Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross's (Hailee Steinfeld) father has been shot in cold blood by the coward Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), and she is determined to bring him to justice. Enlisting the help of a trigger-happy, drunken U.S. Marshal, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), she sets out with him -- over his objections -- to hunt down Chaney. Her father's blood demands that she pursue the criminal into Indian territory and find him before a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) catches him and brings him back to Texas for the murder of another man.

Jim Jarmusch:

Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.

John Donne:

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

True Grit

In an opinion piece published on the news website, rue89, the anonymous duo - political science and communication students in their twenties - said the film was a tongue-in-cheek way of criticising France's niqab ban, which the Senate passed last month and is due to go into force early next year.

"To put a simple burka on would have been too simple. So we asked ourselves: 'how would the authorities react when faced with women wearing a burka and mini-shorts?," asked the students, one of whom is a Muslim.

Josh Harris:

Everything is free, except the video that we capture of you. That we own.

Mark Twain:

When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, noncommittal. The great majority of them are not studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side.

Aditya Dev Sood:

Perhaps it all makes sense, for the point is the clothes she is wearing, not the character she is playing.

Alan Kay:

We can't learn to see until we realize we are blind.

Fashion Remix

The dreaded question. "So, what's your Ph.D. research about?"

You could bore them with an explanation.

Or you could dance.

Garrison Keillor, quoting you:

I could have done that. Why didn't I?

An exchange:

Decius: This looks good!

k: This is gonna be sooo bad.

Decius: I don't have a solution for the problem of bad taste.

Joss Stone:

Don't tell me that I won't
I can

Marge Simpson:

Bart, don't make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice.

Sarah Silverman:

You're very free if you don't love money.

Cormac McCarthy:

Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

Dance Your Ph.D.

Our man Morgan and his lovebuddy Destiny, along with Mssr. Foodpenguin and that dastardly dip-stick Lionel premiered to two jam-packed houses in Austin.

Jonathan Lethem:

Bob Dylan's originality and his appropriations are as one.

The same might be said of all art.

Stanley McChrystal:

You have to not lose confidence in what you are doing. You have to be able to go to the edge of the abyss without losing hope.

Morgan and Destiny's Eleventeeth Date - The Zeppelin Zoo

David Pierson:

Mike Zhang considered himself serious boyfriend material.

But Zhang, a 28-year-old language tutor and interpreter, couldn't afford an apartment in the capital's scorching property market.

Rather than waste any more time, his girlfriend of more than two years dumped him.

Homeownership has become the ultimate symbol of virility in today's China.

John Bird and John Fortune:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Nick Timiraos:

A new report estimates that nearly one in five mortgage defaults through the first half of 2009 were "strategic," where borrowers who appeared to have the capacity to pay their mortgages stopped doing so.

One young fish to another:

What the hell is water?

Ruth Simon And James R. Hagerty:

23% of all mortgage borrowers in the US are underwater.

Decius:

Imagine if they all walked.

Ma Nuo, bai jin nu:

I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on the back of my boyfriend's bicycle.

Oliver Laric:

How an incident happens may reflect nothing about the incident itself, but it must reflect something about the person involved in the happening, and supplying the how.

Five people interpret an action, and each interpretation is different, because, in the telling, and in the retelling, the people reveal not the action, but themselves.

David Shields:

The world exists. Why recreate it?

David Shields / William Gibson:

Who owns the words?

Who owns the music and the rest of our culture?

We do -- all of us -- though not all of us know it yet.

Jim Jarmusch:

Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.

Jean-Luc Godard:

It's not where you take things from -- it's where you take them to.

Versions, 2010

A.J. Jacobs:

Brad Blanton, a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist, says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. Oversharing? No such thing.

I have a theory: I think Blanton devised Radical Honesty partly as a way to pick up women. It's a brilliant strategy. The antithesis of mind games.

Janelane, on Dmitri the stud:

At least he had the courtesy to tell her he was good in bed so she knew what she was missing out on!

"Leonard Nimoy":

It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth?

The answer ... is No.

Paul Graham:

I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.

Jacobs:

If you're going to be a schmuck, at least you should find some redeeming quality in it.

One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time.

Penelope Trunk:

Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

I Think You're Fat

David Petraeus:

Mr. President, this isn't double-down. ... This is all-in.

Ryan Crocker:

It's all hard, and it's hard all the time.

Matthew Yglesias:

Petraeus could be just the man to do for Obama what he did for Bush: help reframe the problem and walk away from unrealistic goals while projecting determination and making things better in some small concrete ways.

Timothy Ferriss:

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

Charlie Brooker:

Suddenly there is no stick. There's just you. You are the stick.

Rudy Rucker's classics are now free.

Decius:

I love Rudy Rucker.

Dr. Nanochick:

I dig Rudy Rucker.

Bucy:

Rudy Rucker rules!

Rudy Rucker:

It starts with Software, where rebel robots bring immortality to their human creator by eating his brain. Software won the first Philip K. Dick Award.

In Wetware, the robots decide to start building people -- and people get strung out on an insane new drug called merge. This cyberpunk classic garnered a second Philip K. Dick award.

By Freeware, the robots have evolved into soft plastic slugs called moldies -- and some human "cheeseballs" want to have sex with them. The action redoubles when aliens begin arriving in the form of cosmic rays.

And with Realware, the humans and robots reach a higher plateau.

On the internet:

I just hope the public won't ever be bullied or bamboozled into letting the bosses bottle up the genie. That's something we need to keep an eye on.

On "Infinity and the Mind":

It is in the realm of infinity that mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic. By closely examining the paradoxes that arise from this merging, we can learn a great deal about the human mind, its powers, and its limitations.

On "Mathematicians in Love":

Rucker cleverly pulls off a romantic comedy about mathematicians in love.

On "Frek":

Like every great science fiction novel, "Frek and the Elixir" is really about the present -- about the power of corporations, about media and entertainment, about bioengineering, about quantum mechanics, about your wife or girlfriend, your next-door neighbor, and your boss, and about you, at age twelve, and now.

On "Spaceland":

Spaceland challenges readers to imagine what life might be like in a world with four spatial dimensions.

The Ware Tetralogy

Jon Bruner:

More than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another during 2008. This map visualizes those moves. Click on any county to see comings and goings: black lines indicate net inward movement, red lines net outward movement.

Discover:

There are 260 million people in America, and you are one of them.

Decius:

Paul Graham asks what living in your city tells you. Living in the north Perimeter area for 6 odd years now has told me that everybody makes way, way more money than I do. It's not inspiring so much as it makes you sympathize with class warfare.

Bird and Fortune:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Louis CK:

Maybe we need some time ... because, everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...

Where Americans Are Moving