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From Intelligent Life: Some lovers of the language deplore the whole business of verbing (Benjamin Franklin called it “awkward and abominable” in a letter to Noah Webster, the lexicographer, in 1789); others see it as proof of a vibrant linguistic culture. Certain words seem to bring people out in...

Today the Internet is in fact doing what the most grandiose claims about the book maintained that that humble object could do: duplicate the world, provide a perfect reflection of the order of nature...

The Toppling | by Peter Maass

The New Yorker

After the marines arrived, a small group of Iraqis gathered around a statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of the square and tried to bring it down with a sledgehammer...

Mott grave monument, Mississippi. Photograph by Walker Evans, 1935 From The Design Observer: The grave or tomb is the body’s last bed, or its last house. This last house is in many cases more permanent, if not more splendid, than anything occupied in life. This was clearly the case...

From AGNI: Ingrate. My daughter the beautiful ingrate. It was supposed to have gone with her to college, to Boston. That was the plan, and she left it in her closet. Look here, my flight jacket, with the green ticket stub from the dry cleaner safety-pinned to one of...

Conversations at the End of the Avant Garde | by Ann Kjellberg

Little Star

Of all insects, crickets make the most loyal spouses, like zebras among animals. I used to keep two crickets in a cage, male and female. When the...

Vertumnus, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1590-1591 From The Smart Set: We fill absences. This is what we do. Nature has her way of filling up absence with stars, atoms, frogs, dirt, human beings. Human beings, though, have their own curious way of filling absence. When we lived in caves, we filled...

Twelve Theses on Wikileaks | by Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

Le Monde Diplomatique

These 3: In the ongoing saga termed "The Decline of the US Empire," Wikileaks enters the stage as the slayer of a soft target.