Novak Djokovic's Gluten-Free Ascendancy - WSJ.com

Novak Djokovic's Gluten-Free Ascendancy - WSJ.com: "But no one would have predicted what has transpired since January. Djokovic's season has gone from good to great to outrageously, impossibly, unrealistically phenomenal. In an age when even small sports achievements can get enormous hype, there's really no superlative to describe what the soon-to-be 24-year-old has done this year."

Ten Commencement Speakers You Wish You'd Had - Education - GOOD

Ten Commencement Speakers You Wish You'd Had - Education - GOOD: "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

Objects and Agency.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Market: Change Observer: Design Observer

The Meek Shall Inherit the Market: Change Observer: Design Observer

A Private Army to Cover your Assets - Vive

A Private Army to Cover your Assets - Vive: "Industry and oil play a large part in the activities of the paramilitaries in Colombia. The Coca Cola bottling plant in Carepa has become infamous for attacks on SINALTRAINAL union activists. Union leaders have been murdered and members forced to resign their union memberships at gunpoint. An explosion at the water treatment plant in May 2003 killed three Sintraemcali union members. The Sintraemcali Union had been involved in a long battle to keep the plant from being privatised."

9 Ways to Need Less Money: Stress Less, Enjoy More | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

9 Ways to Need Less Money: Stress Less, Enjoy More | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In: "Stop showing your love with money."

digital digs: composition, humanities, and the "digital age"

digital digs: composition, humanities, and the "digital age": "But what is the effect of the digital plank if it can just be added on without any impact on the existing planks?"

On the Floor Laughing: Traders Are Having a New Kind of Fun - Technology - The Atlantic

On the Floor Laughing: Traders Are Having a New Kind of Fun - Technology - The Atlantic

Stolen Transition Preston

Stolen Transition Preston: "If you see this bike, please beat the living **** out of whoever is riding it and return the bike to me. I'll give $100 to whoever returns it to me, and an extra $50 if the thief goes to the hospital."

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage: "In one visit to his library, Tufte showed me a Victorian book diagramming popular dance steps of the time, a sketchbook made by Pablo Picasso during his Paris years, and a copy of the Hypnerotomachia, a dreamlike love story that was printed in Venice in 1499, which Tufte bought at auction for $385,000."

Urban Ranger: build the habit of purposeful walking

Urban Ranger: build the habit of purposeful walking: "How to walk

Don't worry about this part. Just walk. For the sake of your own dignity and the beauty of the world, please don't put on any silly outfits and pump your arms like a maniac. Just dress and walk normally. That 5% extra health benefit or whatever that you supposedly get from pumping your arms won't mean a thing when you stop after 3 months because you are tired of looking like a bozo. Also, you'll unconsciously get faster as you do it a lot. So relax."

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage: "Tufte took one look at the Web site mockups that the board’s designer had prepared and pronounced them “intellectually impoverished.”"

Paul Wolfowitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Wolfowitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "From 1970 to 1972, Wolfowitz taught in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where one of his students was I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.[19]"

A Veteran of Bin Laden Assault Unit SEAL Team Six Describes His Training | Politics | Vanity Fair

A Veteran of Bin Laden Assault Unit SEAL Team Six Describes His Training | Politics | Vanity Fair: "(Note: Do not practice underwater swimming or breath holding at home because it will kill you.)"

FBI down to 1 fugitive in $7 million Conn. Heist - Yahoo! News

FBI down to 1 fugitive in $7 million Conn. Heist - Yahoo! News: "With a coat smothering his head, McKeon listened as Gerena stuffed the cash into duffel bags. 'I thought he was going to kill me,' McKeon said. 'All I said was `Vic,' and he said `Jim, I've got nothing against you. I'm just tired of working for other people.''"

Chronology - The Evolution Of The Bush Doctrine | The War Behind Closed Doors | FRONTLINE | PBS

Chronology - The Evolution Of The Bush Doctrine | The War Behind Closed Doors | FRONTLINE | PBS

Wolfowitz!

The science of DJing an Olympic beach volleyball match. (5) - By Jacob Leibenluft, Tom Scocca, June Shih, and Tim Wu - Slate Magazine

The science of DJing an Olympic beach volleyball match. (5) - By Jacob Leibenluft, Tom Scocca, June Shih, and Tim Wu - Slate Magazine: "In weightlifting, failure is not about deductions; it's about complete meltdown. It is about huge muscles failing to do what they are told, a breakdown in the connection between body and mind. Success consists of beautiful, measured movements, while failure is sudden and catastrophic. In Japanese, this aesthetic is called mono no aware, the contrast between extreme beauty and perfect death. In weightlifting it lies in the difference between the perfect lift and the giant thud of the unlifted weight that announces the death of a dream."

Wouter Weylandt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wouter Weylandt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Weylandt is survived by his girlfriend, Sophie, who is expecting the couple's first child in September."

Why don't we love our intellectuals? | www.guardian.co.uk | Readability

Why don't we love our intellectuals? | www.guardian.co.uk | Readability: "Recognising that they had been shafted by some clever flash-mobbing, the erudite editors of Prospect and Foreign Affairs tried to salvage something from the wreckage in a later edition. Noting that the definition of public intellectual remained 'satisfyingly vague', they set up what the racing fraternity would call a stewards' inquiry to 'weigh up the field on three criteria: novelty, real-world impact, and intellectual pizzazz'. The result: the world's leading intellectual turned out to be General David Petraeus, architect of the US 'surge' in Iraq, currently in charge of the fiasco in Afghanistan and scheduled to become head of the CIA in September.

This is the kind of thing that gives superficiality a bad name."

William Gibson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Gibson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Through studying English literature, he was exposed to a wider range of fiction than he would have read otherwise; something he credits with giving him ideas inaccessible from within the culture of science fiction, including an awareness of postmodernity"

In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ All-Star Team - NYTimes.com

In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ All-Star Team - NYTimes.com

Some snippets that I misfiled. Of course, when I copied these to put in here the URLs died en route.

Life as Captured in Charts and Graphs - NYTimes.com

Russian tycoon 'pays ransom' to free kidnapped son - Telegraph: "The children of Russia's rich have been targeted for kidnapping since the mid-1990s when opportunistic businessmen found themselves in the right place at the right time and were able to snap up valuable assets from factories to gold mines for a fraction of their real worth."

How it turned out: "HE often talked about the dog he had had--going into detail about his little antics, running around with the supper dish in his mouth, chasing the birds that didn't seem to be scared of him in the slightest, chasing airplanes as if they were birds. He always said that he felt his childhood ended the night that, after so many years, in the middle of a big thunderstorm, his old little beagle vanished without a trace."

The Flip Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish - NYTimes.com: "Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia."

Navy SEALs, the 'quiet professionals,' got bin Laden - CNN.com: "Though he won't discuss specific areas of countries where he's carried out missions, he said that he normally trained for missions on exact mock-ups of a targeted location. He's confident that the special team knew the compound where bin Laden was hiding as if the SEALs had built it themselves."

Amazon.com: The Kingdom of Bones: A Novel (9780307382801): Stephen Gallagher: Books

Amazon.com: The Kingdom of Bones: A Novel (9780307382801): Stephen Gallagher: Books: "It was fascinating to sort through Bram Stoker's working papers for Dracula in Philadelphia's Rosenbach museum and get a sense of another writer's process. The way he sketched out rough structures for each chapter and set a wordage target for each, striking each one out with a single pencil stroke when the chapter was done. Sudden flashes of insight scribbled on hotel stationery."