July 2, 2014
Aux armes, et cætera
From the album of the same name recorded in Jamaica in 1979, Serge Gainsbourg smokes, samples and sings "La Marseillaise" to a loping reggae beat, leaves out some words and titles it "Aux armes, et cætera", thereby deeply offending some of his co-citoyens. I was recently discussing the Marseillaise with a French person, who linked me to Gainsbourg's version. My friend agreed that musically his country's national anthem was wonderful, but said the violence of the lyrics disgusted him. It's interesting to consider a nation's official anthem in the cultural and political setting of its birth, and then contrast with the present day. [more inside]
"She had led them into and out of some mighty thrilling episodes."
“Would you like to – solve mysteries? belong to a secret club? ride, swim, travel, go to parties
with the best friends in the world? Then the wonderful adventures of Trixie Belden are written just for you. Don’t miss a single one!” [more inside]
The Vietnam Center and Archive
The Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive "collects and preserves the documentary record of the Vietnam War, and supports and encourages research and education regarding all aspects of the American Vietnam Experience." It includes vast sections of digitized material, including audio, video, maps, as well as all manner of documents. [more inside]
Maps and info about New York's other MTA
The New Yorker investigates the routes, drivers, and ridership of NYC's "dollar vans" [SLNew Yorker]. (Dollar Vans, previously)
Stephen Gaskin bought the farm
Stephen_Gaskin founder of The Farm, husband of renowned mid-wife, Ina May Gaskin died July 1st. Here's a good obituary.
The search for the spiritual community life that culminated in the purchase of land outside Summertown, Tennessee began with Gaskin's Monday Night Class held in San Francisco in 1969 & 1970. [more inside]
I really just wanted to post cute pictures of doggehs
(All links are safe for everyone unless you don't like cute things.) Pit bulls in a photo booth. Pit bulls being true to type. Pit bull fight! Pit bulls true to type part 2: Yes, they suddenly snap. Gratuitously cute Pinterest board of pit bulls.
Rule number one is: young men die. And rule number two is...
Doctors can't change rule number one.
The televisions series, M*A*S*H, developed by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, was broadcast on CBS for over a decade, from the pilot on September 17, 1972, to the highly-rated final episode on February 28, 1983. Yet reports of its demise are fictional, M*A*S*H is alive and well. [SPOILERS within if you haven't seen the series.] [more inside]
The televisions series, M*A*S*H, developed by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, was broadcast on CBS for over a decade, from the pilot on September 17, 1972, to the highly-rated final episode on February 28, 1983. Yet reports of its demise are fictional, M*A*S*H is alive and well. [SPOILERS within if you haven't seen the series.] [more inside]
The Sexiest Baritone Hunks from Opera
Barihunks. A blog about hunky baritones. That is all.
The original fugitive
July 4, 2014, will mark the 60th anniversary of the murder of Marilyn Sheppard. Her husband, Sam Sheppard, a prominent doctor in the prosperous Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, Ohio, claimed that her killer was a "bushy-haired intruder." The trial at which he was convicted was a media spectacle that was at the time unrivaled; it inspired the 1960s TV series The Fugitive and the 1993 movie of the same name. What better way to mark the occasion than by exploring the complete collections now online courtesy of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, including the crime scene photos, the coroner's report, the 1954 trial transcript, and the masterful summation by F. Lee Bailey that won Doctor Sam an acquittal 12 years later?
This cat really likes Q-tips
Talking Folklore in the Digital Age
"When most people think of 'folklore,' they tend to think of fairy tales and urban legends. Trevor Blank thinks of photoshopped memes and dark humor." The Signal, a blog from the Library of Congress, has posted a two-part interview (part 2 is here) with Blank, who studies creepypastas, LOLs, demotivational posters, and other dynamics of "folk culture in the digital age." [more inside]
That group is men.
"There remains, however, one important group that the show barely, and inadequately, represents." Noah Berlatsky writes in the Atlantic about the portrayal of men in Orange is the New Black. [more inside]
SUCCUMB TO THE CRUMB
This is serious.
"The movies are like a machine that generates empathy."
Life Itself. The documentary based on Roger Ebert’s memoir, by Hoop Dreams’ director Steve James, premiered at Sundance in January and is now rolling out in theaters and on demand.
Don't Leak National Secrets Unless It's For Wall Street
"What could he possibly have that's worth $1 million a month other than classified information?" Former NSA head Keith Alexander goes directly into consulting for large financial associations, with a potential Congressional investigation to follow.
The Wikipedia Entry for Guam, Retold as a YA Novel
The Wikipedia Entry for Guam, Retold as a YA Novel This is just one of several awesome literary parodies on The Toast lately.
