This Is Probably An Interesting Blog (but in the offhand chance it isn't…)

This incredible fight broke out during the U.S. Open.

The New York Post gave us the recap:

“I don’t give a f–k what anyone wants,” the young man told the woman. “I got a lot of money on the game. … Sit the f–k down.”

As the man and woman volleyed insults at one another, the crowd around them grew more interested in the fight than the match.

When the woman threatened to get the hot-headed man tossed, the young man barked back, “Evicted for what? I’m not talking during the points. … Get the f–k out oh here.”

Moments later, the woman’s fat

(via)

There is nothing at all novel about the peculiar, ambient intimacy of social media if you have spent any time living in New York City. Life in Manhattan is like living inside a gigantic Twitter stream. What you get to know about people you don’t know simply by accidental adjacency is astonishing. For a few years, a guy who lived in the building across the street from me practiced piano every day in the nude. He had double-height windows in his apartment and had positioned the piano to take advantage of the nice western exposure, and would plop himself down every afternoon and begin his etudes wearing not one stitch of clothes. I had an unobstructed view of him from my living room. I wouldn’t have recognized him on the street and I didn’t know his name, but I knew him, or at least knew his body, and knew this odd habit of his. To put it in social-media terms, it was as if @weirdneighbor were tweeting, “I like playing piano in the nude. Whatever.” Because of the slant of the sun and the size of my windows, I don’t think he could see me, so our relationship, as it were, was less like Facebook, where the exchange is mutual, and more like Twitter: in other words, I was “following” him, but he wasn’t following me.

– Susan Orlean, making an interesting observation about the similarities between social media and life in Manhattan.

One should also note how casually we now use social media to describe the terms of our existence, instead of the other way around.

There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

– David Brooks, discussing what he believes to be a “meta-cognition deficit” permeating our culture.

If I can reword his thesis a bit, we might instead say something like, “the bravest act one can embark upon is the questioning of everything they believe.” This is why I don’t tow a party line with regards to politics and I resent those who insinuate I do. It’s why I seek out experts in a field, rather than a watered-down, prepackaged narrative from talking heads. And it’s also why I’ve wrestled so seriously with matters of faith and belief in the supernatural, and why — in the short term at least — I’m more comfortable in a state of agnosticism than in any camp professing certainty. I admire people who challenge their presuppositions — especially when they end up shattered to bits.

We’re finally settled — more or less — into our loft in Philadelphia and I expect my next project to be finding the various adornments for our brick walls. This print by David Schwen seems like the perfect blend of ornithology and dry humor.

(via)

(via)

From The Telegraph UK:

“SHCOOL” is painted along a newly paved road leading to Southern Guilford High School on Drake Road in Greensboro, North Carolina, US.

In other news, 68 percent of Americans are opposed to the construction of the “Ground Zero Mosque,” which is actually a community center and isn’t located at Ground Zero either.

(via)

In its origins, with Burke, conservatism was supposed to be about taking the long view, having proper deference to the wisdom of our ancestors and taking proper care for the flourishing of our descendants. This is also what Chesterton meant when he said that tradition is “the democracy of the dead.” Burke thought this long view was most likely to be taken by the aristocracy, but in a society without an aristocracy there needs to be a body of intellectuals who take it as their special mission to meditate on the “first things”, one might say, that link us to those who went before us and those who will come after.

– Alan Jacobs, writing in a blog post about the proposed Muslim Community Center two blocks from Ground Zero.

(via)

If I could only find out who makes these engraved wooden rings, I would immediately buy one for the wife.