Aren't there any other black presidents who win historic elections against old white rich guys? No? Well then, Barack Obama is the Person of the Year, according to TIME, which is not even trying anymore now that Newsweek is gone. Obama was chosen because, let's see, "We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Barack Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America. In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union."

If taking our guns away and taxing the Koch Brothers at [...]

I recently attended a wedding, and it was, as weddings are wont to be, an almost transcendentally beautiful occasion. It was held on the grounds of a giant sandstone Federation house (who can honestly call something with guest quarters off-site a house?) sitting on miles of pristine green acreage. Fairy lights in the shape of love-hearts hung from the trees. The air smelled of freshly cut grass. Butlers stood with umbrellas armed for the possibility of rain to escort you the few feet to the bathrooms. The food was unlike any food I’d ever tasted. The country estate on which is was held, several hours outside of Sydney, was [...]

There are only 16,777,216 colors that can be represented on the web (under our current system). The Tumblr that celebrates them, Pretty Colors, has posted 1077 of those colors since January. That means this Tumblr can only exist (if it continues posting at the same rate) for another 10,433 years before it runs out of colors. If my math is right. Which it may not be. But it'll have run out of "pretty" colors long before then, most likely. How many of the colors that can exist online can also be considered pretty, even with an open mind? I'd give that Tumblr about another 3000 years. I look forward [...]

"We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it." That's Time editor Rick Stengel on his new cover story…. which is coverlined "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan," and has a portrait of a woman brutalized by the Taliban. The story contains this: "As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be [...]

I'm as trouble as most folks by the overwhelming scientific evidence about the damage concussions do to football players and how I can continue to enjoy the sport in light of that fact. And this Time article (and its sidebar) does a good job of explaining the situation. But, REALLY, did no one look at the links appended to various paragraphs? Because they're kind of appalling.

I take back everything I've ever said about Time. While I may, in the past, have castigated the magazine as an out-of-touch rehash of events that are already old news by the time the book is published, or chastised it as a dispenser of conventional wisdom for those who liked their news pre-chewed, I was deeply wrong. I'm not too big a man to admit that. Time magazine, is, in fact, the most authoritative source for information-particularly regarding health and fitness-that we have in the nation, and perhaps the world.

Really, Time? Hockey's the only option you're gonna give us?

"SCIENTISTS say time is gradually slowing down and will eventually grind to a halt, freezing everything in an instant. But the change is so subtle it is undetectable to human senses and would only become noticeable over billions of years, when the Earth is long gone." —I guess this is a kind of "good news/bad news" type deal.

Photo by Alex James Bramwell, via Shutterstock

Mr. King: If you could go back and stop Hitler or something like that, you would, wouldn’t you?

Mr. Morris: Would I stop Hitler? Yes.

Mr. King: Yes, sure you would.

Mr. Morris: My mother’s dead, but I think my mother would be proud of me.

Mr. King: But, of course, she wouldn’t know who Hitler was. Because he would have been totally whisked off the stage.

—And there you have it. If you don't recognize the picture of Hitler, it's because they've already done it.

"New materials with the ability to manipulate the speed of light could enable the creation of a 'space-time cloak' capable of masking events or even creating an illusion of 'Star Trek'-style transportation, according to scientists in London." Scientists: "cloak"?

"Currently, Americans watch 200 billion hours of television every year, while the total amount of time the world's Wikipedians have devoted to building the largest, most comprehensive open-source encyclopedia ever known is about 100 million hours." -Citing Clay Shirky on what we do with our time. (via)

I'm always suspicious when they announce the discovery of a new, semi-Earth-like planet mere hours before the opening of a mega space opera movie. Like, okay James Cameron, what CAN'T you manipulate? And yet there it is, announced yesterday: GJ 1214b, a planet a mere 13 parsecs away (just 247 trillion miles! I think that is like maybe a couple weeks of travel time in hypersleep, right you guys?) that is less than three times the size of earth, entirely covered in maybe-water, at a delightful surface temperature of 374°F. We are all going to live there! I can't wait! With our gills and our pressure pills [...]

Time's Mark Thompson takes a look at suicide among army recruiters ("Last year alone, the number of recruiters who killed themselves was triple the overall Army rate.") It's a disturbing piece that is slightly spoiled by the constant series of throws to photogalleries ("See pictures of suicide in recruiters' ranks."). But you should still probably read it.

"There is an immense opportunity—maybe it’s even a business opportunity—to look at our temporal world and think about calendars and clocks and human behavior, to think about each interaction as a specific unit, to take careful note of how we parcel out moments. Whether a mouse moving across a screen or the progress of a Facebook post through a thousand different servers, the way we value time seems to have altered, as if the earth tilted on its axis, as if the seasons are different and new." —In case you haven't read this a thousand times yet.

Wait, did you see this horrifying thing on the kilogram, a measure of weight (yes, yes it is) that is actually tied to a real object? (Which affects the "pound," as the pound is now basically defined as 0.45359237 kilograms!) Familiarly known as Le Grand K and held in a vault just outside of Paris under three bell jars, it dates back to the 1880s, when it was forged by the British metallurgist George Matthey from an alloy of nine-tenths platinum and one-tenth iridium. As a metric unit, the kilogram is “equal to the mass of the international prototype,” according to the official definition. In other words, as [...]

It's helpful both for the youngs, who are impatient for their lives to start, and for the student of history, to examine things with regard to the pace at which they occurred. As a public service: the Joan Didion Timeline. N.B. Does not include some uncollected pieces such as The Case of Theresa Schiavo (2005).

"At Fortune, [former New Yorker managing editor Ralph] Ingersoll developed what came to be called the 'corporation story,' a profile of a company.' He had the idea of writing about The New Yorker…. published, anonymously, in August, 1934. It was 'The Making of a Magazine' told straight, which made The New Yorker look exactly the way Ross didn't want it to look. It also violated Ross's creed: 'I do not want any member of the staff to be conscious of the advertising or business problems of The New Yorker. If so, they will lose their spontaneity and verve and we will be just like all other magazines.' Ingersoll's story, which [...]

Oh my God, you guys, can you believe it's time for Time's magazine-cover-person-thing of the year again? There was like a big debate about it, you guys, and like they decided it was half for "the economy" being a person and half for "Twitter" being a person, because all the people there have heard lots about the economy and Twitter? These people were Tom Colicchio and Gayle King and stuff, so they would know. But we think there are better ideas for person of the year, which Time can squeak out on the stands before it is out of business, and surely maybe you can have some ideas too? [...]

Steven Johnson, in Time: "We are living through the worst economic crisis in generations, with apocalyptic headlines threatening the end of capitalism as we know it, and yet in the middle of this chaos, the engineers at Twitter headquarters are scrambling to keep the servers up, application developers are releasing their latest builds, and ordinary users are figuring out all the ingenious ways to put these tools to use. There's a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring. The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are – millions of us – sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one [...]