Friday links! Serve the humans edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
What's that? Do I hear pussy talk?

What’s that? Do I hear pussy talk?

Well, it happened: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resigned before I could record the rap lyric I serve humans like Kathleen Sebelius, / reading Jack Handy and Marcus Aurelius. She also resigned before I could design and construct the machine that would allow me to join the Beastie Boys in a time when that rhyme scheme was appropriate, but that’s the thing about building a time machine. You can finish it whenever.  Today is Friday, and we’ll bestow our gifts on the people when we damn well please. Won’t you do a basically adequate job of serving humanity with me?

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Friday links! Triumph of theory edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments
The cat fits in the box.

Japanese cat celebrity Maru fits in the box.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, some people see things as they are and ask why; others see things as they never were and ask why the media is lying. The world of theory is invariably preferable to the world of, you know, the world. We derive our broad principles from the specific around us, but explicit language feels more concrete and understandable—more true—than the details. So after we extrapolate our theories and take them to heart, we return to the real and identify the places where it doesn’t match theory as flaws. Today is Friday, or at least it should be, and anyone who tells me otherwise has screwed up the progression of days. Won’t you demand that the flesh be made word with me?

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Friday links! Amazing America edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 5 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQzDqM0XbFM

That right there is the theme song to Sarah Palin’s new show Amazing America, which presumably celebrates everything great about the United States—including, at :59, “the dogs and the horses and the trucks and the guns.” Finally, basic cable is giving dogs and horses the credit they deserve. As one commenter put it:

Speaks straight from the GUT!  The way it is presented it gives us ALL a DEEP SENSE OF PRIDE!  Isn’t it a gift from our God when each can take PRIDE not necessarily only from what we have done but love the PRIDE we have in sharing ALL INCLUSIVE OF EACH THAT HAS THEIR PRIDE AND SATISFACTION OF GIVING TO OUR GIFT TO AN “AMAZING AMERICA!”

Today is Friday, and it’s high time we all took pride not necessarily in doing things, but in proudly including ourselves in the satisfaction of giving our gift to America, which is us. Won’t you speak from the gut with me?

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Friday links! Declinism v. Triumphalism edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Easter_Island_Ahu_(2006)

Enjoy your cat videos now, because a NASA-funded study has predicted that industrial society will collapse in 15 years. This is what we get for not letting them go to the moon. It’s also what we get for developing an economy that uses more and more resources to exponentially increase the number of human beings while concentrating control of those resources in a progressively smaller fraction of the population. I’m selling a bumper sticker that says exactly that. Unfortunately it demands a bumper eight feet wide, so it only fits on the kind of cars that we can make for the next 15 years. Today is Friday, and the mechanisms of our triumph hasten our decline. Won’t you become a forgotten god with me?

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Friday links! Human endeavor edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

Epic sport and games fails

Ah, the human: so much more ambitious than the object, yet so much less reliable. It seems that wherever you look, human beings are trying various stuff. Be it opening a pickle jar or writing a play about an ambivalent Danish prince, people can’t get enough endeavoring. Does every endeavor succeed? Probably, is what I’m thinking, but let’s just run the numbers and make…okay, nope. It turns out history is littered with failed endeavors, be it opening a pickle jar or writing a comedy series about a handsome lawyer. Today is Friday, and you don’t know until you try. Won’t you hurtle down the ramp with me?

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