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How common is moral grandstanding? There is ample empirical evidence to show that people really are often motivated to use moral talk to impress others. Social scientists have found that we tend to judge ourselves as superior to others in a host of areas: intelligence, friendliness and ambition, for example....

posted on Sep-10-20 at 4:39 PM

Rhythm & Blues Review (1955)
posted on Jul-8-20 at 2:39 PM

Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU's top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism.

The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
posted on Jul-7-20 at 10:08 AM

Why Fireworks Scare Some Dogs but Not Others
posted on Jun-26-20 at 5:56 PM

A Brief History of Anti-Fascism
posted on Jun-24-20 at 9:58 PM

When I got back home and was trying to write about Jah B., doing my best to stake out some understanding of what was going on musically in Kingston in the late Fifties and early Sixties, I ran into the riddle that bedevils every person who gets lost in this particular cultural maze, namely, where did ska come from? That strange rhythm, that chop on the upbeat or offbeat, ump-ska, ump-ska, ump-ska... Did someone think that up?

That Chop on the Upbeat
posted on May-7-20 at 2:47 PM

Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong
posted on Apr-25-20 at 2:18 PM

Yosemite webcams, among others...

What it says on the tin.

Scroll down below the Novel Coronavirus warning and behold.
posted on Apr-22-20 at 2:00 PM

The Narrow World
posted on Apr-11-20 at 4:28 PM

Introduced as both Freezeout and Alcatraz to the 9th Power Revisited, Bob Dylan -- Visions of Johanna, in San Francisco on December 11th, 1965. Well before it was recorded for the album Blonde on Blonde.
posted on Apr-5-20 at 11:29 AM

Tuba Skinny -- Maple Leaf Rag
posted on Apr-1-20 at 12:52 PM

Walken Dance
posted on Mar-31-20 at 11:30 AM

Ryuichi Sakamoto's Happy End for Orchestra
posted on Mar-20-20 at 3:30 AM

Found: a two gram dinosaur that was the same size of Cuba's Bee Hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world.
posted on Mar-12-20 at 12:57 PM

Equinoctial PDF by John Varley

Old Hundredth by Brian Aldiss

Roog by Philip K. Dick

Liane the Wayfarer by Jack Vance
posted on Sep-23-19 at 12:37 AM

Soundies: Black Music from the 1940s*

* With one exception

A potpourri of je ne sais quoi
posted on Aug-11-19 at 12:13 AM

I’ve given up hope that boomers can rescue us from the tyranny of the Trump age. Boomers were supposed to fix things, build things, save things for future generations. They would see things as they are, and instead of asking why, dream of things that never were and ask why not — as Robert Kennedy promised. Allow me to burn my generational card.

Can Millennials Save America ?
posted on Oct-13-18 at 7:20 AM

It Can Happen Here
posted on Jun-16-18 at 4:09 PM

Can't Keep My Paws to Myself
posted on Jun-12-18 at 3:42 PM

Why Dictators Write
posted on Jun-2-18 at 10:58 AM

An Unsung Lawyer and Officer Who Shattered Racial Barriers
posted on May-22-18 at 7:09 AM

Problem:

...The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates. When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India. Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million). Pakistan (12.7 million) has twice as many poor people as the United States, and Ethiopia about four times as many.

The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
posted on May-14-18 at 8:08 AM

A whale's story

Another whale's story
posted on May-11-18 at 3:32 PM

Hail the matriarch: the world’s only colony-building beetle

Truly Oz is Oz.
Well, lethally venomous fauna aside...
posted on May-7-18 at 1:23 PM

Falcon Cam 1201 3rd Avenue Building fka Washington Mutual Building aka Saturn V Building WARNING ! HIGH SCHMOOP CONTENT !
posted on May-6-18 at 11:59 AM

Coati Mundi -- Que Pasa/Me No Pop I
posted on May-4-18 at 10:36 PM

Randall Jarrell reads The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
posted on May-2-18 at 6:49 AM

Ain't no smilin' faces / Lying to the races..."
posted on Apr-29-18 at 9:05 AM

Play Saturn's Rings Like a Harp
posted on Apr-24-18 at 9:01 AM

La Piscine or the Swimming Lesson.
posted on Apr-15-18 at 11:39 AM

Above all, Ms. Dick shows up in female characters. She inspired Juliana, the heroine of “High Castle,” who has no trouble slashing a Nazi operative’s throat, as well as a number of shrill, carping, unhappy wives in other books. "I was a good — what do you call it? — muse,” Ms. Dick said in a recent interview....

Anne R. Dick, Memoirist and Writer’s Muse, Is Dead at 90
posted on May-21-17 at 7:03 AM

Bruce Langhorne 1938 - 2017

An inspiration for many a beginning guitarist, he was a remarkable person and musician.
posted on Apr-15-17 at 7:20 AM

“Folk Music in America” is a series of 15 LP records published by the Library of Congress between 1976 and 1978 to celebrate the bicentennial of the American Revolution. It was curated by librarian/collector-cum-discographer Richard K. Spottswood, and funded by a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. The music, pulled primarily from the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song (now Archive of Folk Culture), spans nearly a century (1890-1976) and virtually every form that can be considered American music. This includes native American songs and instrumental music, music of immigrant cultures from all over the world, and uniquely American forms like blues, jazz and country.

