David Moldawer

“Pseudovariety — “the illusion of diversity, concealing a lack of real choice” — is when you go to the store and see an entire aisle filled with hundreds of different kinds of soda but most of those soda varieties are owned by three companies.”

“The discussed ending of the film that Kurtz favored presented the rebel forces in tatters, Leia grappling with her new duties as queen and Luke walking off alone “like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns,” as Kurtz put it. Crystal Kurtz said that ending would have been a more emotionally nuanced finale to an epic adventure than the forest celebration of the Ewoks that essentially ended the trilogy with a teddy bear luau.”

“

Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time?

Albert Markovski: Yes. No. Time, not space. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

”

“Obama’s early pieces primarily played with structure: Our Long-Term Strategy In Afghanistan employs Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique to reorder the words in a major speech on foreign policy, eventually creating a shocking sound collage that, according to the White House, reveals “a truth previously buried beneath layers of intent.” Since then, the president’s work has grown more abstract and drawn mixed reviews. Citizens reacted favorably to the absurdist slapstick of Reshaping Wall $treet, which features a man in a pig mask rooting through a garbage pail filled with currency, but were less satisfied with (S)Mother Earth, in which Americans ranging in age from 6 months to 90 years are submerged in oil and found guilty by a clown-faced judge for their role in the recent BP oil spill.”

“

I’d always assumed that Americans used to have British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same. Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. That’s not too surprising.

What is surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to today’s American accents than to today’s British accents. While both have changed over time, it’s actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then.

”

“

The duelists each fired two shots, and, as neither man had been injured, resolved their duel with a handshake.

Other members of the groups, who had various reasons for disliking each other, began fighting. Bowie was shot in the hip; after regaining his feet he drew a knife, described as a butcher knife, and charged his attacker. The attacker hit Bowie over the head with his empty pistol, breaking the pistol and knocking Bowie to the ground. Wright shot at and missed the prone Bowie, who returned fire and possibly, hit Wright. Wright then drew his sword cane and impaled Bowie.

When Wright attempted to retrieve his blade by placing his foot on Bowie’s chest and tugging, Bowie pulled him down and disemboweled Wright with his large knife. Wright died instantly, and Bowie, with Wright’s sword still protruding from his chest, was shot again and stabbed by another member of the group. The doctors who had been present for the duel retrieved the bullets and patched Bowie’s other wounds.

”

“Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals of jobs numbers and GDP.”

“Like many outside-the-box thinkers, they’re good at applying their principles more consistently than your average partisan, but lousy at knowing when to stop. (Hence the tendency to see civil rights legislation as just another unjustified expansion of federal power.) And like many self-conscious iconoclasts, they tend to drift in ever-more extreme directions, reveling in political incorrectness even as they leave common sense and common decency behind.”

Study Reveals Dolphins Lack Capacity To Mock Celebrity Culture

“I don’t know if this is too much for your magazine, but I can actually mentally give myself an orgasm.” She hisses a little, like one of the deviant vampires in True Blood. “You know, sense memory is quite powerful.”

“The Howell’s symbolize big business. Thurston and Lovey are indeed rich, but neither seem to possess any appreciable skill. They earned their wealth the oldest-fashioned way — they inherited it. They are delusional, conniving, greedy, and corrupt. They would be ultimately doomed to failure if ever presented with the challenges and constraints of the real world or if they were merely called upon to compensate for their personal excesses. Even though their monetary wealth is completely without value on the island, all of the castaways continue to treat the Howell’s as if they were royalty. Most perplexing is the fact that, for no apparent reason, Gilligan attends to their every need and whim. With no evident remuneration, Gilligan bathes these “haves” with surpluses purchased at the expense of the “have nots.”

“Studies of highly sensitive people show their delicacy is “domain general,” Dr. Wilson said. Not only are they “exceptionally moved by symphonies” and find graphic depictions of violence “too hard to bear,” but they are also sensitive to drugs like caffeine, and their skin is easily irritated by the wrong soap, sunscreen and fabric. Highly sensitive pigs squeal a lot; highly sensitive people feel a lot.”

Increasing Number Of Parents Opting To Have Children School-Homed | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

“These slow-changing facts are what I term “mesofacts.” Mesofacts are the facts that change neither too quickly nor too slowly, that lie in this difficult-to-comprehend middle, or meso-, scale. Often, we learn these in school when young and hold onto them, even after they change. For example, if, as a baby boomer, you learned high school chemistry in 1970, and then, as we all are apt to do, did not take care to brush up on your chemistry periodically, you would not realize that there are 12 new elements in the Periodic Table. Over a tenth of the elements have been discovered since you graduated high school! While this might not affect your daily life, it is astonishing and a bit humbling.”