Always an enigma,
John Zorn, winner of a
MacArthur Fellowship, founder of avant garde record label
Tzadik proponent of
radical Jewish culture, leader of the hard core group
Naked City, creator of the
Masada songbook, and
hundreds of
other things, has, with the likes of Mark Ribot, Cyro Baptista and Mike Pattoon, released a
heart-breakingly lovely Christmas record, A Dreamer's Christmas. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski
on Dec 12, 2011 -
19 comments
This past August a murder charge was dismissed against Nga Truong, a young mother who had confessed to Worcester, MA Police interrogators in 2008 that she had smothered and killed her 13 month-old baby, Khyle. A judge later concluded that confession was coerced -- extracted in part by police "deception," "trickery and implied promises" -- and the case was dropped.
(pdf). Her case raises questions: What coercive power do detectives have who are driven to extract confessions? Under what circumstances might someone admit to a crime they have not committed?
WBUR (Boston's NPR station) investigated Truong's case and has an extensive report, Anatomy of a Bad Confession: Part
One and
Two [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 10, 2011 -
28 comments
Daniel Yergin was recently interviewed on NPR's always informative
Planet Money podcast. Yergin—most famous for his 1992 Pulitzer-winning opus on 20th century petroleum development,
The Prize—has penned a
sequel, of sorts, examining the modern quest for sustainable energy amidst the looming threat of climate change. If
The Prize was an epic glorification of the quest for money, oil and power,
The Quest is a look at those who might have to clean up the whole mess. "The heroes are the engineers and scientists of the energy world — the geeks, in other words."
[more inside]
posted by hamandcheese
on Nov 15, 2011 -
11 comments
Marshall Terry, a reporter for WFAE in Charlotte, NC
eats a pepper that is being submitted to Guiness as the world's hottest. Caution: there is hurling and hallucinating.
posted by zzazazz
on Nov 10, 2011 -
155 comments
A Coconut Cake From Emily Dickinson: Reclusive Poet, Passionate Baker. [NPR.org] Poet Emily Dickinson withdrew from society for most of her adult life. And yet, she was known to lower a basket full of cakes from the window of the home she rarely left to crowds of expectant children on the street below.
The Poet's House in New York City put on exhibit an original manuscript of a Dickinson cake recipe that contained coconut. That recipe calls for the following ingredients.
1 cup coconut,
2 cups flour,
1 cup sugar,
1/2 cup butter,
1/2 cup milk,
2 eggs,
1/2 teaspoon soda,
1 teaspoon cream of tartar.
posted by Fizz
on Oct 24, 2011 -
25 comments
"I remember back in the '90s, when I first heard about their discovery of cell receptors activated by pathogenic microorganisms. I was in this bar called Alumni Club on Clark Street in Chicago. It's gone now, which is fine because it was terrible. Doesn't matter, I guess, but me and my buddies had just polished off a mound of wings and, like, seven buckets of Corona when this dude comes in blabbing about the critical role dendritic cells play in adaptive immunity. I almost kicked the hell out of him on the spot, but I have to admit the slides he brought made me a believer."
Dennis O'Toole uses the Nobel Prize to satirize sports commentary in hilarious fashion. (SLNPR)
posted by jbickers
on Oct 4, 2011 -
9 comments
Dissolve my Nobel Prize! Fast! It's 1940. The Nazis have taken Copenhagen. They are literally marching through the streets, and physicist Niels Bohr has just hours, maybe minutes, to make two Nobel Prize medals disappear.
posted by sweetkid
on Oct 3, 2011 -
70 comments
Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it. SF Signal comes to the rescue with this handy flowchart.
posted by Artw
on Sep 27, 2011 -
166 comments
Hidden Tunnels, Bugs, and Bigamy: A Strange and True D.C. Story: "Reports indicated that the tunnels were long and extensive – that they may have reached as far as Rock Creek Park. Some electric lighting was discovered inside. For days, wild theories abounded – was it a Confederate soldier hideout? A stop on the Underground Railroad? A liquor depot for bootleggers? A counterfeiter’s lair? Or maybe a secret laboratory for 'Dr. Otto von Golph’s' experiments?
None of the above."
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Jul 8, 2011 -
41 comments
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration. This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopically -- at the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. The University of Wisconsin's Dr. Stephen E. Lucas meticulously analyzes the elegant language of the 235-year-old charter in a distillation of
this comprehensive study.
More on the Declaration: full transcript and
ultra-high-resolution scan,
a transcript and scan of Jefferson's annotated rough draft,
the little-known royal rebuttal,
a thorough history of the parchment itself,
a peek at the archival process, a reading of the document
by the people of NPR and
by a group of prominent actors,
H. L. Mencken's "American" translation,
Slate's Twitter summaries, and
a look at the fates of the 56 signers.
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 4, 2011 -
72 comments
Marlon Brando. Yeah, sure, he could act. Very talented guy. But, hey, he also invented a radically innovative tuning system for conga drums. Played the congas, too. Yup.
That's right.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 3, 2011 -
23 comments
The Hardest Cases: When Children Die, Justice Can Be Elusive A joint investigation by PBS Frontline, ProPublica and NPR has found that medical examiners and coroners have repeatedly mishandled cases of infant and child deaths, helping to put innocent people behind bars. (
Via. (Article contains descriptions of children that have been killed by abuse. May be disturbing / triggering to some readers.) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 28, 2011 -
20 comments
It is 2007, and R.P. Salazar is living in Waco, Texas. His email username is rpsalazar. One day an email arrives addressed to another rpsalazar, meant for someone with the same initials and surname but a slightly different email address. He sends it along to the right person, an R.P. Salazar living in Bangkok. Before clicking Send he adds a p.s.: "How's the weather in Bangkok?"
Before the end of 2007, Ruben Salazar and Rachel Salazar are married.
Storycorps and NPR report the whole story. (The text is good, but the audio is even better. Click "Listen to the Story.")
posted by mark7570
on May 13, 2011 -
21 comments
Coal cares! "Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself."
[more inside]
posted by cmoj
on May 11, 2011 -
23 comments
Sandwich Mondays! For the past year, the
Wait Wait... Don't Blog Me! team at NPR has been blogging about a different sandwich every Monday. Some highlights include the
most expensive burger in the world, the
Kevin Butler (a "nonfictional sandwich from a fictional person"), , Paula Deen's
favorite burger (it is even more impressive than you expect), and quite possibly
the first sandwich ever made. And, from the Golden Arches, the
McGangBang McRedacted, the classic
McRib, and the
Mc10:35 (possible only during the magical moment when breakfast and lunch menus are available at the same time).
posted by blahblahblah
on Mar 30, 2011 -
59 comments
"Ron Schiller, NPR Foundation's senior vice president for fundraising,
was recorded secretly on Feb. 22 by Republican filmmaker James O'Keefe, who is well known for his undercover stunts targeting various agencies. Schiller is seen on a videotape during a luncheon with men who were posing as members of the fictitious Muslim Action Education Center."
* [more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 8, 2011 -
205 comments
American
women at work, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of women's to men's earnings, for all occupations, was 81.2 percent in 2010. Of course, it was also at this level in 2005 and 2006. Give it another 40 years or so to women to get paid what men do for working the same jobs. Though the trend is stagnant at the moment (see Chart 1 on page 3 of this
2009 PDF) some are
optimistic about the
progress women have made.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Mar 7, 2011 -
48 comments
