Have you heard about O: A Presidential Novel? It’s a book about “aspiration and delusion, set during the presidential election of 2012 and written by an anonymous author who has spent years observing politics and the fraught relationship between public image and self-regard.” Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp says,

The author is someone who has been in the room with Barack Obama and knows this world intimately. The author wishes to remain anonymous to avoid being pigeonholed or ignored or scorned on the basis of associations, views, or background.

Slate’s David Weigel, possessor of a review copy, reveals the book’s final sentence here, but let me tell you how it really ends. Someone with an attenuated connection to the president will make a considerably larger amount of money than if they had published under their own name, which they will eventually reveal without any detrimental effects to their professional reputation. I mean, you can see it coming a mile away, right?

Reading, once you’ve learned how, is fundamentally easy, right? You are presented with the written word, which your brain runs through some contextual/syntactic gears, and then the meaning is imparted. It’s an experience that can’t be improved, other than with a pair of eyeglasses or a really swank smoking jacket. But, before the reading happens, the material needs to be acquired, identified and organized. And now that ever-increasing amounts of text are consumed online, this is a process that can be daunting, if you go it alone. So maybe this unimprovable experience is one that you’re doing wrong, or inefficiently.

Read the rest.

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Boston’s sport fans — once a bunch of admirable stoics capable of accepting the inevitability of defeat with a graceful fatalism — are having a hard time coping with loss ever since their swift transition from poignant dignity to loudmouthed arrogance, a transformation which inspired a unifying sense of hatred and disgust in the rest of a previously sympathetic nation.

This is a video of Conservative New Media writer John D. Villarreal talking very loudly about Chaser, a border collie featured in an article in today’s New York Times. Chaser apparently knows 1,022 proper nouns and whatnot. Do you think Chaser is as incredible as John D. Villarreal does? How incredible is this? I think: Very incredible.

Tweeting is easy; blogging is hard. [Via]

According to The 1938 Almanac for New Yorkers, excerpted below: 110 years ago tomorrow, hazing was outlawed at West Point! And also this week in 1919, 35,000 dressmakers in New York City went on strike for, among other things, a 44-hour workweek. Later that year, the National Association of Ladies’ Hatters went on strike as well. 1919 was a big year for striking! See also: the Seattle General Strike, the Boston Police Strike, the New York Harbour Strike and the Actor’s Equity Strike that shut down Broadway. In 1919, the women of the New England Telephone Company shut down New England’s telephone service for five days. Women were also instrumental in the Winnipeg General Strike in May. Overall, in New York City, one in four workers went on strike. More than 4.1 million people in the country were involved in just nine of the largest strikes — and there were more than 3000 labor strikes in the course of 1919.

A study has found that studies need to find more previous studies to cite in current studies.

Now that the Golden Globes have been awarded, the best part of Oscar season kicks into high gear: It’s smear campaign time! (Also, allegation of smear campaigns time.) Coming out of the gate, the first apparent smear attempt comes at the expense of Colin Firth, as nefarious smearmongers circulate word that the character Firth plays in The King’s Speech (King) was not a fan of the Jews. Veteran smear-watchers will recall that this is the same tactic used against Russell Crowe’s character back when 2002’s A Beautiful Mind was vying for Oscars. Crowe did not receive the Best Actor award, but he had just won the year previously and it was his third straight nomination in the category. It is impossible to know whether Academy members’ intense dislike for the actions of a real-life character influence their decision to celebrate the performance of the actor portraying that character, but these smear campaigns can get pretty vicious. If you hear something in the near future about how the dude who hacked off his arm once told a Polish joke, don’t think it’s a coincidence.

Here is a cure for depression: Be less depressed. Genius!

The president’s last executive order was signed between Christmas and New Year’s. It codified the bias in hiring towards college graduates (and more and more in America, those without college degrees will never have access to decent work!), but at least demanded the creation of entry level positions in the government for recent college graduates and veterans. The Wall Street Journal extends a statement from the president today, promoting his new executive order, which we shall call Operation Untangling. The plan apparently means that every government agency must identify which of their regulations are stupidest, and make them go away, supposedly. For instance, Obama trumpets that they just changed the EPA regulations that ensured saccharine was treated as a toxic chemical. American, onward and upward, very, very slowly. Anyway there’s lots of dog whistle noises in here about business and regulation that are designed to appeal to particular people but judging from the reaction, it’s just another chance for everyone to complain from various opposing viewpoints about how America is broken.