Dinner With a Stranger. Another way to tell a story and maybe start a meme in some circles. A visual essay by Franke James.

Don't cap me, dude: Please Raise My Taxes. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, offers some alt-logic:

I'M the chief executive of a publicly traded company and, like my peers, I'm very highly paid. The difference between salaries like mine and those of average Americans creates a lot of tension, and I'd like to offer a suggestion. President Obama should celebrate our success, rather than trying to shame us or cap our pay. But he should also take half of our huge earnings in taxes, instead of the current one-third.

Then, the next time a chief executive earns an eye-popping amount of money, we can cheer that half of it is going to pay for our soldiers, schools and security. Higher taxes on huge pay days can finance opportunity for the next generation of Americans. ...

Voices in type: Hamish Hamilton: Five Dials

via MeFi, where's it's billed as Highbrow Freebie. Chomsky, Raymond Chandler, Sartre and Flaubert lead a roster lesser-knowns.

A commenter:

"Distributed in Portable Document Format (PDF), Five Dials is best downloaded, printed out and enjoyed (we hope) away from the computer."

Oooh... the fancy online journal is too good to be read on a stinky monitor.... it's litch-er-a-toor...

I'll download and read it, but I'll be darned if I'm gonna waste the ink before I know if it's any good.

Good movie: We caught a movie on HBO, The Namesake, about a young man named Gogol (played by Kal Penn, at right), an Indian born in New York whose father loved the Russian author. Family, culture, modern life well done. Based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, who was born in London and raised in Rhode Island.

It's a very American movie. Penn took some flak for saying it doesn't matter that his character is Indian, which baffles some on the college circuit. He's right. All families have their ways, their traditions; his family is gentler than most.

It's worth recording and watching when you have a chance. I put it that way because the next screening is Sunday at 11:55 p.m.