May 2012
5 posts
6 tags
1 tag
“I rest my case. This nasty vegetable needs to resume its place in obscurity.”
– A friend’s response upon reading this Slate story mocking the recent trend of obsessing over kale.
(For the record, I don’t mind kale).
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
April 2012
12 posts
5 tags
3 tags
5 tags
6 tags
“I have a police scanner on my nightstand. I fall to sleep and wake up to the...”
–
From Sara Ganim’s About page on her website. Many congratulations to Sara and members of the Patriot-News staff in Harrisburg, Penn. on a well-deserved Pulitzer for their dogged work on the Penn State story.
6 tags
4 tags
8 tags
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
3 tags
4 tags
On repeat right now: Tanlines’ Brothers off...
March 2012
7 posts
3 tags
6 tags
2 tags
4 tags
2 tags
4 tags
4 tags
5 tags
“Never use a Metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to...”
– The first rule from The Economist’s style guide, which refers to George Orwell’s six elementary rules (“Politics and the English Language”, 1946).
February 2012
7 posts
7 tags
2 tags
3 tags
“He crossed the Atlantic because it was there, and the Pacific because it was...”
– The lede to John Fairfax’s obituary in the Times, easily one of the most beautifully crafted obituaries I’ve ever read.
2 tags
4 tags
“Living alone comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control...”
– Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at NYU and the author of “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone,” in a NYT column about living alone.
4 tags
January 2012
11 posts
4 tags
2 tags
“And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not...”
– John Steinbeck, in a letter from 1958 on falling in love.
5 tags
Things I learned about Costco from The New Yorker
I highly recommend Patricia Marx’s piece in The New Yorker last week (Jan. 16) about grocery shopping in New York. Not only is it incredibly funny, it really captures the economics of groceries here.
“If Costco were a country, its revenues would make it the sixty-fifth largest in the world, ahead of both the Republic of Microsoft and Applestand and right behind the United Kingdom of...
2 tags
4 tags
“Perhaps the calendar, gazed upon from a distance, actually illuminates the...”
– A poignant essay by Ted Anthony about the power and legacy of a calendar.
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
“When I was 17 years old, I sent away for a NASA astronaut application, received...”
– Facebook post from one of the most extraordinary and qualified people I know who has applied for the NASA astronaut training program. Like me, he’s dreamed about getting to space since he was tiny. Unlike me, he studied astrophysics, has spent the last three austral summers working in...
5 tags
“Leaving and moving on — returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and...”
– Carrie Brownstein, co-writer of Portlandia, on her previous relationships. Quoted from this wonderful profile about her last week in The New Yorker.
December 2011
12 posts
7 tags
“You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is...”
– WSJ’s piece in Weekend today on how to ace an interview at Google and why brain teaser questions are spreading to other picky employers.
4 tags
4 tags
9 tags
the new sarablask.com, paring down the digital...
I spent my weekend paring down my digital footprint. I killed my old site and redirected the URL to Tumblr, unsubscribed from countless newsletters, group deals, innumerable group deal spinoffs, sale announcements, where-to-eat emails, and deleted my accounts on an assortment of social platforms that will not reach mass adoption.
Privacy aside, there are a multitude of reasons why I did this....
