May 1, 2014
The Silence of the Fannibals
NBC’s Hannibal is the subject of significant critical acclaim as its second season draws near to conclusion, with many describing it as the best show on TV. It’s been called better than True Detective, better than American Horror Story and The Walking Dead, and even better than The Silence of the Lambs. However, despite the confidence of the show's creator in a renewal, the show’s fate on NBC is in question due to low ratings. [more inside]
Al Goetze, the Indiana Jones of spices
If you hear the term "spice buyer," you might imagine someone trading goods on a hectic futures trading or arguing with farm managers on a phone, but for Al Goetze and his team, spice buying means meeting with farmers and local distributors in more than 40 countries, often in the developing world. Goetze has been likened to Indiana Jones, part scientific in his discussion of herbs and spices, but he also travels to see the spices in person. He recalls adventures in buying nutmeg in Indonesia and sage in Albania, and has talked to NPR about how pepper gets dirty and how it gets clean. But not all are fond of the spice hunter from McCormick, as buying direct from the farmers has greatly impacted the livelihood of spice-trading companies, whose practice has been recorded as far back as 2600 BC, when onions and garlic from Asia were fed to Egyptian slaves (PDF).
Bill Simmons' Big Score
Bill Simmons, Grantland boss and 30 for 30 executive producer, went from a little known Boston blogger to one of the most successful sports writers in the history of American media. Rolling Stone's Rob Tannenbaum took a deeper look at Simmons.
Baltimore Landslide
After heavy rains all week, an entire side of a street in Baltimore collapsed in spectacular fashion, destroying several cars in the process, though injuring no one. (collapse occurs at the 1:10 mark). The retaining wall which collapsed had been a problem for the community for years, and Baltimore's collapsing infrastructure has been a recurring problem in the city, which only threatens to get worse. This is a larger problem for America as a whole, with the Society of Civil Engineers giving the country a D+ for its current overall infrastructure quality.
Every Cheap Trick Song. Ranked.
Exactly what the title says.
The author is Colin Gawel, from the legendary (in Columbus, OH anyway) rock band Watershed.
A cynical take on making bookends
18 Books That Changed How We Felt About Ourselves As Women
The Huffington Post does a surprisingly decent, nostalgic roundup of 18 books women readers say "shaped the way they thought about themselves as young women," from Jane Eyre to Tori Amos.
Stop, Look, and Perform!
A performance art piece called Crossings has been created by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor, Ann Basting, to encourage driver awareness of pedestrians. via
Damon Talks about Everyday Robots
Damon Albarn talks about each track on Everyday Robots. Damon Albarn has released Everyday Robots (reviews here, here, and here), his first "official" solo album (I guess Democrazy doesn't count). He talks about every track on SoundCloud.
Google has always been the caretaker
Having taken pictures of more than 6 million miles’ worth of road, Google is more than doubling the amount of global Street View imagery by adding all of its archive photography. The company’s Google Maps Web application will now include a time machine feature where users can move a slider to see all historical images of a place. As much as possible, pictures of the same place have been aligned so they have the same perspective as one another.
The NYC Neighborhood Where It Looks Like the Apocalypse Just Happened
"I’m fascinated by organic neighborhoods that somehow manage to survive despite the gentrification of the city, and I’m not sure there’s a better example of this than Willets Point. Rundown, polluted, forgotten, and undervaluing its land, a place like Willets Point is the complete antithesis of everything New York has become today." - A photo essay by Slate's Nick Carr
"I think I'm an okay writer, but a very good storyteller."
World's best-selling author James Patterson on how to write an unputdownable story. Interview with James Patterson. 'Patterson recently earned the distinction of being the best-selling author since 2001. Just to be clear, one of the author's books wasn't merely declared "the #1 bestseller," a blurb that pops up on front covers regularly. Rather, James Patterson is the top selling author in the world for the last 14 years. An estimated one out of every 17 hardcover novels purchased in the United States is his, dwarfing the sales of both Harry Potter and the sparkly Twilight vampires.' [more inside]
The agonizing wait goes on.
187 girls still missing two weeks after they were abducted from a school in north-eastern Nigeria.
The Nigerian government is facing growing international embarrassment and domestic anger over its failure to locate scores of school girls kidnapped by militants more than two weeks ago.
There are fears many of the missing girls, suspected of being taken by the Islamic group Boko Haram, may have been smuggled out of Nigeria into neighboring countries.
From The Smithsonian.
BBC News
ABC News, Australia.
The suspected abductors, Boko Haram, are believed to be linked with Al-Qaeda.
Diiiiiiiiiiyiyiyiiiiie
Crocodile Chop (SLYT)
Alton Brown presents his recipe for cat poo dog treats
State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma
At 6:36 p.m. on Tuesday in McAlester, Okla., Clayton Lockett started kicking his leg, then twitching, then writhing and moaning in agony, and everyone watching knew something had gone terribly wrong. Mr. Lockett, a convicted murderer, was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, about to be executed by lethal injection, but the untested combination of a sedative and a paralyzing agent had failed. [more inside]
He saves everything
Patrick Roche is a slam poet, and a member of the Princeton Ellipses Slam Team. He was recently awarded Best Persona Poem for "Siri: A Coping Mechanism" at the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. [more inside]
Al Feldstein, visionary EC Comics & MAD Cartoonist/Editor has died.
EC Comics and MAD Magazine cartoonist/editor died on tuesday at age 88. Al Feldstein's covers and artwork for EC Comics great Sci-Fi/Horror books are legendary. Sadly, his singular, clunky, thick, goofy style was phased out after a few years of classic work at EC in favor of the more modern, detailed artists in the stable as he took on more editorial and writing duties. He went on to turn a post Kurtzman MAD Magazine into a phenomenon as its editor.
Are atheletes really getting faster, stronger and better?
The large got larger. The small got smaller. The weird got weirder. When you look at sporting achievements over the last decades, it seems like humans have gotten faster, better and stronger in nearly every way. Yet as David Epstein points out in this delightfully counter-intuitive talk, we might want to lay off the self-congratulation. Many factors are at play in shattering athletic records, and the development of our natural talents is just one of them. TED talk, 14:53
Three of you, fifty of them... FIGHT
Have you ever wanted to see three expert fencers fighting fifty novices? Of course you have, even if only after you read that question. (via kottke)
One Friedman unit in, victory is almost within the dog's grasp
"The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue. -- Schlachtbummler Jamie K. imagines the introduction of a new cat to his dog owning household as a classic guerilla war. Read the comments for counter insurgency strategies for the dog.
Snaps on a plane
Taking photos from an airplane window seat usually results in banal or just bad (hazy, blurry) pictures. Here are some remarkable exceptions to that rule (in French with credits and links).
10 PRINT "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" 20 GOTO PARTY
"At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, Dartmouth professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born." This post from the '60s at 50 blog about BASIC's 50th Birthday/Anniversary has several good historical links (including Dartmouth's Anniversary Celebration, which started about 15 hours early), but as for recognition by 'today's media', the 'Guarniad' may be best, with memories of a half-dozen veteran programmers and developers, and Jack Schofield, their "computer editor" (isn't that job title obsolete?), wondering if Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" may have been inspired by the computer language. [more inside]
Spectacular Salsa
Simon's not strictly in the mood for ballroom, but Paddy & Nico have much more in store than first appearances suggest. Watch the energy-shift in this electric pairing's performance. "I will be 80 this July."
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