latimes:

So long, plastic grocery bags?
The Los Angeles City Council voted for an ordinance banning plastic bags Tuesday, making L.A. the largest city to possibly forbid grocers from providing anything other than paper bags (at 10 cents a pop).
Plenty of people have voiced their disapproval of the ban, including one bag-totting Target customer in Eagle Rock:

“I’m going to forget to bring my bag, and I’m not going to want to pay, so Target will probably lose some of my business,” the Highland Park resident said. “Then I’ll be putting even more things back.”

But the inconvenience may be worth it for the greater good, as Karin Klein writes in her account of the bag-less lifestyle (with a bit of a learning curve):

Truth is, though, it can be a pain. Sometimes, you just crave a flimsy wisp of plastic with built-in handles to carry out the trash, or to hold some messy item that should not see the inside of a backpack. The reality is that life without plastic bags is entirely doable and a lot better for the environment, but it does require some adjusting.

Read more on the possible ban, which would begin in 2014, here.
Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

latimes:

So long, plastic grocery bags?

The Los Angeles City Council voted for an ordinance banning plastic bags Tuesday, making L.A. the largest city to possibly forbid grocers from providing anything other than paper bags (at 10 cents a pop).

Plenty of people have voiced their disapproval of the ban, including one bag-totting Target customer in Eagle Rock:

“I’m going to forget to bring my bag, and I’m not going to want to pay, so Target will probably lose some of my business,” the Highland Park resident said. “Then I’ll be putting even more things back.”

But the inconvenience may be worth it for the greater good, as Karin Klein writes in her account of the bag-less lifestyle (with a bit of a learning curve):

Truth is, though, it can be a pain. Sometimes, you just crave a flimsy wisp of plastic with built-in handles to carry out the trash, or to hold some messy item that should not see the inside of a backpack. The reality is that life without plastic bags is entirely doable and a lot better for the environment, but it does require some adjusting.

Read more on the possible ban, which would begin in 2014, here.

Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images


latimes:

laughingsquid:

This Was First, A Website Collecting the First Posts of Popular Websites

Time to feel a bit old if you remember Reddit’s first-ever post, or LiveJournal’s initial “this is a test,” entry!

latimes:

laughingsquid:

This Was First, A Website Collecting the First Posts of Popular Websites

Time to feel a bit old if you remember Reddit’s first-ever post, or LiveJournal’s initial “this is a test,” entry!


Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Those who maintain the power structures of the academy, and particularly the humanities, might reply that of course Helen Keller would say such a thing. If they didn’t say it out loud, they’d at least imply that collaboration is helpful only to those whose infirmities and weaknesses make it impossible for them to stand on their own—those people really need help. But not so in the humanities! Where we all lift our own weight, and all of us speak in our own, strong voices.

[…]

Academic life in the humanities still bears the form, if not the detail and substance, of the monastic life that shaped the modern university. Our offices and library cubicles are like cells, places to which we retreat so that we can “read, read, read, work, pray, and read again,” as the philosopher Charles Peirce put it back in 1877, quoting an old chemist’s maxim. Our graduate-school training habituates us in burying ourselves for long hours in solitary seeking, emerging only for the austere hours of communal liturgy, where most of us sit in silence while one chosen from among us stands and reads from the holy text. The main difference between us and the medieval monastics is that they, when they went into solitude, believed they were not alone. We moderns decidedly are.

After philosopher Judith Butler’s fantastic commencement address on the importance of the humanities, a lament on the crisis of collaboration and cross-disciplinary communication in the humanities from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It seems like the humanities can learn from science where, it has been memorably noted, “successful scientists have often been people with wide interests.”

