The litter in littérateur. Ricky Opaterny on Books, Music, Art, and Sports

• Clearly, @FrancesSF is the best new restaurant in San Francisco: http://bit.ly/cZyzhR #
• I'm hoping for big wins today from Coach K and Speaker Pelosi, who can redeem herself after having wrecked the economy. @atcal #BeatCal #
• RT @BarackObama: Yes we can. #
• A great piece by William Deresiewicz on leadership: http://bit.ly/bG7j6P #

• "…these days, it seems, the really unhappy people are working in offices." http://s.nyt.com/u/xQd #
• This video's form mirrors my personal motto: "Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!" http://bit.ly/cWYk8f (via @GinaGarzaNYC) #
• On @MLBNetwork John Hart just said Kenshin Kawakami has "Asian hesitation" and that the Braves bullpen is full of "Irish rogues." #racism? #
• Michael Lewis's The Big Short is the biggest disparity of great writer, awful paper.What were the colleagues of @norton_fiction thinking?;-) #

• Is there a translated work of literature that readers consider to actually be better than the original work? #
• It's a testament to Sushi Zone that its waitresses waited 30 minutes for seats at the bar on their day off tonight. #
• “[It] is in failure and through failure, that the subject constitutes itself." –Michel Houellebecq #
• Tracey Thorn's "All the Divorces" from her new album isn't a pop song, it's a panorama of adulthood's disappointment: http://bit.ly/ccRHFG #

• What a comeback by Finland in the Bronze Medal game! Nice to see Selanne still out there. #
• Where are the technologists who oppose this personal branding trend? http://s.nyt.com/u/70p #
• That was the best hockey game I've ever seen. (No, the perfect ending didn't hurt.) #
• RT @paidContent Mags To Their Digital Units: Drop Dead http://bit.ly/946M3P (This is a deliberately provocative + misleading headline.) #
• My friend Russell did a much better job than @paidContent in covering the "Power of Print" campaign: http://bit.ly/9BNcDI #
• Before today, this was clearly the best hockey game I had ever seen: http://bit.ly/d28GsZ #
• This is my favorite Neil Young song. #ClosingCeremony #
• The USPS complains about its losses and yet hires Accenture, BCG, and McKinsey. There's its problem right there. http://bit.ly/bvH8GW #
• I just finished reading Patti Smith's tremendous and tremendously beautiful memoir, "Just Kids," from @eccobooks #
• My photos from yesterday's protest at the Civic Center in San Francisco. Lots of @atcal kids were there! http://bit.ly/9uJXjR #march4 #

I’ll be writing about Canada’s hockey victory at the Olympics shortly. In the meantime, enjoy this piece and the following line by Adam Gopnik on the subject:

Anything that depends on a single bounce or giveaway, though it can fairly be called victory, can’t really be called a triumph. But anyone who didn’t understand the role of hockey in Canadian life at least got a glimpse yesterday.

• Why President Obama should have never said that he "hated the bank bailout": http://bit.ly/cuINEI #
• I would trade legislative transparency for a health care bill. I've read Eating Animals. I don't want to see how it's made! bit.ly/9CgSCc #
• Thinking about social media as a return to a pre-literate and not desirable age. #
• Getting ready for game time—Let's go, Team Canada! #
• Know any students interested in journalism and technology? We're looking for an intern: http://colligy.com/s/jobs/ed-intern/ #
• Pulling the goalie with a one-goal deficit just seems stupid to me. I've seen it fail three times in the Olympics and succeed none. #

As anyone who discussed Obama’s State of the Union address with me knows, I absolutely hated the speech’s opening in which Obama expressed his own hatred for the bank bailout. I hated it because Obama’s words seemed to me so, so untrue—or at least they should be untrue if he’s at all listened to the economists who surround him—so full of populist pandering. I was glad to hear David Frum echo this point on Marketplace a few days ago, arguing that it the problem isn’t just a lack of conviction but the fact that that absence of conviction will handcuff the government when it comes to pushing any sort of difficult, currently unpopular long-term policy.

• Why underdogs risk more in competition: http://bit.ly/98Eum4 #
• "[GDP] measures everything . . . except that which makes life worthwhile." -R.F.K. #
• Getting ready for South Africa: "A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies." #
• I think I'm going to read Patti Smith's "Just Kids" and Edmund White's "Rimbaud" as a pair. #
• Listen to the new K's Choice single, "Come Live the Life": http://bit.ly/diNf26 #

• Of course, pubs stagger release dates. If you want the cheaper, more portable edition, you gotta wait. Why should ebooks be any different? #
• Why would I ever vote for a gubernatorial candidate who wants to run California like a business? #
• "In what way do technological systems have moral characteristics?" http://bit.ly/d9unn1 #
• Anyone know how to search tweets from only people you follow? #
• Techies, pay attention: "…our greatest challenge now is the decision not to do what it is in our power to do." –Jedediah Purdy #

• Why isn't the Twitterverse reviving the #amazonfail chorus over the bookseller's dropping all Macmillan titles? #
• Is Amazon nudging people to do the right thing and buy from independent bookstores?! http://nyti.ms/b0RKgS #
• Amazon/Macmillan standoff is over. Now, stop licensing eBooks to readers and start selling them! #
• Why haven't many people pointed out that the iPad can handle epub, PDF, and Kindle–all the ebook formats! #
• An excellent, long interview with DFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9TWD5QaRY #
• "…sending and getting…updates to and from dozens…of people every few minutes is an image from information hell." http://bit.ly/beXIaB #
• "Any journalist who cheerleads uncritically for Twitter is essentially asking for his own destruction." http://bit.ly/cWGnkf #