Some others:
Ever French Novel Ever
My Prestigious Literary Novel and
Just A Normal Bestselling Teen Novel
The Mother of Dark Matter
Vera Rubin and Dark Matter Vera Rubin has been quoted as saying "Does Sex Matter? Of course it does. But does it matter enough to Matter? That's a different question." She is an astronomer and mother of four who successfully combined a serious career with raising a family. She is one of the discoverers of dark matter. [more inside]
How to turn Barbies into Doctor Who Weeping Angels
"Six Barbies, two cans of primer, two cans of Stone paint, four bags of feathers, less than half a yard of fabric, (a Dremel), miles of hot glue, and a shit-ton of patience." The result: Weeping Barbie Angels.
I Punch First
On 22nd May 2014, Gia Milinovich awoke to discover an intruder in her house. This is what happened next.
"A and not-A are mutually exclusive. That’s negation."
Welcome to Night Vale: where even “not” isn’t what it seems. All Things Linguistic considers how MeFi favorite Welcome to Night Vale (previously) achieves its humor through violating certain deeply-held beliefs.
Tic Tac Toes in My Mouth
What Happens When 350 Musicians Meet For The First Time In Brooklyn?
The Discovery of Oneself: An Interview with Daniel Mendelsohn on Proust
“What is the lesson you draw from your own existence?” This is the philosophy that Proust teaches us. Last year, the French magazine La Revue des Deux Mondes published an interview with Daniel Mendelsohn about his experiences reading Proust as part of a special issue on “Proust vu d’Amérique.” Translated from the French by Anna Heyward. [more inside]
Sailor Moon: The Explainer
On July 5, 2014, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal will premiere on Japanese streaming site Nico Nico Douga and on Hulu Plus 17 years, 4 months, and 27 days after the final episode of Sailor Moon: Sailor Stars aired in 1997. No disrespect to J.J. Abrams, but this is the most important resurrected franchise of the decade. Any questions?
The opening and transformation sequence have been leaked and can be seen here.
Tibetans breathe thin air because of extinct cavemen ancestors?
A new paper in Nature suggests the gene variant that allows Tibetans to thrive at high altitudes may have arisen in the mysterious Denisovans, an extinct branch of hominid that co-existed with modern humans and Neanderthals. Denisovans were discovered through DNA analysis of a single bone from a cave in Siberia.
Popular article in Slate. Just as Neanderthal ancestry contributed 1-4% of genes to modern people with ancestry outside of sub-Saharan Africa, Denisovan ancestry lives on in Southern Asia, and as the new research suggests, conferred benefits to the people of Tibet. From links here and here you can download the DNA letters for the first Denisovan discovered, along with a report generated based on personal genomics analysis.
Stash Pad
Everybody get up, it's time to slam now
Maybe you know everything there is to know about Space Jam. Maybe you've still got the lovingly-preserved official website (previously) in your bookmarks folder. And you may have already seen the creepy Space Jam-themed mod of NBA 2K14. But if you really wanna jam, listen to the many, many, many mashups featuring the Quad City DJs' theme song.
So, come on and slam! And welcome to the jam! [more inside]
By the creek I heard a voice: O woe, O woe, I had no choice
Tell me behind what door your treasure lies
149 previously-unknown Bob Dylan acetate recordings were recently discovered in two boxes labelled "Old Records" in the back of a closet on W. Houston Street in New York City. [more inside]
We Shall Overcome
Today is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the civil rights act, and to commemorate, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library hosted in April a Civil Rights Summit, featuring dozens of civil rights luminaries as well as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama. [more inside]
Summer Is for Skinny People
For some of us, summer is the season of dread, because, for all its many charms, it's also the season during which taking off one's clothes in public becomes customary, at times even compulsory. While I am spiritually and voyeuristically 100 percent on board with partial and total public nudity among those who choose to engage in it (a segment of the population I envy as deeply as some people envy millionaires), my own relationship to bodily exposure is a joint-freezing, breath-seizing nightmare. To couch it in terms of the ranking phobias in American life, I would rather address a large audience while sealed in a coffin aboard a free-falling airplane infested by poisonous spiders the size of Alaskan king crabs than take my shirt off at the beach.
"Local films for local people"
"The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon": In 1994, workers demolishing a toy shop in Blackburn, England stumbled on hundreds of films of Edwardian-era daily life made and collected by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon. This BBC series describes their rediscovery and historical significance, revisits filming locations, and includes interviews with relatives of some of the films' subjects. [more inside]
Daily affirmations from a time before this: a fanzine trawl
Do you miss the music fanzine culture of the 1980s and 1990s, when publications like Forced Exposure, Bananafish, Conflict, Superdope, Crank, Siltbreeze, Matter and Lowlife cataloged the under-the-counter culture? Fuckin' Record Reviews brings you highlights from all of these zines and more!
