Ana Marie Cox went from sitting in her pyjamas slagging Washington’s elite on Wonkette to the online editor of Time magazine, so clearly she’s doing something right. Along the way she also published a novel. Anyway, here’s her rules for creating a successful blog.
Yeah, we all know how well that worked out last time. I remember before the invasion of Iraq, the neocons were floating the idea of a new “domino theory,” where Iraq would go democractic and the rest of the Middle East would follow suit. Turns out there IS a grain of truth to that, in that the legitimacy of violence and insurgency is spreading out from Iraq throughout the region. Oops.
Anyway, here’s the NY Times article where Bush once again bracingly ignores reality to exclaim some half-baked vision.
Before the U.S. marched on Baghdad, elements of the Pentagon were planning attacks on Iran. Not a huge surprise, but certainly troubling.Check out the article, courtesy of Rolling Stone.
…courtesy of Foreign Policy. These guys don’t look like “dead enders”, as Rumsfeld termed them; they look like some pretty tough hombres to me.
And more FP goodness with a profile debunking the myths surrounding Al-Jazeera.
Personally, I don’t find Asian horror films, or their American remake counterparts, all that scary. A little different, certainly moody, but….meh. Still, the New York Times Magazine has an interesting article about how the genre has jump-started horror in a new direction.
Two interesting stories about the former Soviet Union, one in Harpers about the bustling trade in bride-shopping Americans in the Ukraine, and one in Vanity Fair about Moscow’s club scene, which is apparently the most insane, debauched fracas on the planet.
Apparently, getting a “nuts to you” letter from the New Yorker is de rigeur for aspiring Gotham scribes, and a lot of really good stuff gets left out when “Talk of the Town” goes to press every month. So one enterprising writer decided to showcase some of the best (rejected) New Yorker scribblings in “Silence of the City,” a website that consciously apes the look and feel of the magazine.The Village Voice did a profile on the site and its creator, Mac Montadon.
Akihabara, girls in maid costumes, Stormtroopers and Firefox…yessir, that’s a potent stew of nerd. 🙂
If you live in a big city, the trade off you make is between covenience and activity and extra space and serenity. But a couple on New York got the best of both worlds when they built a porch and garden on the roof of their 6 storey apartment building. Needs a hound dog though, and maybe a couple of shirtless guys in overalls, along with some form of banjo-pickin’.
I’m always interested in travel and media piracy, and when the two mix and throw in a dollop of third-world hucksterism, it’s a win/win, as this traveller in Veitnam discovered.
The same site also has a story about how being a travel writer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and a link to a NY Times story about the generally crappy state of the travel book industry.