Link Banana

I thought this line, noted by Noreen Malone, was good enough to share. After tasting the spit bucket after a sampling of wines from a smattering of American states, Joel Stein writes:

As I took a swig and swirled it around to gross out my friends, I thought it tasted like America. It was sweet, funky, simple, aggressive and not as bad as you’d been led to believe.

An intelligent-sounding explanation of Lia Holleran’s Dark Skate photographs:

The works blur the boundaries of photography and become self-portraits and drawings as well as records of performances. Light is used to form the drawing line while HALLORAN skateboards at night through different venues. The resulting images are each a trajectory of the artist’s movements over time. The photographs pair urban environments with lines of light which behave as physical objects or break apart into flurries of abstraction.

A less intelligent-sounding explanation: awesome.

(via The Daily Dish)

This rather brief story from mental_floss is entertaining, even as it makes me wish for both greater length and depth. Cosmopolitan is perhaps the most surprising:

It wasn’t always about sex. Actually, when Cosmo started up in 1886, it wasn’t about sex at all, nor was it targeted at women, nor was it lowbrow: In 1892, a single issue featured stories by Henry James, James Russell Lowell (the poet and founding editor of The Atlantic Monthly), and Theodore Roosevelt. Early stories, according to Charles Panati, covered “such disparate subjects as how ancient people lived, climbing Mount Vesuvius, the life of Mozart, plus European travel sketches and African wild animal adventures.

I sometimes fancy myself rather spartan, but living with only 100 things — as Dave Bruno is trying for — sounds like a bridge too far.

“Stuff starts to overwhelm you,” says Dave Bruno, 37, an online entrepreneur who looked around his San Diego home one day last summer and realized how much his family’s belongings were weighing him down. Thus began what he calls the 100 Thing Challenge. (Apparently, Bruno is so averse to excess he can’t refer to 100 things in the plural.)

(via kottke)

Tyler Cowen points to some interesting research:

Immediately after one person performs a favor for another, the recipient of the favor places more value on the favor than does the favor-doer.  However, as time passes, the value of the favor decreases in the recipient’s eyes, whereas for the favor-doer, it actually increases.  Although there are several potential reasons for this discrepancy, one possibility is that, as time goes by, the memory of the favor-doing event gets distorted, and since people have the desire to see themselves in the best possible light, receivers may think they didn’t need all that much help at the time, while givers may think they really went out of their way for the receiver.

It’s the way of the future according to David George Gordon. I find myself surprisingly interested in it. The crucial component is this:

Insect lovers like Gordon argue that entomophagy — the scientific term for consuming insects — could also be a far greener way to get protein than eating chicken, cows or pigs. With the global livestock sector responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions and grain prices reaching record highs, cheap, environmentally low-impact insects could be the food of the future — provided we can stomach them.

(via Slate)

The dismissiveness of the title Time gave this excerpt (it’s the same one I used above) bothers me a bit. What Rutka Laskier, a Polish Jew who died at Auschwitz when she was only 14, wrote could certainly stand on its own merits. This juxtaposition struck me:

I am writing this as if nothing has happened. As if I were in an army experienced in cruelty. But I’m young, I’m 14, and I haven’t seen much in my life, and I’m already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see “uniforms.” I’m turning into an animal waiting to die …

Now to everyday matters: Janek came by this afternoon. We had to sit in the kitchen … I told him that I had given away all my photographs. He got very upset. We were joking around; we spoke about “Nica and the gang.” While we were talking he suddenly blurted out he’d like it very much if he could kiss me. I said “maybe” and continued the conversation. He was a bit confused; he thought I was Tusia or Hala Zelinger. I would have allowed [myself] to be kissed only by the person I loved, and I feel indifferent towards him.

(via brijit)

Time has some (very) beautiful photos of trees taken by Stuart Franklin. His website has many more photos of many other things.

(via Snarkmarket)

Stefan Klein penned a pretty neat Op-Ed about time in today’s New York Times. I can say I’ve experienced this exact thing before:

Believing time is money to lose, we perceive our shortage of time as stressful. Thus, our fight-or-flight instinct is engaged, and the regions of the brain we use to calmly and sensibly plan our time get switched off. We become fidgety, erratic and rash.

Tasks take longer. We make mistakes — which take still more time to iron out. Who among us has not been locked out of an apartment or lost a wallet when in a great hurry? The perceived lack of time becomes real: We are not stressed because we have no time, but rather, we have no time because we are stressed.

I know I know. George Clooney isn’t really “The Last Movie Star.” But when I finally got around to looking at the Time cover story, I thought it was great and carefree in the way that Joel Stein seems to do better than anyone else.

Clooney hit traffic, his assistant called to say, on his way back from visiting his girlfriend in Las Vegas. He’s wearing faded jeans, black laced boots and a zip-up sweater, and he looks less like a movie star than a normal, un-Botoxed 46-year-old unmarried guy coming over for dinner, but he also looks like he’s excited to be here because wherever he is, George Clooney’s also there. He hasn’t brought any wine, and I worry that this guesting thing is just not going to work out. I offer him a glass of red, and he suggests that we sit on the couch, and soon we’re talking about real estate, and it’s fine, and next thing I know, he’s getting a tour of the house. A tour of the house? The man owns a mansion in L.A. and a 15-bedroom villa in Italy! Why don’t I just show the Oscar-winning actor the tape of me in my high school production of Bye Bye Birdie? But he’s nailing this guest role: “I love old houses like this.” “You kept the original stuff.” “It’s nice to have a guest room.”

(via brijit)

In what The Page calls an “amazing wire story,” Libby Quaid explores Senator McCain’s reputation as a hothead for the AP.

“F — - you,” he shouted at Texas Sen. John Cornyn last year.

“Only an a —  —  — would put together a budget like this,” he told the former Budget Committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, in 1999.

“I’m calling you a f —  —  — jerk!” he once retorted to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.