¶ Thanks to Tyler Cowen, we encountered Ethan Zuckerman’s “dance mix” on cities and serendipity. As we’ve pointed out in large ways and small ever since we took to the Internet eleven years ago, it’s possible to live the life of a villager in the most booming metropolis — and that’s what most city-dwellers do (even, and perhaps especially, the habitués of downtown clubs). That’s why we don’t put much stock in the utility of exposure to “opposing points of view.” What’s better, in our view, is constantly sifting through the differences among similar points of view.

The real takeaway from Ethan’s piece is the grandeur of using the Internet to make and maintain friendships around the world.  

Through my work on Global Voices, I’m blessed with a set of close friends from around the world, and I often catch glimpses of important breaking stories, either through the work we do on the site, of from my friends’ preoccupations on their social media feeds. In late December 2010, it became clear that something very unusual was happening in Tunisia – friends like Sami Ben Gharbia were both covering the protests unfolding in Sidi Bouzid and spreading across the country, and asking loudly why no media outside the region was covering the revolution underway. I got into the act with one of my better-timed blogposts – on January 12th, I published “What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?“… and I got a lot of phone calls when Ben Ali fled the country two days later.

The revolution in Tunisia caught intelligence and diplomatic services around the world flat-footed. It didn’t have to – there was a wealth of information being published on Tunisian Facebook pages, aggregated by groups like Nawaat.org and distributed on Al Jazeera (primarily through their Arabic service.) But this shift from a world where news is dominated by superpowers to a multipolar world is a hard one for diplomats, the military, the press and individuals to get used to. And if I’m honest about my view of the world, I’m forced to admit that there’s no way I would have known about the revolution brewing if I didn’t have close Tunisian friends.

Note that  Ethan’s Tunisian friends were presumably not barraging him with points of view opposed to his own. Quite the opposite! (My Heart’s in Accra; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ In the Big Book of Perfect Timing, Alan Stillman will deserve a special place. He opened the first TGI Friday’s in 1965 — the Year of the Pill. Before Friday’s he says, there was no place for young women to go out to, alone or in groups. One thing led to another, and Mr Stillman dines at one of his own restaurants once a week — an empire that he began with no knowledge of the hospitality business.  (edible geography; via MetaFilter) ¶ As a rule, we have no time for books claiming that the Internet is sending us to hell in a handbasket, but an intriguing review by Michael Thomsen of David Thorne’s The Internet Is a Playground may require making an exception. (The Millions)

¶ Propeller Theatre comes to Boston. Edward Hall’s all-male Shakespeare troupe is into the artifice of acting, and also sticking with the text. Son of Sir Peter is too busy to worry about being overshadowed by famous parent. (Globe; via Arts Journal) ¶ “Personally, I can’t think of the last time I saw a show that really seemed truly new and boundary-breaking to me.” At the Guardian, Alexis Soloski calls for a new critical vocabulary. It may be a while before “avant-garde” means anything again. ¶ Reviewing Tony Kushner’s new play, Terry Teachout snipes. (About Last Night) 

Even if “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” were 15% better than “Lear,” Mr. Kushner’s play would still have profited from being stripped of its lengthy digressions and superfluous subplots, most of which serve only to obscure the play’s good parts.

¶ We’ve been scratching our heads about Thomas Pynchon for more than forty years, so we’re grateful to Mark O’Connell for his theoretical breakthrough: reading a tediously endless novel with occasional flashes of set-piece memorability induces the literary equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome! When we picture the sullen young men who carry these books around, we get it entirely. (The Millions)  ¶ Bharati Mukherjee writes about her new novel, Miss New India, at Speakeasy. We’re intrigued by the theme of internal migration, in which people who aren’t too far from peasant roots approach the “Western” world in cosmopolitan cities. This is precisely what happened in that Western world two hundred years ago.

¶ “The Mother’s Curse” — a genetic problem that sounded a lot like hemophilia, but we kept reading: it’s mitochrondrial build-up, which in males remains unaffected by natural selection. Unless, that is, something on the Y chromosome fights back. (Not Exactly Rocket Science) ¶ We are all alcoholics now: in her compelling essay, “The Drunkalogues,” Denise Grollmus shows how pervasively the twelve-step program has influenced the template of alcoholic and drug-dependent memoirs, almost as though AA were running a Rod Serling program. Denise hails David Carr’s The Night of the Gun as an alternative tale, one built not so much on the power of drugs as on the faultiness of self-protecting memory. (The Rumpus) ¶ Poetic Justice? Maud Newton’s 40th birthday will coincide with Judgment Day. Given her antecedents — her “ninth great-grandmother” was accused of witchcraft in the Seventeenth Century, not to mention her peppily dogmatic mother — she’s not really surprised. (The Awl)

New: ¶ Quelques mots sur la procédure new-yorkaise, in which our criminal procedure is explained to French readers, so that they can follow the Day-Ess-Kah imbroglio. Do admit: it’s much easier to say that than Dominique &c. (Diner’s Room; via Mnémoglyphes) ¶ While we are great fans of the tonic tone taken by The Epicurean Dealmaker, there is a rotting edge to his calls for those who would pitchfork bankers to put down their implements and consider “serious reform.” That rotting edge is a faith, increasingly unsustainable, in the way that the American legal system does business. Claiming that bankers need protection from lynch mobs, moreover, is insulting to black Americans.

Have a Look: ¶ Understanding Arab Culture Through Typography @ Brain Pickings. ¶ What Your Literary Tote Bag Says About You. (Vol. I Brooklyn; via Marginal Revolution)

Noted: ¶ Michael Stipe @ Interview. ¶ The “ultimate green burial.” (Mother Jones; via The Morning News) ¶ James Ward is thorly unimpressed. (I Like Boring Things)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 12:01 am.