Lifehacker is probably one of my most-read blogs that doesn't translate into many (or any, till now) posts on this site. There's definitely something seductive about wasting one's time reading other people's suggestions about how not to waste time. But now Lifehacker's founder and lead blogger is stepping down to get back to making stuff. Of course (I tell myself) finding and curating good stuff is its own form of culture making, but often it still can feel a level removed.

blogs, horizons of the possible, internet, time

Nate

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As the years passed, Lifehacker became my online alter ego, my professional identity, my work and my play. I happily gave up time I’d normally spend on creative side projects to the site, because it was my primary outlet for the two things I love most: software and writing. But as our staff and audience grew, the news chase intensified, and management duties piled up. I started writing and coding less and air traffic-controlling, copy-editing, budgeting, doing PR, and assigning stories to my writers more. While that all has been great experience I am lucky to have under my belt, it’s time for me to recalibrate how I’m spending my days. As someone put well, it’s time to mitigate the urgent to focus on the important.

The bottom line is this: for someone who loves making things on the web, spending 100% of the time blogging about what other people are making is simply untenable.

After studying at an Anglican university in Hong Kong and then becoming the first East Asian to be admitted as a barrister in England, Wu Tingfang served as the Qing Dynasty's minister to the United States, Spain, and Peru around the turn of the last century. His 1914 book comparing American and Chinese cultures is a fascinating, moving, and at times amusing read; it was written in part to counter the era's entrenched discrimination against Chinese immigrants. I particularly enjoyed his bafflement at the Americans' boast of calling their president, simply, "Mr."; he argues (in a playful but serious manner) for a more exalted title.

asia, china, cultural worlds, government, names, power, titles

Nate

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[T]here are railroad kings, copper kings, tobacco kings, etc. It is, however, manifestly improper and incongruous that the people should possess a higher title than their President, who is the head of the nation. To make it even, I would suggest that the title “President” be changed to “Emperor,” for the following reasons: First, it would not only do away with the impropriety of the chief magistrate of the nation assuming a name below that of some of his people, but it would place him on a level with the highest ruler of any nation on the face of the earth. I have often heard the remark that the President of the United States is no more than a common citizen, elected for four years, and that on the expiration of his term he reverts to his former humble status of a private citizen; that he has nothing in common with the dignified majesty of an Emperor; but were the highest official of the United States to be in future officially known as Emperor, all these depreciatory remarks would fall to the ground. There is no reason whatever why he should not be so styled, as, by virtue of his high office, he possesses almost as much power as the most aristocratic ruler of any nation. Secondly, it would clearly demonstrate the sovereign power of the people; a people who could make and unmake an Emperor, would certainly be highly respected. Thirdly, the United States sends ambassadors to Germany, Austria, Russia, etc. According to international law, ambassadors have what is called the representative character, that is, they represent their sovereign by whom they are delegated, and are entitled to the same honors to which their constituent would be entitled were he personally present. In a Republic where the head of the State is only a citizen and the sovereign is the people, it is only by a stretch of imagination that its ambassador can be said to represent the person of his sovereign. Now it would be much more in consonance with the dignified character of an American ambassador to be the representative of an Emperor than of a simple President. The name of Emperor may be distasteful to some, but may not a new meaning be given to it?

A telling recollection from the late Richard John Neuhaus (writing in 2002) about "the inherent worth of King's preaching, exhortation, inspiration" . . . and the tendency of media to neglect it.

politics, preaching, race, television

Andy

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Every preacher who has been around a while finds consolation in the promise of Isaiah that “the word shall not return void.” To preach well is success. I recall rallies when, in the course of his preaching, King would hold forth on the theological and moral foundations of the movement. The klieg lights and cameras shut down, only to be turned on again when he returned to specifically political or programmatic themes. “Watch the lights,” he commented. “They’re not interested in the most important parts.”

Say what you will about Andrew Wyeth, he introduced at least one ten-year-old to seriously looking at art. At my request, my parents framed a print of Wyeth's "Faraway" and it hung over my bed for many years. Today I am more intrigued and moved by Wyeth's watercolors than his every-brown-blade-of-grass realism, but who knows—without that accessible and yet mysterious painting, I might not have started noticing what artists like Wyeth made of our world. RIP.

art, childhood, painting

Andy

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I suspect that once the shouting dies down, Wyeth’s oeuvre will undergo at least a partial revaluation, and that it will center on his watercolors. Like so many other American artists who came to prominence between the end of the 19th century and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Wyeth profited greatly from the immediacy of watercolor, an on-the-spot medium that does not allow for second thoughts: What you paint is what you get. It forced him to be free. To look at a watercolor like “Benjamin’s House,” which hangs in San Francisco’s de Young Museum, is to see what Wyeth meant when he claimed that “I honestly consider myself to be an abstractionist.” All narrative content has been stripped out of this bare, washy winter scene, leaving only the essentials: a wall, a window, a handful of branches. The result is a masterly little glimpse of the visible world, executed with self-effacing virtuosity.

