Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The story of NPR’s new show Invisibilia starts with a butcher knife. Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller were taking a walk during some downtime at the Third Coast Conference and, as sometimes is the case during meandering walks at audio storytelling confabs, the conversation turned to psychology and how people interpret their thoughts. It was…
One point that, I hope, runs through a lot of my work is the use and abuse of dead moral questions. In that, I mean the tendency for political types to bring a lot of rhetorical and mental weight to bear on questions that are not politically live, in any meaningful sense. This focus is…
‘Far from being ‘sacred’, as some have claimed, freedom of speech is always contingent.’ Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP In times of crisis, those who would like us to keep just one idea in our heads at any one time are quick to the megaphones. By framing events in Manichean terms – dark versus light; good versus…
Today, in the wake of the Paris’ tragedy, some journalists, here and there, also on Gawker, try to understand what this very “different” newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, actually is. And yes, I say “is” because the newspaper itself is not dead and will be published normally next Wednesday and the weeks after that, despite the slaughter…
Most of The New York Times’ most popular items last year weren’t news stories by Benjamin Mullin Published Jan. 12, 2015 1:48 pm Updated Jan. 12, 2015 2:02 pm The New York Times Last year’s most popular item in The New York Times was this interactive, an image gallery of sorts that showed the photographic…
Over the past week, millions of people who had never heard of French magazine Charlie Hebdo have come into contact with its controversial covers and cartoons. And many have come away with questions about those cartoons, including a nagging sense that their depictions of Islam and people of color have been insensitive, or even racist….
by Julia Homer (About the author: Julia Homer was the editor of CFO Magazine for its 1985 launch and served at CFO Publishing until January 2012 when she left as executive vice president. While CFO was part of The Economist Group from 1989 to 2009, Homer helped launch CFO Europe, CFO Asia and CFO China,…
Even Ross Douthat came out swinging yesterday in favor of the slain cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo (“The Blasphemy We Need“). Since it is difficult to find even one square inch of common ground between right and left in American politics, this ought to have come as good news. Unfortunately, Douthat’s Take is yet another of…
Only when it doesn’t endanger their ability to make a profit. “Freedom of speech” has perhaps never looked so confused. In the days immediately following a massacre at French comics magazine Charlie Hebdo last week that left at least 12 people dead and 11 injured, multinational tech companies rallied support. Donations have poured into Charlie…
Mark Zuckerberg in 2013. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is dealing with the contradictions of promoting free speech while running the world’s biggest social network, after being called out on the gap between his words and Facebook policy. Zuckerberg, who has been outspoken in his support of Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech in…