found drama

• Haruki Murakami and the Art of Japanese Translations
  Roland Kelts, writing for The New Yorker:

  Rubin said that the first time he translated a Murakami novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, he phoned the author several times a day to nail word choices and correct inconsistencies. “In one scene, a character had black-framed glasses. In another, the frames were brown. I asked him: Which one is it?” I found Rubin’s anecdote revealing. The Japanese language acquires much of its beauty and strength from indirectness—or what English-speakers call vagueness, obscurity, or implied meaning. Subjects are often left unmentioned in Japanese sentences, and onomatopoeia, with vernacular sounds suggesting meaning, is a virtue often difficult if not impossible to replicate in English.

  (tagged: translation Haruki Murakami language )
• Reactor – a foundation for asynchronous applications on the JVM
  By Jon Brisbin, writing at the SpringSource Team Blog. See the comments section for the answers to some of the obvious questions comparing it to Vert.x.
  (tagged: Grails Vert.x JVM Groovy async Java )
• Tea Partiers and Tax Exemption: The Real I.R.S. Scandal
  Jeffrey Toobin, writing for The New Yorker:

  It’s important to review why the Tea Party groups were petitioning the I.R.S. anyway. They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.

  (tagged: tea party politics IRS taxes )
• Paul Irish on Chrome Moving to Blink
  Mat Marquis (Filament Group) interviews Paul Irish (Google) over at A List Apart.

  We carefully gauge real-world usage of things like CSS and DOM features before deprecating anything. At Google we have a copy of the web that we run queries against, so we have a pretty OK idea of what CSS and JavaScript out there is using.

  (tagged: Blink Google Chrome )
• Common Patterns in Styleguides, Boilerplates and Pattern Libraries
  Tyler Sticka, writing over at the Cloud Four blog, offers up a round-up or field guide of the styleguides, boilerplates, etc. that are out there — including a spreadsheet to organize the patterns he found.
  (tagged: CSS bootstraps style guides design boilerplates )
• RequireJS Fundamentals
  Burke Holland, writing at the Kendo UI Team Blog.
  (tagged: RequireJS JavaScript )

About Rob Friesel