Arthur Brisbane, the hilarious Public Editor for The New York Times, continues to ask the hard questions facing all journalists, like “Is fact-checking worth it?”
“Girls Kissing Girls: Explaining the Trend” is a mildly intriguing title, but it doesn’t come close to the actual web address for this Time story, which includes “girls-kissing-girls-whats-up-with-that.”
We had endless fun with the worst sentences of the year, but our personal favorite might have to be the following: “As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, ‘Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead.’”
The answer appears to be “No,” but the question in the subhead–”Could a brain parasite found in cats help soccer teams win at the World Cup?”–is undeniably intriguing.
The New York Times Magazine’s profile on David Mitchell is one of our favorite features on one of one of us’s favorite authors. Our favorite part from Wyatt Mason’s look at Mitchell: “When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, ‘your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there’s this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing.’”
Last week we linked to Philadelphia Magazine‘s profile of Buzz Bissinger, which asked why the former Pulitzer Prize winner was so angry. This week, we link to Bissinger’s own indirect response from The New Republic, in which he explains why he loves Twitter: “I am an angry man, which is one of the reasons I have resumed therapy and take four different pharmaceuticals. I wake up angry, stay angry during the day except to my dog and children, and go to bed angry at night. Most of my anger amounted to a running dialogue of abuse and self-abuse while working alone at home. But with Twitter, I now had an outlet.”
Over at Mental Floss–can you believe we haven’t linked to a magazine founded by Duke guys yet?–Miss Cellania offers an unorthodox but NPI-approved take on who the most influential person on the Internet is: Randall Munroe. You may not know Munroe’s name, but we hope you know his product. If not, you’re gonna have a fun next few days.
One of xkcd’s best strips was quickly immortalized into a futile but fun version of Tetris within days. Somewhat relatedly, Jacob Lambert pens his ode to the game, which he says brings “interior freedom.” We’re kind of upset he left out the Russian music. Gotta talk about the Russian music.
