The Joy of Less

"In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied. I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”"

from The New York Times

The Dude of Roller Derby and His Vision

"The legend of the modern roller derby has claimed its place in the Generation X canon: playing on an outdated fad of their Nixon-era upbringing, some tattooed, disaffected young women from Texas reimagined the sport as a symbol of postfeminist sisterhood. Tough, brash and calculatedly sexy, with a rockabilly swagger, the roller girls declared themselves She.E.O.’s, started a coast-to-coast cultural juggernaut and inspired books, reality TV shows and a forthcoming Drew Barrymore movie.

But history will record the odd man out was, in fact, a man. And certainly odd."

from The New York Times

How We Became the United States of France

"This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the banking system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future where too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national healthcare? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food."

from Time

Sorting Out Coffee's Contradictions

"Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers."

- Coffee, a topic near and dear to the Brown File's heart.

from NY Times

Part Company

"Once a song exists, it never ceases to exist, whether I have constant access to it or not. And much of my music collection is under-appreciated and under-listened to anyway."

from NPR

Shimano Shuns Cables for Full Electronic Shifting

"Road-bike aficionados are much like trout: simultaneously enthralled and mortified by anything shiny and new that enters their environment. And so it's not surprising that the first two questions people tend to ask about Di2 are: 1) What if the battery dies? and 2) What if it gets wet?"

from Wired.com

Angry Clinton Women ♥ McCain?

"But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became “angry white women” once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype."

from The New York Times