Highlighted by jakesutton
— Kanye West, kanYe West : Blog : ¶“I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. AS LONG AS PEOPLE THINK I ACT LIKE A BITCH THIS TYPE OF SHIT WILL HAPPEN TO ME. I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I’M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE BUT I’M UP FOR THE CHALLENGE.”
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— Penn Jillette, Commentary: Is Obama skidding or crashing? - CNN.com ¶“President Obama is so damn smart. He just drips smart. He clearly understands stuff that we could never understand. He’s trustworthy. If Obama were teaching fire-eating, we would all learn fast. If he told you that the burns would be minor and the fire would go out when you closed your mouth, you’d believe him. If I weren’t twice his weight, I’d fall back with my eyes closed into his caring arms in one of those cheesy ’70s church trust exercises. He could talk me into anything.”
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— ?uestlove, The Roots say Fallon gig `enabled us to survive' ¶“This would basically match or surpass what we would make touring 200-plus days out of the year. And, two, this allows us to be home.”
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— Florigium - The tree of my life - Coming back from the Golgotha! ¶“Our Lady Of Sorrows was initially named Our Virgin of the Seven Sorrows (or Swords), but Pope Pio X (1913), fixed the liturgical feast on September 15 and the name we have today. Our Lady Of Sorrows has a broken heart by seven swords, because seven were the most principal sorrows during her life: the prophecy of the old Simeon, the exile in Egypt, the loss of Jesus in the Jerusalem’s Temple, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Deposition from the Cross and the Burial. Our iconography, often, represents St. Mary with one sword, only the sorrow of the Simeon’s prophecy (the statues of the 19th century).”
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— Rands In Repose: A Disclosure ¶“As best I can tell, there are two useful types of meeting: alignment and creation. Briefly:
Alignment meetings sound like this: “It’s red, are we all in agreement it’s red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks it’s blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons it’s red. Convinced? Done now?”
Creation meetings sound like this: “We need more blue. How are we going to do that? Phil, you’re our blue man. What should we do here?””
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— NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Op-Ed Columnist - Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? - NYTimes.com ¶“One measure of the absurdity of the system: Every year you, the American taxpayer, send me a check for $588 in exchange for me not growing crops on timberland I own in Oregon (I forward the money to a charity). That’s right. The Agriculture Department pays a New York journalist not to grow crops in a forest in Oregon.”
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— Christopher Hitchens, via David Smith ¶“It’s now very common to hear people say, “I’m rather offended by that”, as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. “I’m offended by that.” Well, so fucking what?”
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— The Myth of Fernet - News - SF Weeklypage 1 - SF Weekly ¶““I have to admit, my first experience was like, ‘What the fuck?’” says 26-year-old Becky Licu, who with Cattani co-owns Barfly Promotions, a company that works with Fernet-Branca. “I wasn’t prepared for something like that.”
“It’s an acquired taste first and foremost, like coffee or wine,” says Hobson’s Choice General Manager Chris Dickerson. “First time you have it is like, ‘Argh! This is absolutely horrible.’”
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— The Simple Pleasures of Conserving Fruits for Winter - Trucs d'artan ¶“The wax is not there for decoration or brand recognition. It is part of the caring ancient art of putting fruit by for winter. The ‘Passe Crassane,’ like many of the “winter” pears, does not ripen on the tree, however long you may let it hang. It ripens over a prolonged period of winter storage, slowly developing its heady pear perfume, and transforming its flesh from hard and grainy to silkily ripe and slippery with juice. The problem is, how do you prevent the pear from dehydrating before it ripens fully? Answer: seal the end of its stem with a blob of sealing wax. This prevents the loss of moisture, which in the pear occurs primarily through its thick stem.”
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— Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy | The A.V. Club ¶“Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It’s more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom?”
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— America Serves | Change.gov ¶“The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.”
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— Change.gov is coming — and has Obama picked his CTO? » VentureBeat ¶“Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.”
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— Highlights: Newsweek's Special Election Project | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com ¶“The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.”
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— Editorial - The Next President - NYTimes.com ¶“An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.
Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.”
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— TiVo and Netflix finally consummate union ¶“Through the partnership first envisioned in 2004, Netflix subscribers who own the TiVo Series3, HD, or HD XL will be able to stream over 12,000 movies and TV shows through Netflix’s online streaming service. In order to do so, users will first need to visit the Netflix website in order to add movies and TV episodes to their instant queues, which will then be displayed through the TiVo. From there, users can browse their instant queues and make selections right from that comfortable dent in the couch.”
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— Elevated Voices - The Many Reasons Why Colorado Is on Election Watch ¶“This time Denver’s corporate partner, Sequoia Voting Systems, failed to mail 18,000 ballots to voters who requested them. Without the ballots, voters could be forced to cast provisional ballots, which are given to people whose names don’t appear on lists where they expected to vote. If the voters receive those ballots in the mail this week, as promised, they will only have until Friday to put it back in the mail to ensure it will be counted.”