June 30, 2012
Our heads are round so that our thoughts can fly in any direction. - Francis Picabia
Little Surrealist Dictionary A game of re-definitions.
boy o boy
At the end of November, 1979, this band was just a year and half old and had played fewer than 40 sets. They had a handful of embryonic songs influenced by Television and Magazine, and a 3-month old, 3-song EP with two decent songs. Then they went to London to play a bunch of gigs behind that EP, and in just 6 months, over 40 gigs, they exploded.
They watched in the studio during the January 1980 recording of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” wooing Joy Division’s producer Martin Hannett; appeared on TV that month with a song they had only played 4 times, and released a forgettable single at the end of February. Suddenly new songs poured out at a remarkable rate: ”Twilight”, “Things to make and Do,” “A Day Without Me”, ”Trevor” became ”Touch”, ”Silver Lining” transformed into a second single (produced by Hannett). They signed a record contract in March, and immediately began recording a stunning debut album. By the summer they had more songs: a psychedelic/sexual horror tune, and a hot new single.
It all became bloated and sucky commercial and atmospheric soon after, but for a while there, boy did they rock. [more inside]
WHO FLAGGED MY VIDEO?
I do my little turn on the catwalk...
Rio Wang has posted a fantastic 1892 photo album of Russian army fashions.
Among the Republicans by V.S. Naipaul
The end of "With this policy, I thee wed."
Obamacare: One Less Reason to Get Married. Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel writes: Insurance Marriages had become to the 21st century what shotgun weddings were to jokes about hillbillies. Back in 2004, the LA Times wrote about couples that married for insurance, couples who for varying reasons had not wanted to marry, but who had been driven to marriage by financial necessity. ABC News posted its own roundup of With This Policy, I Thee Wed-style couples in 2008, as did the New York Times. In 2008, 7% of couples who married reported doing so primarily for the insurance benefits. [more inside]
Very Sharp
Making a Kitchen Knife - A simple video showing the art of crafting a chef's knife from scratch. [slyt] [more inside]
"Whereas the left is always in danger of talking itself into the ground."
What's also obvious is that this phase of Occupy, with talk of credit unions and occupying the SEC, while eminently worthy, is also kind of boring, especially when compared to the thrill of Occupy's park phase. Some, though, are ready to move on. "It's easy to go back to the park occupation and fetishize it, in a way," says Occupy Chicago's Brian Bean. "I prefer not to run a mini-society – I want to run society." - The Battle For The Soul Of Occupy Wall Street - Rolling Stone - Mark Binelli.
Running a pirate radio station is like the army, but you're still allowed to wear your own clothes and you don't really need to do any exercise.
Why Johnny Can’t Add Without a Calculator
Slate: Technology is doing to math education what industrial agriculture did to food: making it efficient, monotonous, and low-quality. [more inside]
"Yeah, she thought Chicago schools were still legally segregated. That was around 2003."
Alan Moore knows the score.
In 2010, DC Comics offered Alan Moore the rights back to Watchmen. This is a factually accurate account of what happened. (SLYT)
Cisco called, they want their Internet back
Introducing Cisco Connect Cloud!
Now available mandatory for Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers, Cisco Connect Cloud gives you almost anybody anytime, anywhere access to your home network.
“Don’t try to lock him up. He escapes, you know."
Born in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, member of the French resistance and the SOE, multiple escapee from Nazi execution, RIP Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld.
Forgotten, awesome, not dead yet: Marshall Efron
Two clips from the 70s kids show Marshall Efron's Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School: David & Goliath and Jonah. [more inside]
A 4-month Online Dating Experiment Using 10 Fictional Singletons
"Is online dating a different experience for men than it is for women? To find out, I conducted a 4-month experiment in the US and UK using 10 dummy dating profiles. Here's what happened..."
The PH.D. Grind: A Ph.D. Student Memoir
The Ph.D. Grind: A Ph.D. Student Memoir is Philip J. Guo's candid book about his six years of working towards a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University. Lots of Hard-earned wisdom and useful advice (especially in the epilogue) for those thinking about getting a Ph.D. [more inside]
Previously owned
"I still buy books faster than I can read them. But this feels completely normal. How weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life." Julian Barnes reflects on his life as a bibliophile, the disappearance of secondhand bookshops and the precarious survival of the physical book.
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