May 2013
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Protip: Immaculate Conception is not the Virgin... →
One day it will no longer be necessary for us to explain this simple fact to everyone who wants to make a snarky reference to Catholic doctrine. Until then, we’ll pass around this GetReligion post.
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In case you haven’t heard, the Eurovision Song Contest is this week. Eurovision is a bizarre creature that takes some explaining—basically, it’s X Factor for all of Europe, where each participating country sends an act to represent them in the finals (which air this Saturday!). Eurovision sometimes produces hits (hi, ABBA) and sometimes forces an entire continent to watch unicycling...
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“Abstruse dark ale brings unexpected compost-wafted rauchbier-like cedar burn to...”
– John Fortunato reviewing the Long Ireland Brewery’s Black Friday Imperial Ale, aka the best beer review your editors have ever read. (via @tristyn_bloom)
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WatchExperience David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is Water” commencement address, given at Kenyon College in 2005, in a whole new way with this short film by The Glossary. Gosh, DFW is great.
(Via Open Culture)
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“It’s like throwing a Lolita-themed children’s birthday party.”
– Zachary M. Seward thinks Great Gatsby parties are entirely missing the point.
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The Man Too Handsome for Saudi Arabia Who Wasn't →
In the interest of nuanced journalism, we direct to you to islawmix’s clarification of that story from a few weeks ago:
While the laughs and light-hearted news from the oil lands of strife are being welcomed by news readers and makers as a nice departure from the usual headlines, this sort of misreporting is not only common but feeds into dangerous and reductionist stereotypes of Muslims...
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“Alexis Madrigal, Conor Friedersdorf, Garance Franke-Ruta, and Geoffrey Gagnon?...”
– NPR’s Neda Ulaby, ragging on The Atlantic’s own staff names… in an Atlantic piece on those purportedly unusual NPR names.
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April 2013
42 posts
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“Jacques entered out of the rain, drenched from that selfsame precipitate.”
– The Lyttle Lytton contest, which recognizes bad opening sentences to hypothetical novels (with the added challenge of a length limit), has just announced its 2013 winners. That up there? That’s just one of the honorable mentions.
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“Thank you. So have a nice life.”
– Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to US Secretary of State John Kerry, in remarks given before the press Sunday in Istanbul. His All Holiness’ laconic sass is always appreciated.
(Incidentally, more on how Kerry’s visit may mark the first step in ending a long-standing conflict over a...
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Challenging Orwell's Diction →
You know what’s fun? Critiquing politics and language.
You know what’s even better? Critiquing a critique of politics and language.
You know what this is? A critique of a critique of politics and language.
WINNER.
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UAE men 'too handsome' for Saudi festival
That is an actual headline describing something that actually happened.
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We don’t know what to say, readers. Our thoughts are with Boston today.
If you have information about or need to find somebody, Google’s Person Finder may help. Read up here on how to donate blood or make a financial contribution to the Red Cross.
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“You need to be very adaptable, to enjoy living in foreign countries and change...”
– US diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, 25, was killed in the field in Afghanistan last weekend. We’ve covered issues of diplomatic security and the evolving Foreign Service before, so for today here’s an apropos interview with Nicholas Kralev on the new face of American diplomacy, and a personal...
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