Rambling linkpost in an easy-to-follow numerical format.

1. Courtesy of our pal RJ White, here’s Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan on CBC in 1968. Fascinating contrasts between these men, not just on their viewpoints but their very demeanor. Mailer explodes in bursts of theatrical bombast while McLuhan maintains his academic demeanor throughout. The latter reminds me of a minister, evangelizing gently.

2. Semi-related by time period if nothing else: everything you need to know about naturalistic dialogue is contained in The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century and Terkel’s Working. The reissues of his work from W.W. Norton have been outstanding.
3. Bill Maher reveals some frightening truths in this piece for Salon.com while rallying around “elitism” as a good thing.
   

   I don’t get it: In other fields — outside of government — elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I’d like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad — the elite aren’t down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. But when the anti-elite crowd demonizes the elite, what they’re actually doing is embracing incompetence. Now, I know what you’re thinking: That doesn’t sound like our president — ignoring intelligence.

   You know how whenever there’s a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, “Where are they getting these screw-ups from?” Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College — home of the “Fighting Christies,” who wait-listed me, the bastards — and then went on to attend Pat Robertson’s law school.

4. I’ve always ripped my MP3s at 192kbps. “No Compromises!” I would declare when dragging and dropping. Turns out that I may have been wrong. I’ve shaved off 20% of my file size by switching to variable bitrate encoding and I don’t notice a difference, even on my too-expensive Shure headphones.
5. Speaking of MP3s: I may have actively hated Daft Punk’s last proper album, but this Coachella set from last year is pretty impressive.
6. There is a movie about Helvetica out and if that doesn’t satiate your fontlust, here’s a nice blog post about Microsoft Windows fonts. (For the record: I’ve fallen in love with Franklin Gothic Standard No. 2 again lately, actually.
7. Finally: if you’ve not seen Lil’ 9/11, you’ve not seen the the face of genius.