Check out the early writings of musicians like Steve Albini, Bill Callahan, Alan Licht and David Grubbs, as well as veteran rockcrits like Byron Coley, Gerard Cosloy, Tom Lax, etc.
Check out the early writings of musicians like Steve Albini, Bill Callahan, Alan Licht and David Grubbs, as well as veteran rockcrits like Byron Coley, Gerard Cosloy, Tom Lax, etc.
How can you do justice to all? You can't.
While interviewing Indra K. Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, at the Aspen Ideas Festival Monday, David Bradley, who owns The Atlantic, asked two questions that elicited as frank a discussion of work-life balance as I've seen from a U.S. CEO. Pepsi CEO's Mother Had A Brutally Honest Reaction To Her Daughter’s New Job. (Previously)
Accounting by, and for, the Dutch
The Vanished Grandeur Of Accounting, in which Jacob Soll argues that it was the Dutch, and certainly not the Venetians or Florentines who are responsible for the spread of that moral and mathematical revolution: double-entry accounting. [more inside]
"I create forms and ideas, but I'm not responsible for them."
Why the Civil Rights Act couldn’t pass today
"Although the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate by 73-27, with 27 out of 33 Republican votes, one of the six Republicans who voted against it was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who weeks later became the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer and started the long process by which the Party of Lincoln became the party of white backlash, especially in the South. Today, Republicans hold complete legislative control in all 11 states of the Old Confederacy for only the second time since Reconstruction." [more inside]
"A Subtlety" & We Are Here
Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit: "Anger shot up my body like a hot thermometer. Face flushed, I walked to the Mammy sphinx. Couples posed in front of it, smiling as others took their photos. So here it was, an artwork about how Black people’s pain was transformed into money was a tourist attraction for them... Something snapped... I yelled that this was our history and that many of us were angry and sad that it was a site of pornographic jokes." [more inside]
Where it went wrong for African teams at the World Cup
As the last of the African teams exits at the Round of 16, filmmaker and columnist Farai Sevenzo looks at the state of African football, bedevilled by the perennial problems of poor organisation, tactical indiscipline and rows over money. [BBC]
"It's a privilege to want less."
The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in farmer's markets, healthful cooking, and dismantling the industrial food system, spurred in large part by Michael Pollan's 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma. But the "food movement" of today tends to be dominated by affluent urbanites, and messages from Brooklyn and San Francisco often don't reach--or resonate with--the majority of places in between.Guernica contributor Meara Sharma interviews food journalists Jane Black and Brent Cunningham about the juxtaposition of American working-class culture, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and the idealized pastoral leanings of the modern-day food movement: Servings of Small Change. [more inside]
Why am I screaming for Ice Cream again?
NYT Dining & Wine's Ice Cream Issue:
- The Only Ice Cream Recipe You’ll Ever Need (video) (recipe)
- Ever True to You, Local Parlor – A Cone to Remember
- Chocolate Ganache, an Easygoing French Treat (video) (recipe)
- You Say Soft, I Say Serve
- At Morgenstern’s Finest, a Swirl of Innovation
- A Crush of Summer Flavors
- A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Scoop
- A Malted Milk Crawl in New York
Space without the space
The solar system's solid surfaces stitched together. If you want some more detailed imagery, you can always browse around NASA's planetary photojournal archive.
"Lime tainted with the sour taste of racism"
“We pride ourselves on our multiculturalism and inclusiveness, but what kind of message are we sending to visitors and new Canadians from that region (South Africa) when they see this racial slur being used for a trendy ingredient with no thought as to how hurtful it might be to a segment of our own population?”The Vancouver Sun reports on the increasingly popular southeast Asian lime with the shockingly racist but obscure in Canada name. [more inside]
The 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters
At The Dissolve: 12 critics narrowed down a list of more than 650 movies, all released between May 1 and August 31 between 1975 and 2013, to arrive at the 50 greatest summer blockbusters. [more inside]
"Iconography"
Back in March, the AV Club premiered a new feature called Iconography, which is an illustrated column by Nick Wanserski examining "pop culture's most fascinating objects". Though the updates have been very sporadic since then, here are the first three entries for your enjoyment: The golden idol from "Raiders of the Lost Ark", The spinning top from "Inception", and Link's floppy hat from "The Legend of Zelda".
The Decade Between Rise and Dawn
Three short films depict the spread of simian flu during the decade between Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes: Spread Of The Simian Flu: Quarantine (Year 1) [6m25s], Struggling To Survive: All Fall Down (Year 5) [5m10s], Story Of The Gun: The Gun (Year 10) [13m40s]. [more inside]
"Daddy is exercising his demons."
Peter and Jane: the Lost Episodes Artist Jon Bentley revisits images from his youth.
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