Image via Wikipedia

By most accounts, Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson is having the worst season of his professional basketball career. He has played just 16 games due to an arthritic knee and was cut by the Memphis Grizzlies early in the season before being picked up by the Sixers.

Yet, thanks to fans’ votes, Iverson has landed a coveted spot in the starting lineup for the NBA All-Star Game this February. And he’s actually considering playing in the game.

Writer Sherman Alexie thinks this is a terrible move on Iverson’s part. So terrible, in fact, that he wrote a poem about it and sent it to ESPN. The poem, titled “Brotherly Love,” follows:

continue »

Cover of The Catcher in the Rye

Just how influential was J.D. Salinger, who died yesterday? The almost instant response online is pretty telling:

NPR’s Linda Holmes recalls some of the pop culture allusions to Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, including references in Annie Hall, the Wedding Crashers, Family Guy, and songs by Guns ‘N Roses and Billy Joel.

And on Twitter and Facebook, fans have comes out in droves to share favorite quotes and remember the author’s influence on their lives:

continue »

Image via Wikipedia

J.D. Salinger, best known for his 1951 novel Catcher in the Rye, died yesterday at the age of 91. According to Salinger’s son, the author died of natural causes. He had lived a reclusive life in Cornish, New Hampshire, since the 1960s.

Salinger wrote one novel and three short story collections, including Nine Stories and Franny and Zoey, but it was Catcher in the Rye that propelled him to fame. The novel, which chronicles the adventures of rebellious teenager Holden Caulfield, was—and remains, in many ways—the quintessential coming-of-age novel and continues to be referenced in popular culture today.

According to the Associated Press:

continue »

Yes, I’ve heard. The unfortunately named iPad is the Next Big Thing from Apple. Or maybe it’s not. Either way, I don’t really care.

At the moment, I’m too entranced by this other completely low-tech accessory for the MacBook that I discovered over at Design*Sponge this morning: The BookBook.

continue »

Apple tablet rumors and old Beat poets. They’re two things you wouldn’t expect to see together—except perhaps in a Mac commercial touting the company’s hipness with repurposed footage of Jack Kerouac.

But wouldn’t you know? One of the last remaining Beats, 79-year-old poet Gary Snyder, is a Mac user. (He also “lives without electricity … almost never uses a cellphone and has no use for BlackBerrys [and] considers texting ‘abhorrent.’”) So naturally, The New York Times‘ John Markoff asked Snyder, who likes his laptop and it storage space, about the Apple tablet rumors.

continue »