(via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)


nprfreshair:

Mitch Hurwitz, who worked on The Golden Girls before creating Arrested Development, tells Terry Gross about how the pressure of a writers’ room can lead to great jokes:

I remember Jim Vallely, as I said, one of the executive producers of Arrested, I remember being in a room with him [on Golden Girls] and there was a scene where Blanche was opening up birthday presents, and Jimmy yelled out, It’s a blouse! And everybody looked at Jimmy and he took a second, ‘You said you wanted something crotch-less!’ I remember saying to him, ‘Did you know you were going to say the crotch-less thing?’ And he said, ‘No, I had no idea, I just painted myself into a corner.’ And I love that. I think that’s such an important part of comedy. We do it all the time on Arrested, just paint ourselves into corners and try to get out. It’s all about constraints.

nprfreshair:

Mitch Hurwitz, who worked on The Golden Girls before creating Arrested Development, tells Terry Gross about how the pressure of a writers’ room can lead to great jokes:

I remember Jim Vallely, as I said, one of the executive producers of Arrested, I remember being in a room with him [on Golden Girls] and there was a scene where Blanche was opening up birthday presents, and Jimmy yelled out, It’s a blouse! And everybody looked at Jimmy and he took a second, ‘You said you wanted something crotch-less!’ I remember saying to him, ‘Did you know you were going to say the crotch-less thing?’ And he said, ‘No, I had no idea, I just painted myself into a corner.’ And I love that. I think that’s such an important part of comedy. We do it all the time on Arrested, just paint ourselves into corners and try to get out. It’s all about constraints.


npr:

Hey, brother. Did you catch Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz on Fresh Air yesterday? Anticipation for the fourth season on Netflix was hyped to a fever pitch before its May 26 release—did it live up to your expectations?
Read and listen to a portion of the Fresh Air interview here.
nprfreshair:

Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz on the deeper truths of the show:

What is honest in the show is there are family dynamics. The family speaks in code, family has its own mythology. In many ways, your family wants you to be what they think you are. My father said to me recently, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you could write longhand.’ Or, ‘I didn’t know you knew how to write in handwriting.’ [And I said] ‘Of course I do. I’m a grown man.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t know you knew how.’ ‘I think you’re thinking of when I was 8.’ ‘You definitely couldn’t [then]. I’ll show you cards. …’ And there’s something fun about how your family won’t let you change, in a way, and the push and pull of like, ‘No, I’m a different person!’ And of course, they’re kind of right.

npr:

Hey, brother. Did you catch Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz on Fresh Air yesterday? Anticipation for the fourth season on Netflix was hyped to a fever pitch before its May 26 release—did it live up to your expectations?

Read and listen to a portion of the Fresh Air interview here.

nprfreshair:

Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz on the deeper truths of the show:

What is honest in the show is there are family dynamics. The family speaks in code, family has its own mythology. In many ways, your family wants you to be what they think you are. My father said to me recently, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you could write longhand.’ Or, ‘I didn’t know you knew how to write in handwriting.’ [And I said] ‘Of course I do. I’m a grown man.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t know you knew how.’ ‘I think you’re thinking of when I was 8.’ ‘You definitely couldn’t [then]. I’ll show you cards. …’ And there’s something fun about how your family won’t let you change, in a way, and the push and pull of like, ‘No, I’m a different person!’ And of course, they’re kind of right.


explore-blog:

Lapham’s Quarterly presents the worst jobs in history on a cartesian graph of treacherous/tedious and difficult/disgusting. In the unfortunate case that yours is a contemporary addition, here’s how to find fulfilling work and do what you love.

explore-blog:

Lapham’s Quarterly presents the worst jobs in history on a cartesian graph of treacherous/tedious and difficult/disgusting. In the unfortunate case that yours is a contemporary addition, here’s how to find fulfilling work and do what you love.



Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies
Albert Camus, quoted in the wonderful How to Find Fulfilling Work. (via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)


You have to completely lose yourself in something, even if you have to lose yourself in something else 45 minutes later. If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It’s like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention. The secret to multitasking is that it isn’t actually multitasking. It’s just extreme focus and organization

Joss Whedon, who recently shared his life-wisdom with graduating seniors, joins in the effort to debunk the myth of multitasking.

Losing yourself is, of course, a function of having found your purpose and engaging in fulfilling work.

(via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)


The cultivation of aptitude, far more than coincidence or inspiration, is responsible for most creative breakthroughs.