Made most popular to many Americans as the closing song for the Grand Ole Opry programs, Will The Circle Be Unbroken was written in 1907 by Ada Habershon, an intensely religious young woman and acquaintance of Dwight Moody and Ira David Sankey. The music was "composed" by Charles Gabriel, a popular songwriter and composer of the era who is often solely credited with the song, but while he may have put the notes down on paper, the tune itself already existed as the African-American spiritual Glory Glory / Since I Laid My Burden Down. [lots more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 6:10 PM on May 26, 2006 (18 comments)

Not Lost After All Given recent posts proving and disproving various meanings of the ongoing numbers references on the television program Lost, I figured that some of you would be interested that a person over on Flickr seems to have a much better explanation: they're simply geographic coordinates.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 10:42 AM on September 30, 2005 (67 comments)

Ibrahim Ferrer has passed. The 78 year old vaulted from relative obscurity - outside of Cuba, at least - to the forefront of the badly and over-generally named "International" or "World Music" scenes when he came out of retirement to perform with a number of past colleagues (including Compay Segundo and Ruben Gonzales) as Buena Vista Social Club. A film, directed by Wim Wenders, and an album made with the help of guitarist Ry Cooder cemented his position as one of the sweetest voices in Cuba's rich musical history in the west and elsewhere. He was generally considered one of the greatest masters of the traditional son and bolero styles.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 12:44 AM on August 7, 2005 (36 comments)

The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament was originally written as the Irish drover balled Bard of Armaugh (or Armagh), which later mutated into A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version, The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as Locke Hospital, St. James Infirmary Blues, Tom Sherman's Bar and Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.

beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc) cut down in (his/her) prime (or and I know I've done wrong)

The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album Son of the Wind) and Johnny Cash (who added a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex). Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's version.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 3:24 PM on August 3, 2005 (27 comments)

Is a "virtual" Philly even better than the real thing? Well, GeoSim Systems thinks so. Except for the aroma of freshly-grilled cheesesteak, at least. Their "Virtual Philadelphia" is the most detailed urban imaging system I've seen yet, and you can read about the monumental process of turning photographic images (taken from both aircraft and street-level) into this incredible rendering in a February 17 NY Times article (reg req). And - as expected - Google wants to get in on the action and do the same thing in San Francisco. via BB
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 3:11 PM on June 10, 2005 (29 comments)

From Genesis to Apocalypse: one more threat to NASA's pure research funding.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 9:58 AM on September 8, 2004 (6 comments)

Free the Olympukes. Fontshop, the 500-lb gorilla of type foundries, has released Jonathan Barnbrook's Olympukes dingbat font - which does a good job of reconciling the love/hate relationship many of us have with this most constructed of all sports events - for free. Barnbrook is the politically savage designer behind the Virus typefoundry, and is probably most well-known for collaborations with Damien Hirst and the typefaces Exocet and Mason (which was originally called Manson – and "intended to speak of the uncomfortable associations between elegance and violence" – but was renamed Mason in a fit of pique marketing), which are sold through the fine folks at Emigre.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 9:09 AM on August 13, 2004 (8 comments)

"Get some respect, be some patriot." The Department of Homeland Security really, really needs "a piece of identity ware." Adbusters culture-jammers need not apply.
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 4:09 PM on December 16, 2002 (25 comments)

Apparently I live in the most diverse city in the United States. Synagogue arsons, propane-tank-bomb-plotting and suburban hate crime aside, Sacramento is a pretty neat place, especially since my wife (Korean-American) and I (Jewish) can afford to own a house on our meager incomes and still go out to eat Pho (Vietnamese), Kitfo (Ethiopian), Som Tum (Thai), Kalbi (Korean) all within a short drive. It's not San Francisco, but neither is the cost of living. Do you notice the tension caused by resistance to diversity in your town, or are you too busy eating the sushi to notice?
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 10:53 AM on August 29, 2002 (36 comments)

To those who have much, more will be given; to those who have little, more will be taken away. The NY Times (mefi/mefi) has uncovered the abuse of an IRS policy - established in 1996, ostensibly to aid widows and orphans - by some of the wealthiest Americans to avoid income and estate taxes altogether. Yet again, only in the land where the individual comes before all else!
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 1:47 PM on July 27, 2002 (35 comments)

Dee Dee Ramone dead at 50. First Joey, now Dee Dee. I wanted to be a punk rocker, too, just like Sheena, but I wasn't cool enough back in my rock and roll highschool days. If a punker dies, do we wear white to mourn him/her?
posted to MetaFilter by luriete at 11:45 AM on June 6, 2002 (39 comments)