorite excerpt:

"Jones began by talking about the financial crisis. 'The floor has been torn out from under the American people,' he said. 'That’s the bad news. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their pensions, their 401(k)s. But I know from my personal life sometimes something really bad has to happen before something really good can happen. It’s when you get dumped or fired or fail that test that you have to look at yourself and figure out, What am I going to do now? And we’re at that moment. Sometimes a breakdown can lead to a breakthrough.'"

www.newyorker.com/...090112fa_fact_kolbert - Preview

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As someone who is repelled by maternity, breast feeding grosses me out. Yet this article was fascinating and, surprisingly, not gross. How Americans have changed their attitudes towards breast feeding is a good case study for how our views on health, medicine, family and food have evolved.

And of course...pumping technology is fascinating! Ok, not really...but worth a read, for sure.

www.newyorker.com/...090119fa_fact_lepore - Preview

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