dan collier

The 2007 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. My favorites for 2007 are Editorial Cartooning (one great example, and another), International Reporting, and Breaking News Photo.

The Pulitzer site archive is an amazing source of browsing material. Unfortunately, it is not the easiest site to navigate. So here are some previous winners: 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) has died. I’ve really enjoyed everything I read by him, especially Breakfast of Champions and Cat’s Cradle. Below is an excerpt of an essay he wrote in 2004.

Cold Turkey by Kurt Vonnegut

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Vonnegut’s voice was unique. He was an ex-POW who survived the fire-bombing of Dresden, a former Cape Cod car salesman, and a humanist revolutionary. You have to like a man that wrote “All the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

Episode One of This American Life on Showtime.

Reality Check

Three stories of people hatching a plan and believing they’ve made a dream — big or small — come true. Instead, they’re snapped back to reality: an experience that, as everyone knows, can be unpleasant.

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This song is not appropriate for professional environments.With a shout out to Analog for a conversation about mixing it up, and of course my Brooklyn homies.

Jaxon took this picture. I’ve been looked at it frequently for months and I really like it. I’ll have to get around to posting more of the kids stuff.As best I can tell, it is a picture out our slider door around sunset that captures a partial reflection of the inside. To capture as much sky as is present, he was close to the door and the figures in the picture are at least 5 feet behind him.Or it could be something else entirely, maybe really slow shutter speed and a quick turn? Digital interference? Fnord? I don’t know. I like it. Taken Monday, December 04, 2006, 5:43:06 PM