January 20, 2016
Phylogenetic analyses suggests fairy tales are much older than thought
To come to these conclusions, the researchers applied a technique normally used in biology—building phylogenetic trees to trace linguistic attributes back to their origin....one fairy tale in particular, they note, was very clear—called The Smith and The Devil, they traced it back approximately 6,000 years, to the Bronze Age.
First Listen: Saul Williams - MartyrLoserKing
Spoken word artist Saul Williams comes forth with a new album, MartyrLoserKing, available for first listen via NPR, produced by Justin Warfield. Williams first made his name on the slam poetry circuit and has been recording rap (hard to call them hip-hop) albums for several years. [more inside]
Nobody could focus on their own moves
Angel Collinson: making it big in big mountain skiing
Angel Collinson Annihilates Alaska and makes big mountain skiing look easy, but when seen from the first person perspective, it's a different view. [more inside]
Game Music's New Canon
Jeremy Parish writes about video game(-ish) music label Brave Wave and has interviews with Ninja Gaiden composer Keiji Yamagishi and Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae, both artists on the label. (Brave Wave previously)
Flint Water Crisis Runs Deeper and Wider
Last month, Flint, Michigan, declared a state of emergency as a result of serious contamination of the municipal water supply. Since then, the issue has expanded from a municipal problem to a scandal reaching the Governor's office and the White House. The situation in Flint took up much of the annual State of the State address this week. [more inside]
America’s most contentious legal reformer
Harvard Magazine profiles Judge Richard Posner (LL.B. ’62): Rhetoric and Law
Larry Wilmore Celebrates the 1st Anniversary of His Show
The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore observed its first anniversary with a wonderful episode last night that featured Donald Trump's pandering to evangelicals, a suggested alternative to A Birthday Cake for George Washington, and a panel discussion on the Oscar awards boycott.
Michael Jackson.
Who here likes pancakes? I love pancakes.
Yummiest font ever. Olin College of Engineering students make a machine that "prints" pancakes.
90s scandals may threaten to erode Hillary Clinton’s strength with women
Now that the stories are resurfacing, they could hamper Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to connect with younger women, who are learning the details of the Clintons’ history for the first time. Several news organizations have published guides to the Clinton scandals to explain the allegations to a new generation of readers. [SLNYT] [more inside]
"The top hat and the thimble weren’t plot points, either."
“Would your son want to play with an action figure of Rey, the central figure in the latest Star Wars film? Would your daughter? It’s too bad they don’t have the choice; Hasbro, among other toymakers, left out the one key female figure in their The Force Awakens game sets. Hasbro says it was to preserve plot secrets, but an industry insider said the choice was deliberate.” Where's Rey?
Unterstützt die Wirtschaft - öfter mal Weihnachten
Kraftwerk live in Soest, Winter 1970. This concert from "Youth Carousel" is the earliest existing concert recording from the pioneering electronic group out of Düsseldorf. The group was founded that year and is seen here with their original lineup.
Academic Hiring Is Broken
At Brandeis University, students are petitioning the school to take well regarded adjunct sociology professor Jillian Powers on as a tenure-track professor, after learning how tenuous her status is. A Slate article on the matter discusses why the student petition will most likely fail, and the incredibly broken system used to hire new tenure-track professors without any real consideration for their ability to teach.
Its solution heralds the end of the world.
Smells like holy spirit.
How Christianity Infiltrated Seattle Music with a Little Help from Mars Hill Church and the City Council: Thanks to a restrictive zoning ordinance, for a number of years the only consistently open venue for all-ages music in the city of Seattle was owned and operated by the now-defunct Mars Hill Church, headed by now-disgraced pastor Mark Driscoll (previously). Consequently, "Christian imagery continues to permeate post–Mars Hill Seattle music, though its tone and reception has shifted. Songwriters still approach the subject of faith in allegorical, roundabout ways. This is both a reflection of the complex relationship to faith, and a perfectly understandable aversion to guilt by association."
Hi, I'm a digital junkie, and I suffer from infomania
Infomania, defined by the Oxford dictionary as “the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via mobile phone or computer.” "I was recently described, to my face, as a 'modern digital junkie.' This diagnosis was given to me, half in jest, by Dr. Dimitrios Tsivrikos, consumer psychologist at University College London, when I described my symptoms to him. After spending my workday tapping, swiping and emailing, I come home and — despite my exhaustion and twitching eyes — I want to consume more online. But I’m not even absorbing the articles, tweets and posts that I peruse. I’m just skipping from page to page, jumping from link to link." [more inside]
A Story of a Fuck Off Fund
If any man ever hit you, if anyone ever sexually harassed you, you’d tell him to fuck right off. You want to be, no, you will be the kind of woman who can tell anyone to fuck off if a fuck off is deserved, so naturally you start a Fuck Off Fund.
So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away - Matador
Matador, Texas is a town on borrowed time. If you're not from there or one of the few similarly sinking small towns scattered across the Great Plains region, you would almost definitely not know that it exists. Its population has fallen from 740 to just 607 in 10 years according to a 2010 census. Of course, it wasn't always that way. A true Texas round-up of links to celebrate the Matador that was and still is before it is gone. [more inside]
The Death of the Midwestern Church
Rural neighborhood churches, once the heart of many Iowan communities, are disappearing along with local schools. The result is a tear in the social fabric of life in the Midwest. “There is no glue holding these communities together ... and it’s making us forget how to neighbor. ... If someone is working all the time and has less disposable income, where can they go for help? It used to be church. Now?” ... “you can’t survive unless you become a neighbor and then let other people neighbor you in turn.”
Selective Blindness in Google Earth and Google Maps
Sorry we have no imagery here: Self censorship in Google geographical images Google's original mission statement from 1998 stated was to:
“organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”[more inside]
Many Very Educated Men Just Screwed Up Nature. Possibly?
New evidence of a Ninth Planet. Astronomer Michael E Brown is more famous as "The man who killed Pluto" thinks their might be nine planets after all. [more inside]
"I'm lying," he said, finally. "You don't actually use lime blossoms."
This Professor Fell In Love With His Grad Student, Then Fired Her For It
Christian Ott, a young astrophysics professor at the California Institute of Technology, fell in love with one of his graduate students and then fired her because of his feelings, according to a recent university investigation. Twenty-one months of intimate online chats, obtained by BuzzFeed News, confirm that he confessed his actions to another female graduate student. [more inside]
Going in a hand basket or wearing shades?
The idea that America’s best days are behind us sits in sharp tension with the high-tech optimism radiating from the offices of the technology start-ups and venture capital firms of Silicon Valley.(NYT) Robert Gordon just published a book on the end of US growth. His TED talk echos this.
« Previous day | Next day »