-  Miranda July

I looked him up online, in an attempt to figure out what his deal was exactly, because actually being around him did nothing to illuminate his character. I stumbled upon a manifesto entitled The New Sincerity, and if you’re wondering what that could possibly mean, let me tell you. The New Sincerity is simply The Old Irony, with better PR.

You gotta beget while the begetting is good.

“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.

Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.

If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.

Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”

“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

In some editions of Sunday’s Section A, an article about Sarah Palin’s speech to the National Tea Party Convention quoted her as saying, “How’s that hopey, changing stuff working out for you?” She said, “How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?”

“…the iPad is a lot like Barack Obama: Everyone was able to project their own fantasies and aspirations on a product with which they were mostly unfamiliar, only to sour on it once they realized that it did not live up to their impossible expectations.”

Awl

I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.

Congratulations.

(via marginal revolution)