Every Day Is Getting Straighter
An accompaniment to the main Scrawls and Bawls, this is a hodgepodge of bits and bobs that make me smile, laugh, cry or shudder every day.
What the Planets would look like in our sky if they were as close as the Moon. Jupiter is scary!
What’s the legal status of a country that gets swallowed by the ocean?
Well, it’s a question I’ve never asked myself, but something we all might need to know more about if we live another few decades…
World War II: Operation Barbarossa
Stunning pics from The Atlantic’s series on World War II
My most read blog entries…
Here are the top ten most read posts on Scrawls and Bawls, since its relaunch on Wordpress in November 2010.
1. An interview with Prince Michael of Sealand
2. Falling on deaf ears: The curious case of Korean pop culture
3. The calm at the eye of the storm: South Korean kids on the threat of North Korea
4. Turn out the bright lights: An interview with Interpol
5. S&B Annual Anthology 2010: the results
6. Dustin O’Halloran - Lumiere album review
7. The Scrawls and Bawls Annual Anthology
8. From the jungle to the dancefloor: The evolution of Yeasayer
A visualization of USA credit card debt stacked in 100 dollar bills
If you spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, you would have not spent $1 trillion by now
My favourite news story today
Guatemalan woman finds huge sinkhole under bed
Why are we afraid of male sexuality?
“It’s not as if young men bask in perfect mental health and happiness – young men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of young women, and sex and relationships rank high on their list of concerns. At the other end of the age range, sexually active older women are now widely eroticised (albeit often with a rather misogynistic undertone) as “cougars” or (forgive me) “Milfs” while their male equivalents are disparaged as dirty old men.”
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In the glamour professions - movies, sports, music fashion - there is a different dynamic at play. Even in the second tier glamour industries like publishing, advertising and media, swarms of bright young people throw themselves at grunt jobs that pay poorly and demand unstinting devotion. An editorial assistant earning $22,000 at a Manhattan publishing house, an unpaid high school quarterback, and a teenage crack dealer earning $3.30 an hour are all playing the same game, a game that is best viewed as a tournament.
The rules of the tournament are straightforward. You must start at the bottom to have a shot at the top. (Just as a Major League shortstop played Little League and just as a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan probably started as a lowly spear-carrier, a drug lord typically began by selling drugs on a street corner.) You must be willing to work You must be willing to work long and hard at substandard wages. In order to advance in the tournament, you must not prove yourself above average, but spectacular. And finally, once you come to the sad realization that you will never make it to the top, you will quit the tournament. (Some people hang on longer than others - witness the graying “actors” who wait tables in New York - but people generally get the message quite early.)
”This meaty quote sums up the past 5 years of my life. I’m glad I stayed in the tournament, though.
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen P. Dubner, Freakonomics
Escalating levels of anti-Murdoch graffiti in London.
(Source: Flickr / simon-crubellier)