Inspired in part by reading Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, an artist has created a fruitful long-term creative partnership with the residents of an inner-city neighborhood in North Philadelphia.

art, gardens and cities, horizons of the possible, mosaic, pennsylvania, poverty, public space, sculpture

Nate

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Twenty years later, this area is still poor, with high unemployment but hope can be found at the Village of Arts and Humanities.  That’s what the small art park has grown into—a tangible symbol of renewal that covers more than 120 formerly abandoned lots with murals, sculpture gardens, mosaics, flowers, community gardens, playgrounds, performance spaces, basketball courts, art studios, even a tree farm. 

“The entire community seems to take part in the use of the spaces,” writes Kathleen McCarthy, who nominated the Village for Project for Public Space’s authoritative list of the world’s Great Public Spaces. “As we walked down the street, trying to find one of the parks, a man walking beside us directed us to the Park, and told us the history of it and the wonderful artist, Lily Yeh who started the park. He spoke with pride that this was a part of his community. We sat on the benches made of smashed tile and mirror, making wonderful curves and places to sit. Across from us, women sat and smiled, waved. Children ran over and asked us to hide them during a game of hide-and-seek…. I’ve never felt more welcomed in an unfamiliar place.”

A funny, telling story about what Harold Bloom calls "the anxiety of influence." One way or another, we've all been there.

craft, heroes, poetry, youth

Andy

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The poem, titled “Upon Reading Canada,” was an epistolary one-pager. No rhyme, meter, rhythm, or purposeful cadence worth mentioning—“free verse” would be what they aptly call it. It shared with Mr. Collins’s poetry only its general typographic shape. The rest was a haphazard cocksure motif of Billy Collins himself, cast as the heavy weight champion of the world. You see, boxing rings have lines in the form of boundary ropes, which you must grapple within. This is metaphorically similar to writing, which also incorporates lines—this time, of words.

You can see that the Muses had clearly favored me with a friend request.

David Brooks gets it just right. We are not machines, and neither is our economy. So where, oh where, are the Christian economists whose work is deeply informed by a non-mechanistic view of human nature, and the "faith and trust" that economies require?

economics, psychology

Andy

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For years, Republicans have been trying to create a large investor class with policies like private Social Security accounts, medical savings accounts and education vouchers. These policies were based on the belief that investors are careful, rational actors who make optimal decisions. There was little allowance made for the frailty of the decision-making process, let alone the mass delusions that led to the current crack-up.

Democrats also have an unfaced crisis. Democratic discussions of the stimulus package also rest on a mechanical, dehumanized view of the economy. You pump in a certain amount of money and “the economy” spits out a certain number of jobs. Democratic economists issue highly specific accounts of multiplier effects — whether a dollar of spending creates $1.20 or $1.40 of economic activity. . . .

Mechanistic thinkers on the right and left pose as rigorous empiricists. But empiricism built on an inaccurate view of human nature is just a prison.

I fly all the time and way too much—I've been doing so for about fifteen years now—and the vast majority of flights are absolutely banal and boring. (And happily, none have featured the slightest bit of danger or drama that we witnessed in New York yesterday afternoon.) But three times I have had conversations with a stranger that I will never, ever forget—moments that are on a very short list of the most treasured and important events of my life. This essay by Lindsey Crittenden is a lovely and evocative reminder of the possibilities that surround us—even when they remain only possibilities.

airplanes, friendship, love, transport, travel

Andy

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His name was Peter, and he carried an L.L. Bean canvas bag, monogrammed and trimmed in forest green. It was December 28, 1988, and I noticed him at the gate. Preppy, but kind of cute. And then we boarded, and he took the seat next to mine. American Airlines; JFK to SFO; a DC-10, which meant a layout of two-five-two. I had the window, and he the aisle. We gave each other brief, courteous nods, he stashed his L.L. Bean bag, and I turned back to my book, sneaking an occasional glance his way.

The flight attendants did their familiar demonstration. The plane pulled away from the gate and taxied onto the runway. The plane stopped. The captain came on and made a lame joke. Peter (although I didn’t know his name yet) and I exchanged glances, rolling our eyes in shared wariness. He said something, I said something, and we didn’t stop talking for the next six hours, during which I didn’t look at my book or attempt the movie.

By the time the plane landed at SFO, we knew each other’s names, hometowns, employers, current neighborhoods, and how our mothers didn’t approve of the people we were dating—in my case, because the guy, in Mom’s words, “acted like a kindergartener,” and in Peter’s because the woman wasn’t WASPy enough, a fact Peter underlined by gesturing toward the L.L. Bean bag at his feet.