April 2011
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Visit the New Brainpacking District →
Celebrating the Pen World Voices Festival, “roaming book carts” will be trucked along the High Line his weekend. Whether this resembles an ice cream truck or a prison handcart, we have yet to see.
Also, isn’t Salman Rushdie still pushing books on the guests of the Standard Hotel? I go to the Meatpacking District to lose brain cells, not gain them!
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WatchInterneting! Chart shit! InDesign! Tiny adjustments! Open-plan seating! Yes, making magazines is exactly this exciting. Except replace that buffet of food with a small handcart of booze.
Keep on keeping on Business Week.
utnereader:
Magazines 4 Life.
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Great Escapes
2011: “An estimated 476 Taliban members reportedly managed to crawl their way to freedom from the main jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Monday morning. The prison’s warden said the prisoners used a long tunnel to make their way outside and that authorities discovered it only after the breakout from the political wing of the building.”
—ABC News
1944: “The tunnel was only...
“The framing of the country’s unemployment trouble as an unfortunate metastasis...”
– Lewis Lapham on the servant problem and American jobs. Read more. (via utnereader)
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The origin of the word "robot"
As a word, robot is a relative newcomer to the English language. It was the brainchild of a brilliant Czech playwright, novelist and journalist named Karel Čapek (1880-1938) who introduced it in his 1920 hit play, R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots. Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.”...
In Defense of Shit History
“Actually, the shittle in shittle-come-shites hints at a complication, because while shites is pretty much what you’d think, shittle is not. Shit history is full false cognates like shittle—which proves to be related to shuttle, in the sense of inconstancy.”
—Paul Collins on the etymology of shitfaced. (via @maudnewton) Our love for Paul Collins knows no bounds. Read his essay in LQ if you want a...
“We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and...”
– The Sarasota-Herald Tribune just won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting, just like the awesome journalism job listing said they would.
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“I’ve worked almost all my life, starting on the family farm where my brother and...”
– Philip Connors, from his interview with Maud Newton up on the Paris Review. Connors is here 4/21 with Lewis Lapham—part of Fire Season is excepted in the latest issue of Lapham’s, Lines of Work. I read Fire Season, and it’s great. I recommend this review, which articulates pretty much all I’d want...
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“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as...”
– Martin Luther King Jr., 1954
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DEJA VU: Kate Middleton's sex life is none of your... →
Remembering the Early Years of U.S.-Afghan... →
statedept:
By: Carla Benini: Public Diplomacy Officer in the U.S. Department of State Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
On April 6, 2011, the Department of State and Meridian International Center hosted a reception to celebrate the opening of the U.S. Embassy Kabul-funded exhibit, “In Small Things Remembered: The Early Years of U.S.-Afghan Relations.” Over 300 guests viewed the 80...
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We have a winner!
We’re very happy to announce that Christopher Shores of Blacksburg, VA has won our Salesman contest! Chris gets his very own copy of our “Lines of Work” issue and a Criterion DVD of the Maysles Brothers documentary.Hope you enjoy the existential angst of capitalism, Chris! Thanks to Criterion and everyone who entered. And if you’re on Shutterfly, we highly recommend...
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“Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when, without moving from his...”
– Herman Melville’s classic work of subtle workplace rebellion, Bartleby, the Scriviner. Amazingly, refusing to do his job doesn’t get Bartleby fired. Ben Kafka thinks it’s because of a “fratenral melancholy” that can only exist in the office. Read his essay in our latest...
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We're nominated for a National Magazine Award! →
Seriously, wow. We’re over the moon. And to be in the same category as tumblr-buddy The Paris Review?
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Win a copy of "Salesman" + the latest LQ
The leads are good and the latest issue of LQ is selling strong. That’s why we’re giving away a copy of the Maysles documentary Salesman, furnished by the always wonderful Criterion Collection, as well as a copy of the newest issue of LQ, “Lines of Work.” Just answer the question below by emailing contests@laphamsquarterly.org, and we’ll choose a random winner from...
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