May 24, 2014
The Most Beautiful Scary-Ass Beasts in the World
In these turbulent times, we all need to take a deep breath and think about grace and beauty. In that vein, here are the winners of the British Tarantula Society's awards from its recent Exhibition.
Grime Int'l: a few of the current grime musicians from around the world
Grime is an electronic music style that is largely regional, associated most strongly with the Bow/E3 district of London (prime example: Wiley - "Bow E3"), but in recent years, grime has grown in style and station, moving out from London and expanding to Canada, Australia, Japan and beyond. (NOTE: audio is likely to be NSFW to some degree) [more inside]
like greyhounds in the slips
Why Men Love War. "What people can't understand is how much fun Vietnam was. I loved it. I loved it, and I can't tell anybody."
Breaking, locking & Popping
From the VIBE hip hop dance competition (University of Southern California, Irvine / Segerstrom Hall - January 18, 2014):
2nd place, The Company [more inside]
"I wish girls were attracted to me. I don’t know why they aren’t."
California drive-by shooting: 'Son of Hunger Games assistant director' Elliot Rodger suspected of killing six in attack. Rodger embarked on his shooting spree hours after posting an online video detailing his plans for "retribution" for rejection by women. [more inside]
Presiding Over a College's Final Days
The president of Saint Paul's College, Millard (Pete) Stith, has the unusual mandate of selling his institution. He took over management after the historically black college was unable to pay its debts, lost its accreditation, and closed in 2013. Along with a staff of 22, he maintains the campus in hopes that another college will purchase it during a sealed-bid auction, on June 25.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world down there at the South Pole
The Art of Antarctic Cooking
What comprises “Antarctic culinary history,” Anthony writes, is “a mere century of stories of isolated, insulated people eating either prepackaged expedition food or butchered sea life.” It helped if some of these isolated, insulated people knew their way around the kitchen. “The cook, however good or bad, is an artist whose simple vocation is to make others lives happier,” observed chef Raymond Oliver. More magician than artist, a cook with an Antarctic expedition ranked as one of its most important members. His kitchen little more than a Primus stove, his ingredients either canned or scrounged, he conjured nourishing dishes as if from the gelid air.[more inside]
Decline and Fall
New experiences are under development at this very moment
The VR Chicken Matrix: "a virtual chicken world in which caged animals think they're wandering happily around in the open... got me thinking again about Facebook's recent purchase of Oculus VR."
One plus one is equal to two - calculus in text is left as an excercise
I was surprised to learn that few people knew that almost all maths was written rhetorically before the 16th century, often in metered poetry. Even our wonderful symbol for equality – you know, those two parallel lines – was not used in print before 1575.
A literary trick
From what I saw the plurality of students and faculty had been educated exclusively in the tradition of writers like William Gaddis, Francine Prose, or Alice Munro—and not at all in the traditions of Toni Morrison, Cherrie Moraga, Maxine Hong-Kingston, Arundhati Roy, Edwidge Danticat, Alice Walker, or Jamaica Kincaid. In my workshop the default subject position of reading and writing—of Literature with a capital L—was white, straight and male. This white straight male default was of course not biased in any way by its white straight maleness—no way! Race was the unfortunate condition of nonwhite people that had nothing to do with white people and as such was not a natural part of the Universal of Literature, and anyone that tried to introduce racial consciousness to the Great (White) Universal of Literature would be seen as politicizing the Pure Art and betraying the (White) Universal (no race) ideal of True Literature.In the New Yorker Junot Diaz talks about MFA vs POC. [more inside]
The Songs of Summer
To kick off (in the U.S.) the long Memorial Day weekend (traditionally the unofficial start of summer!) the Boston Globe presents an interactive chart of iconic songs of summer from each of the last 100 years! No word yet on the 2014 earworm to be.
Norse in the Canadian Arctic?
Over the past three decades, a Canadian archaeologist found compelling evidence of a Norse settlement in the Canadian Arctic. Then she was fired. [more inside]
Why Jerry Seinfeld Doesn't Buy the 'Burden of Celebrity'
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