It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention.
Fantastic commencement speech by Conan O’Brien. Fast-forward to the 17-minute mark for the good stuff.
From The Economist:
Company lawyers often insist on them because they see others using them. As with Latin vocabulary and judges’ robes, once something has become a legal habit it has a tendency to stick. Might they at least remind people to behave sensibly? Michael Overly, a lawyer for Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles, thinks not: the proliferation of predictable yada-yada at the bottom of messages means that people have long since stopped paying any attention to it.
Must read from NYT’s Brian Stelter’s tumblr, thedeadline:
I’m going to write this in a stream of consciousness, the same way I experienced Joplin.
It was my first time covering — more accurately, trying to cover — a disaster. The National desk knows I am a weather geek, so I came close to covering the tornadoes in North Carolina in April, and then the tornadoes in Alabama earlier this month. But the timing wasn’t right.
This time, it was. I was awake at 2 a.m. for a 6 a.m. ET flight to Chicago on Monday morning, just 12 hours after the tornado struck in Joplin. While in the air, I wondered if I should volunteer to go there. When I landed, I looked at the departure board and saw that a flight was leaving for Kansas City in 45 minutes. On a whim, I walk-ran to the gate and asked if I could buy a standby ticket. The agent said yes.
Two calls to New York later, I booked the 8 a.m. CT flight. I told the National desk that I’d be in Joplin at noon local time. I had no maps, no instructions, no boots. I had a notebook but no pen.
What I learned: always carry extra pens.
Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel discuss what the Internet is on NBC’s Today Show in January 1994. I imagine this is similar to conversations people had about “electricity” before it became.
Ross Douthat, “The Partisan Mind,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2010.
I don’t usually read Ross Douthat’s columns, but he makes an excellent point about how absurd and inconsistent partisan politics can be.
- President Obama, 11/3/2010
Politics sucks, more often than not. But what’s awesome about elections in our country is not that people vote — it’s that our government accepts the result and continues forward. Midterm elections are the best reminder of that.
Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert - “Everybody’s Talking ‘Bout Sully”
I don’t know how I missed this, but this is amazing.
NYTimes: Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Quitting to Rejoin Rebels http://nyti.ms/a75dgJ
Agree with frankchi on how “The Social Network” is the “zeitgeist of our generation”:
Crossposted on The Huffington Post
There is a wide backlash from new media professionals about The Social Network. Jose Antonio Vargas says that the movie shows how much Hollywood doesn’t understand Silicon Valley. Jeff Jarvis thinks it vilifies nerds and is the new “anti-geek movie.”…
Rick Perry also says: Community’s Christmas episode, which airs tonight at 8/7c on NBC, is going...
As I discussed in a previous post, the short answer is “magic.” If you’re being as sarcastic as...
