Steidl is reprinting an expanded version of Mary Ellen Mark’s Falkland Road (with provocative cover art). The Times’ Holland Cotter reviewed the book a couple weeks ago.
I thought I knew a lot about Mary Ellen Mark and her style, but I had never heard of the book. . . .

Twins
American Odyssey
Strange Moments
The Masters Series: […]

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While I still think it would be safe and enjoyable to visit Iran, I won’t be visiting its troubled neighbor anytime soon.
So much is going on there — so much that is so poorly reported in the American media — that it’s hard to know what is actually happening. Perhaps after I learn Arabic […]

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I haven’t gone to Antarctica. I haven’t even been south of the Equator. But Jeff Schewe’s description of his Antarctic expedition sure makes me want to go sometime — though perhaps not as part of an enormous 40+ person photographic tour; I think that would drive me absolutely bonkers.

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Leslie noted that the noteworthy blogs of the Weblog Awards really aren’t all that noteworthy and/or interesting to her. Yup, there’s a lot out there to sift through.
And over on Cliopatria, Ralph Luker is paying the group blog’s debts.
So here is the list of some of the web logs that I find interesting, that […]

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Brain Drain: The Times ran an article yesterday saying that some Indians find they can go home again.
Exurbs: Whilst searching for the Times article to link against last, week I chose “exurb” as my keyword. That led to an interesting collection of articles in addition to the one I wanted. Some interesting titles […]

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I have to confess that I first thought Radio Open Source was an attempt by public radio to seem trendy (open source, blogging, podcasts) while giving Christopher Lydon another shot at getting into the liberal talk radio game in Boston. The Connection was incredibly uneven after Lydon departed in 2001, and I’ve been a […]

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Pete—I mean “Fang”—gushes about the new trailer for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.
It’s definitely a beautiful looking film, but the preview tells me nothing about what actually happens, though there are hints of a love story and violence and un-Christian religion. So let’s deconstruct what we’ve been shown in the absence of any actual facts about […]

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Need something new to read? Try some of the Weblog Award winners and nominees.

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Last month I wrote how well-qualified international applicants are filling the holes in higher education that native-born Americans just can’t (or won’t) seem to fill, and how (anecdotaly) this trend is influencing hiring in high tech. Whether or not you agree with Thomas Friedman that the world changed while we were sleeping, many agree […]

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Real news curmudgeons want to know.

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Finally some good news from my former home state makes the national press. Apparently someone from the Times was thinking about Brokeback Mountain and got to wondering whether there are any gay people in Wyoming in real life. It seems that the mayor of Casper is gay. Shocking! Well, not really.

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Wishing for better maps shortly after the election, I took matters into my own hands and analyzed the election results by county using the same Mapping Toolbox that we sell to customers. After a few evenings of work I had produced some maps to help me better understand the so-called red/blue electoral divide.
The maps […]

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“The next-generation engineer will use the 3D control scheme he has grown up with.” That’s how Jörg Buchholz introduced his Doom 1.1 MATLAB code that lets data visualizers “fly through a 3D scene like in a first-person shooter in god mode.”
Are shooter games the future of data visualization? Maybe not, but the entertainment […]

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Why, oh why, do we stubbornly cling to the idea that images are — or even should be — truthful? Why don’t we just assume that images are always layered with enough ambiguity, unknowability, and choices of the photographer and image purveyors to make all statements about visual truth suspect?
Here is another example of […]

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South Asian grad student and Chapati Mystery author Sepoy posted a link to a list of ways to stave off the boredom on the flight to India. Righteously cranky!

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