December 28, 2012
Seismic Waves
One shot is what it's all about
Of the final scene in The Deer Hunter, Ebert wrote: I won't tell you how it arrives at that particular moment (the unfolding of the final passages should occur to you as events in life) but I do want to observe that the lyrics of "God Bless America" have never before seemed to me to contain such an infinity of possible meanings, some tragic, some unspeakably sad, some few still defiantly hopeful.
The song was first written in 1918, and 20 years later it was introduced by Kate Smith as a patriotic “Peace Song”.
Here’s some trivia about the Deer Hunter, and a bio of the amazing Irving Berlin
The song was first written in 1918, and 20 years later it was introduced by Kate Smith as a patriotic “Peace Song”.
Here’s some trivia about the Deer Hunter, and a bio of the amazing Irving Berlin
Not that many Dutch people care what you call the country
Thinking of Holland you think of windmills and tulips, but the former is originally a Persian invention (as far as we know) while the latter came from Turkey. Worse, Holland is not even the name of the country you're thinking of. Luckily, there's a handy youtube video to explain the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. [more inside]
Marilyn Monroe, Communist?
"FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star’s communist-leaning acquaintances who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage." [more inside]
Looking Into the Past
Vietnam - Looking Into the Past. Vietnamese photographer Khánh Hmoong takes pictures of Vietnamese landscapes and buildings, then superimposes a photograph from the past over the modern day setting. His work is similar to FILMography (previously on MeFi), Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov's World War II gallery: Link to the Past, and Ben Heine's Pencil Versus Camera. Via
A laconic map
Have you ever wondered what the most common word is for any given country's history of wikipedia page? Me neither. But here it is, made into map form. [more inside]
We're Talkin' Proud
For the thirteenth year in a row, the Buffalo Bills have failed to make the playoffs, a new league record. The tallest building downtown is losing its major tenant. People seem to drive into the sides of buildings a lot.
Yet Buffalo was named as the second "Merriest" city in the United States. Despite the odd calculation of that index, things are looking up for the City of Good Neighbors: [more inside]
British actors colonise American TV
Front Row (BBC Radio 4), 28/12/12 – 30mins. British stars of big American series like Homeland & House discuss why US TV and movies are so keen to employ UK actors right now. Answer seems to boil down to (a) proper theatre training (b) greater willingness to play unsympathetic characters and (c) botox-free faces still able to move in reaction shots. Damian Lewis, Hugh Laurie, Thandie Newton, Adrian Lester, Clive Owen, Ashley Jensen and Stephen Frears all take part. It’s an interesting discussion, though perhaps a little smug in its assumption of British superiority. I’d be interested to hear what American listeners make of it.
The tune will come to you at last.
At the 35th Annual Kennedy Center Honors on December 2nd, the Kennedy Center honored Led Zeppelin, with an introduction by Jack Black, a nod from President Obama, and a tribute from the Foo Fighters. But the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly Heart, a choir and a small orchestra covering Stairway to Heaven while Led Zeppelin watched from the front row.
Stay tuned for The Cranberries CD with the Couch On It
You'd be amazed at the kinds of things that folks dredge from the Lake to be appraised on Lake Dredge Appraisal. via Bullseye [more inside]
"One can tell if one is happy by listening to the wind. This latter reminds the unhappy of the fragility of their house and pursues them in fitful sleep and violent dreams. To the happy, it sings the song of their safety and security: its raging whistle registers the fact that it no longer has any power over them."
Minima Moralia: Reflections from the Damaged Life is a book written by German sociologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno during his exile in California in the 1940s. Translator Dennis Redmond has released his translation under creative commons (here is the same translation set up in a more book-like way). In his essay Promiscuous Reading, Mark O'Connell talks about his habit of never finishing books, but an exception being "this captivatingly strange and mordant text" Minima Moralia, "a thematically wayward aggregation of a hundred and fifty-three short essays and aphorisms that darts restlessly from one subject matter to the next, its fleeting yet intense engagements rarely spanning more than a page and a half." Among the subject matters Adorno addresses is the ethics of writing, which has reverberated down through the years, and is often set up in opposition to George Orwell's thought, as recounted by James Miller in the essay Lingua Franca. [more inside]
it really is
IS SID VICIOUS? WHO CARES? CALL 473-5386 TO SPEAK TO THE PUNK OF YOUR CHOICE.”
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen Take Phone Calls on New York Cable TV (1978) Part 2 Part 3 Stiv Bators is also on the panel. [more inside]
You wanna hear a story?
Wonky graphs of 2012
2012: The year in graphs - as picked by the Washington Post Wonkblog's favorite economists, political scientist, politicians and other wonkys.
GRAPGNRAM STYLE PATR 2
Debtmageddon vs the robot utopia.
To remain true to its faith...
Hobby Lobby, a craft store with 525 U.S. locations, has announced that it will defy a federal mandate to provide health coverage for all employees that includes emergency contraceptive coverage, and will pay a fine of $1.3 million every day. [more inside]
The Last Great Explorer
Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wickham-Fiennes is 68 years old, a cancer survivor, and he's preparing to tackle a six month 2,000 mile trek across Antarctica at night. Partially to raise money for charity, but mostly because if he doesn't accomplish it, someone else might manage it instead.
Now that the Mayan's have lifted off
State of the World 2013: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky this year's model should be particularly interesting, given the current hyperactive state of the world and the abundance of available conceptual lenses
128 pair-wise coupled superconducting flux qubits
The D-Wave OneTM is the world's first commercially available quantum computer. "Our superconducting 128-qubit processor chip is housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room." (images) In other words, it's a programmable superconducting integrated circuit with up to 128 pair-wise coupled superconducting flux qubits (video). The first D-Wave was sold in 2011 for a rumored $10 million. At first there was a lot of skepticism about it, but an August Nature study proved it worked by successfully solving "13 times out of 10,000 for four-amino-acid and six-amino-acid sequences under the Miyazawa-Jernigan model of lattice protein folding." Investors Jeff Bezos and The CIA are happy. A 2048 qubit system is in the works about 1 million times faster.
« Previous day | Next day »