Minneapolis Michael
Be safe, sfj.I had to go to a thing and on the way, the town car I was in got hit by a truck. The collision happened on my side, and the huge divot was in the door I was leaning against.
I was looking away and didn’t know what had happened. My first thought was that we had hit someone. The driver stopped in the intersection to look at the damage. A cop told him to pull over, so he did, right above Canal Street.
He said I should take another cab as he would be busy for a while. I gave him too much money for the half-ride and walked up to Houston. Neither of us were very upset.
OK. We’re Getting a Bicycle
Begley, on BP boycotting:
Go ahead, boycott BP. Not only do you get to send a message to the company that has proved incapable of stopping the undersea gusher unleashed on April 20, but (unless you live in a one-gas-station town) you can do it without much pain to yourself.
Drive right on by the BP station and pull up to the pumps from Exxon, the company responsible for the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 and, more recently, one of the biggest corporate funders of the movement to tar the science of climate change. Exxon also managed to reduce the $5 billion in punitive damages awarded by an Anchorage jury for the Valdez disaster to $507.5 million; the Valdez fishermen and other victims have still not been made whole. (Fun fact: to protect itself in case the original judgment was affirmed, Exxon got a line of credit from JP Morgan, which the bank then parlayed into the first credit default swap, as recounted in the 2009 book Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett. These are the exotic financial instruments that helped trigger the Great Recession of 2008–09.)
Or roll into the Texaco or Chevron station (Chevron bought Texaco in 2001). Texaco is being sued by people in Ecuador for contaminating their groundwater, causing hundreds of residents to develop fatal cancers and causing other environmental damage near the Lago Agrio oilfield, where Texaco dumped oil-production waste (18.5 billion gallons into open, unlined pits) for almost 20 years.
Reading the Sunday Times So You Don’t Have To (Even Though You Should): 6.5.10
(A little quick hit this morning. Have a fun Sunday!)
FRONT PAGE
At Issue in Gulf: Who Was in Charge? - What. A. Clusterfuck.
The Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, went along with these requests partly because the agency has for years had a dual role of both fostering and policing the industry — collecting royalty payments from the drilling companies while also levying fines on them for violations of law.
WEEK IN REVIEW
Obama and the Chaos Perception - Matt Bai knocks it out of the park. It’s really hard for me to admit this, let alone type it, but the “What if Hilary were in charge?” thought is continually finding its way into my brain.
Letters to the Public Editor: What Exactly Is a Blog? - Oh god, this is really the only thing you have to read today. Someone get Grandpa away from the typewriter.
BOOK REVIEW
Our Cluttered Minds - Jonah Lehrer is smarter than you. Here he proves it.
It’s always nice to receive these in the mail.
A thing of beauty.
NPR at D8
MP3: Sleigh Bells - “Tell ‘Em”
*MP3: Sleigh Bells - “Tell ‘Em”
Sleigh Bells’ new album, Treats, is out now.
MySpace
(Ian Anderson)
Ah, yeah.
Reading the Sunday Times So You Don’t Have To (Even Though You Should): 5.2.10
SUNDAY BUSINESS
For Corn Syrup, The Sweet Talk Gets Harder - Read this and then watch “King Corn.” The documentary that did more to open my eyes about Food In America than anything else I’ve read or seen.
Corner Office: The C.E.O. With the Portable Desk - This week, in one of my favorite weekly features, Omar Hamoui, founder and C.E.O. of AdMob, talks about his leadership style. I loved his takeaways from working at a large corporation.
Preoccupations: Yes, I’m 26. And Yes, I Do The Hiring - Can we get Jamie an editor? Or how about a cocktail? Incredibly boring read.
SPORTS SUNDAY
Length of Deal Highlights Howard’s Flaw - Loved the last graf:
Shortly after the deal was announced, Philadelphia’s general manager, Ruben Amaro Jr., said Howard “kind of set the market for himself.” When a general manager admits he has let players set their own market, it may be time to get into the market for a new general manager.
In Defeat, Thunder Sounds a Warning Shot to the League - Kobe, to Durant and Westbrook: “You two are a couple of bad motherfuckers.” The League and its fans agree, Kobe.
THE FRONT PAGE
Greek Wealth Is Everywhere But Tax Forms - This could be a problem:
Various studies, including one by the Federation of Greek Industries last year, have estimated that the government may be losing as much as $30 billion a year to tax evasion
Obama Urges Graduates to Be Open, and Defends Government - Love this guy.
WEEK IN REVIEW
It’s Complicated: Making Sense of Complexity - Nice little think piece about the need to differentiate between complicated and complex.
Narcos, No’s and Nafta - I generally dislike Friedman’s writing - especially when he tries to sloganize something - but I sort of liked his thoughts on Mexico.
A Spill Of Our Own - Much ink spilled in today’s Times about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; I liked this op-ed the best.
Ghetto Mauer!! This is too good not to post, Thank you Mr. Gleeman. (via Aaron Gleeman)
Fo shizzle, my nizzle.
Reading the Sunday Times So You Don’t Have To (Even Though You Should): 4.25.10
You’ve read this piece about 13th Avenue, now here are the other things you should read in today’s NYT.
SUNDAY BUSINESS
They’re Calling Almost Everyone’s Tune - A massive Sunday Business take-out piece about the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. It should come as no surprise that there’s a cocksure leader behind the whole thing. “Swerving” Irving Azoff should have a huge grin on his face this morning because he comes off as the sort of guy I admire in the business world: brash, no-nonsense, fiercely loyal, profane; not the sort of guy whose company I curse more often than any other.
WEEK IN REVIEW
Fight on, Goldman Sachs - This week, Frank Rich writes about financial reform and closes his column by drawing attention to an episode of This American Life that aired earlier this month. In conjunction with ProPublica, the episode explores a hedge fund called Magnetar that gamed the housing market.
Faking West, Going East - An op-ed from Tom Wolfe about Mark Twain give us passages like this:
This improbable yobbo, Mark Twain, had risen up from the buried life of the mines and the boiler rooms and done an amazing thing. He had turned the local yokel’s yawping yodels into … literature!
For Greece’s Economy, Geography Was Destiny - I don’t know anything about geography, and even less about what is going on in Greece (which is in Europe!, I think), but I learned a lot reading this.
SUNDAY STYLES
An Online Alias Keeps Colleges Off Their Trail - Proving that high school students (maybe) aren’t as stupid as you think they are, the NYT has noticed that some high school seniors concerned with college acceptance have taken to creating fake names so admissions counselors don’t find that one picture of them.
THE MAGAZINE
The National Agenda - For the past few weeks, the Magazine has been the best section of the paper. That trend continues this week with this piece on The National and this piece on Politico’s Mike Allen.
Your official Kevin Durant poster
(Copyright 2010 NBAE Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)
After you drop 42 points on 18-for-25 shooting, you can wear any sweater you damn well please.
(Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
Melo looks F-R-E-S-H
Totally rad letterpress stationery from @kristaprints.
An email from my best bud, stuck in London, affected by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano
(I’m) stuck in Europe because my flight home was tomorrow morning; cancelled and I’m sure you know why. In London now - catching a train in the morning to Paris and moving south from there depending on how far the cloud moves and where I can get a flight from…
Its fucking chaos dude. The trains are crazy, hotels are jammed and oversold, and people in general are freaking out. It’s as if the record has skipped and stopped playing, and people don’t know what to do next (because they don’t know how long this will last). It’s as surreal as the feeling after 9/11, when you realize that everything you know and take for granted can be easily altered in a moment’s time…
Most Awesomest Thing Ever pits two things against each other in the pursuit of finding the ultimate awesome thing.
