September 23, 2014
"David Bowie Is" Opens at MCA in Chicago
Joseph Erbentraut and Kim Bellware preview the Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition of "David Bowie Is," for The Huffington Post [more inside]
On second thought, no dessert for me. CHECK PLEASE!!!
The art world's food fetish is nothing new, triggering equal parts salivation and repulsion we gorge on so-called 'food porn' every day, saturating our screens with sugar. But beneath that candy-cane filter there's a darker side to our fetishisation of all-things sweet. With their Twix noses, salami decolletage and strawberry laces spewing from donut-shaped carverns, James Ostrer's saccharine-warped creations are delectably disturbing. Born out of a textbook childhood junk addiction, his new series Wotsit All About takes sugar worship to the extreme, sculpting mutated, larger-than-life candy characters from truck-loads of pick 'n' mix favourites. Pushing his sitters to the extreme he smothers them in cream cheese, frazzles and ice-cream cones, the food masks leaving a claustrophic, bitter-sweet taste on the tongue. Interview with the photographer. [NSFW]
I Am More Than OK With Not "Having It All"
Once I checked financial stability, a good partner, and sufficiently sown wild oats off the list of Reasons Why I Am Not Ready, I was left with my own brain, which rarely goes well for me. Kate Harding writes about her ambivalence about having children, and her ultimate decision.
MOM
India's Mars Orbiter Mission In 45 mins from now (watch a webcast), India's Mars Orbiter Mission's satellite will insert itself into orbit around Mars. This is the final hurdle for MOM to overcome to achieve a big milestone for the Indian Space Research Organization.
People should wear and eat seal as much as possible
Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer, has won the 2014 Polaris Prize for her album Animism. The Polaris goes to the best Canadian album of the year based on "artistic merit without regard to genre, sales history or label affiliation". Her acceptance speech was a little more controversial than usual for the Polaris, with Tagaq saying "People should wear and eat seal as much as possible" and "Fuck PETA." Her performance. Her acceptance speech.
AUDIO FEED: SUBJECT 006
From the ever-fertile brain of Ben Cooper (aka Radical Face, half of Electric President) and pals comes Clone, a musical-visual story in six acts, posted weekly starting today. Act I: The Laboratory.
Chikungunya Style
The other epidemic. From 2006 to 2013, the United States had an average of 28 cases per annum of chikungunya, a viral disease. So far, this year, there have been 1052. Once confined to Africa and Southeast Asia, localized outbreaks have appeared in Italy, other parts of Europe, and the Americas. Although the first known locally acquired case appeared in the Caribbean in 2013, it has achieved epidemic levels with an estimated 738000 cases. [more inside]
Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away
Screens generate distraction - biologically impossible to resist - in a manner akin to second-hand smoke. Allowing laptop use in class is like allowing boombox use in class - it lets each person choose whether to degrade the experience of those around them. [CITATION PROVIDED] I've stopped thinking of students as people who simply make choices about whether to pay attention, and started thinking of them as people trying to pay attention but having to compete with various influences, the largest of which is their own propensity towards involuntary and emotional reaction.
Dodging Healthcare Cost Controls For Fun And (Mostly) Profit
The New York Times reports on a new way medical professionals are gaming the system (to the tune of $2.8T a year) - by making end runs around cost controls through out of network consultation calls.
The Ninth Feltron Report
Nicholas Felton datafied all his conversations in 2013. ALL of them. You may remember Felton, a performance artist, from previous datafication projects. In 2013, he kept detailed records of every conversation he had - with anyone, in any medium. Last month, he released the Report.
Intelligence X 100 =
being FactMag's months-in-the-making rundown of the 100 greatest Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) tracks of all time. [more inside]
Non-ebola care
As hospitals struggle to cope with the ebola epidemic, where are patients with other emergencies finding care? In Monrovia, Liberia, it's Cooper Adventist Hospital. Without proper isolation facilities to handle ebola, they are instead tackling everything else. This August 17, 2014 San Bernardino Sun article discusses the challenges the doctors are facing. Dr. James Appel's blog (Dr. Gillian Seton's article appears in the side bar), and his recent remarks on international aid efforts.
Age eclipsing gender as Canada's major income gap
"The decisions you make in the game should be agonizing," he replied.
Cordial Minuet is a video game being developed by Jason Rohrer (Previously, previously, previously). It is played for money, and is designed with the intent to remove chance from the outcome.
Have a Guinness (Latte) when you're tired
Starbucks Is Testing a Drink That Tastes Like Guinness (Without the Alcohol) by Samantha Grossman (@sam_grossman), Time magazine:
The new drink, called the Dark Barrel Latte, is being tested at select locations across Ohio and Florida, Grubstreet reports. It doesn't contain any alcohol, but it supposedly contains the dark, toasty, malty flavors of Guinness. A BuzzFeed writer who got his hands on one in Columbus confirmed that it really does taste like stout. Several customers who've tweeted about the drink agree that it tastes like Guinness — but the jury's still out on whether or not that’s actually a good thing.[more inside]
When I asked a colleague who was born and raised in Dublin (Guinness's birthplace) how he felt about all this, he responded first with this GIF. Then, as he mulled it over a bit more, he added, "Holy hell. Worst." Then he posed a question: "American Guinness already doesn't taste like Guinness. So what will this taste like?" Then he barfed all over me and my stupid American ignorance.
Where have all the good movies gone?
Between the limited amount of titles on streaming services and the fact that Netflix seems to be shifting away from DVDs altogether, are you just out of luck if you want to watch a non-blockbuster like "Sweet Sweetbacks' Baadasssss Song" or "Raising Arizona"? KQED investigates.
A titanic defeat!
Blizzard cancels Titan. After 7 years of work on the MMO, the successor to World of Warcraft has been cancelled.
We didn't find the fun," Morhaime continued. "We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."[more inside]
I live in a constant state of unrest while I am here
Scandal!
There are 47 episodes of Scandal (so far). In advance of the start of season 4 on Thursday, Vulture runs down the 50 most shocking moments. [Spoilers within, naturally] [more inside]
Raiders
Alone on the Hill
Angry Letters to the One Member of Congress Who Voted Against the War on Terror
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lee's story is how little credit she or her constituents receive for what they got right. Even though a majority now considers the war most understood the AUMF to authorize to be a mistake; even though it has been used to justify military interventions that no one conceived of on September 14, 2001; even though there's no proof that any war-making of the last 13 years has have made us safer; even though many more Americans have died in wars of choice than have been killed in terrorist attacks; even though Lee and many of her constituents were amenable to capturing or killing the 9/11 perpetrators, not pacifists intent on ruling out any use of force; despite all of that, Representative Lee is still thought of as a fringe peacenik representing naive East Bay hippies who could never be trusted to guide U.S. foreign policy. And the people who utterly failed to anticipate the trajectory of the War on Terrorism? Even those who later voted for a war in Iraq that turned out to be among the most catastrophic in U.S. history are considered sober, trustworthy experts.[more inside]
The hospital didn’t have a leg to stand on
How a Squad of Ex-Cops Fights Police Abuses
In 1997, Smith retired from the police force. He needed a job to help cover his two daughters' college expenses, so he signed up as an investigator in the Broward County Public Defender's Office. He had little idea that he'd end up a key player in a bold experiment in criminal justice, one that aims to give tens of thousands of people who can't afford lawyers a fighting chance in a system stacked against them. It's an effort that suggests new ways for court-appointed attorneys to get at the truth, despite their insane caseloads. And a big part of it is getting former cops to police the police.
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