We’re going to presume that Arthur S. Brisbane is 60. We’re presuming that Arthur S. Brisbane is 60 because Arthur S. Brisbane was 59 when Arthur S. Brisbane was announced as the new “Public Editor” of the New York Times last June. If you’re not familiar with a Public Editor, his job is to write letters to the editors of the New York Times. Only unlike yours, his get published.

Like this one, published Sunday:

A Cocktail Party With Readers

A cocktail party! How very New York Times of Arthur S. Brisbane! Not a beer, mind you. Nor a bong hit, for that matter. No, a cocktail party. Something we haven’t seen since Woody Allen’s early, funny films.

Only it’s not a real cocktail party. Arthur S. Brisbane is being fanciful. Arthur S. Brisbane is being fanciful because Arthur S. Brisbane is searching for words to describe a novel experience in Arthur S. Brisbane’s rarefied life. For you see, Arthur S. Brisbane has discovered Twitter:

Read more »

Title: “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement”

Authors: David Brooks

Rank: 5

Blurb: “I try to explain how these findings about the deepest recesses of our minds should change the way we see ourselves, raise our kids, conduct business, teach, manage our relationships and practice politics.”

Review: “People who read books of this type used to be called ‘existentialist.'”

Customers Also Bought: “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Footnote: Stop the presses! Rational man discovers intuition! It’ll change everything you know! Unless, of course, like the Greeks, you knew it already.

The Social Animal [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Updated post:

“There is a possibility, we see the possibility of a meltdown,” said Toshihiro Bannai, director of [Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency] international affairs office, in a telephone interview from the agency’s headquarters in Tokyo. “At this point, we have still not confirmed that there is an actual meltdown, but there is a possibility.”

A meltdown doesn’t necessarily mean a major radioactive release, although cesium has been detected in the air. Depends on how well the containment vessel holds up.

Official: ‘We see the possibility of a meltdown’ [CNN]

Nuclear plant blast ‘appears to have caused meltdown’ [Sydney Morning Herald]

In Japan plant, frantic efforts to avoid meltdown [AP]

The world you grow up in is the world you take for granted. It’s the baseline for all that follows. That’s what fascinates us about generations — the world of foiks ten or twenty years older or younger than us is a different world than ours. They overlap like circles in a Venn diagram, but they’re not identical.

When we were ten, we saw live video from the surface of New Mexico the Moon. We were old enough to know it was Important, but TV itself was a given. It’s not like we grew up in a radio culture. Or with gramophones.

As we grew aware of these things, it was a commonplace observation that folks a few generations older had really been on a ride — from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11. We had missed most of the Twentieth Century action. We were late to the party.

Read more »

Live or Memorex?

One of my assistants on WRR has contacts in the Highway Department who are most unhappy. This is a real sign out there, more are on the way.

Live, then, until we hear otherwise. Either way, somebody’s a genius.

Wisconsin Resistance Radio [via Weigel]

Wow! What an exciting week! After incorporating an independent MySQL database within a WordPress display framework, we devised a barebones AJAX widget to handle refresh-free logins with dynamic error messages, adapted a jQuery Javascript plugin to display clickable and auto-loading overlays, deployed another jQuery plugin with CSS rollovers to replace form radio buttons with clickable highlighting images, pulled off a CSS3 gradient to create easily resized backgrounds that default to flat colors in older browsers, handcrafted cookies with salted-hash sha1 session IDs, and… and…

Hello?

Fine. Be that way. Here’s some bestiality. We have work to do.

[via Ezra]

The news coming out of Japan at midnight PT:

Large areas of Japan’s northern Pacific coast have been swamped by a devastating tsunami, engulfing entire towns following a major 8.9 offshore quake.

The meteorological agency issued its top-level evacuation alerts for the entire Japanese coast, warning of a tsunami of up to six metres.

Towns and farms around Sendai city in northern Japan are being engulfed by a tsunami, and a four-metre wave has swamped parts of Kamaishi on the Pacific coast.

We’re not hearing specific casualty reports yet, but the ugly details will surely emerge all too soon.

Tsunami swamps Japan after powerful quake [ABC Australia]

Tsunami hits north-eastern Japan after massive quake [BBC]

Massive 8.9 quake, tsunamis hit Japan [CNN]

Update: Tsunami warning now in effect from Point Concepcion, California, to the Oregon-Washington Border. Estimated arrival begins at 7:15 am PT.