Folk Music in America
posted on Nov-12-16 at 2:28 PM

The leaves of brown came tumbling down
  Remember, in September, in the rain
  The sun went out just like a dying ember
  That September in the rain

posted on Sep-23-16 at 11:19 AM

Genes that do the same thing in a human and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal. So by comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families. Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.

Meet Luca, the Ancestor of All Living Things
posted on Jul-26-16 at 11:19 AM

Michael Friedman is engaged in an unusual form of journalism. The composer, who has worked on shows including “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” is travelling the country talking to voters about what’s on their minds in this election, and then turning his interview transcripts into original songs. “The New Yorker Radio Hour” has been documenting his work. In California, Friedman spoke with a network-news producer whose jaded feelings about political coverage was shocked by Donald Trump’s hijacking of politics for entertainment

Presidential Campaigns Are Like Wildfires...

from The State of The Union Songbook
posted on Jul-17-16 at 12:14 PM

It is a big part of moral behavior in ordinary situations not to kill people. Yet the morally healthy inhibition against killing people has to be lost, of necessity, in war—even in a morally justified war. It is a big part of politeness—not in the sense of using the right fork, but in the sense of civility—in ordinary situations not to tell another person that she is wrong and misguided about something she cares a lot about, or that she cares about being right about. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say it’s a big part of politeness or civility not to correct people. Yet the civilized inhibition against correcting people has to be lost, of necessity, in a philosophical argument.

Is Polite Philosophical Discussion Possible?
posted on Jun-27-16 at 7:53 AM

The History of Cities Visualized: Metrocosm
posted on Jun-18-16 at 2:46 PM

...Takagi and colleagues observed that cats tend to stare longer at rattling boxes during the experiment, which suggest that they correctly anticipated the presence of an object based on the container's rattling sound. The felines also stared longer when a turned over box yielded unexpected results that defy the laws of physics. Takagi explained that these animals use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds when predicting the presence of invisible objects.

Cats Utilize Physics? Study Says Cats Understand Physics And Use Law Of Cause And Effect To Detect Hiding Prey
posted on Jun-15-16 at 8:12 AM

Researchers have decoded more writing on the 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism and found it may have an astrological purpose
posted on Jun-13-16 at 10:46 AM

...the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

Blonde on Blonde turned 50 on Monday...
posted on May-18-16 at 8:16 AM

It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don't mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will catch fire and plummet from the sky. But rational interaction, that ends with you realizing that you will survive the worst, whatever the worst may be. Accepting death doesn't mean that you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.

It's never too early to start thinking about your own death
posted on May-4-16 at 4:22 PM

Merle Haggard 1937-2016
posted on Apr-6-16 at 12:26 PM

From the Cold War to the War on Terror, conservatives have protested the “evils” of moral relativism for decades, and now it may be a relic of the past. But although conservatives got what they wanted, they didn’t get what they expected. It’s hard to say for sure whether they’re better off now than they were before. It depends on how you look at it. Or, as some might say, it’s all relative

posted on Mar-31-16 at 7:54 AM

DylanTube
posted on Jan-29-16 at 8:07 AM

The singer

If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard

The songwriter

If I Could Only Fly - Blaze Foley

The songwriter's story

Duct Tape Messiah
posted on Jan-27-16 at 12:23 PM

DeKoven, who generally used only his last name, tended to wax enthusiastic over every piece of music he selected for play. He characterized many of them as ''OTW,'' Out of This World. OTW was only the bottom step of a set of escalating accolades which included ''Super OTW,'' ''Super Super OTW,'' and occasionally ''OTG'' (Out of This Galaxy), ''OTU'' (Out of This Universe) and ''OTC'' (Out of This Cosmos). Other phrases DeKoven used included "Remember, even a 3 by 5 inch index card can be used as a post card!" or at the conclusion of a broadcast when soliciting donations for his ''Barococo Society,'' he would always remind his listeners when addressing their letters ''....please skip the Sir or Mister when mailing me. Just capital DeK-o-v-e-n. I see this as an anachronism, especially in the Arts.'' He also reminded listeners that ''I am a lone wolf...'' about his endeavor...

And now, we give you the incomparable DeKoven, maven of the Baracoco...
posted on Jan-26-16 at 8:13 AM

Was it surprising that your music became popular again?

Well, no. Because everywhere I went, even when I was five and six years old, when I’d go to these clubs to play, the first thing they would say when I walked in the door, folks started to pattin’ and hollerin’, ''Let Sam have it! Let Sam have it!'' And I’d get that, man, and people - whoo! I’d put life all in there! And it’s the same thing right now. Anywhere I go, I just haves a zeal. I have a good zeal to play.

Sam Chatmon - Make Me A Pallet On the Floor
posted on Dec-24-15 at 12:09 PM

Lou Reed was a monster
posted on Oct-10-15 at 6:08 PM

Baroque Bohemian Cats’ Tarot

Via tabbycat via filthy light thief via zarq
posted on Jul-22-15 at 1:08 PM