February 22, 2015
The Spin Zone
Mother Jones reports on Bill O'Reilly's claimed experience in combat zones, reaching conclusions like one of his claims "is at odds with news reports from the time—including the report from his own bureau." O'Reilly responded, and Mother Jones factchecked his monologue. Meanwhile, a veteran CBS News reporter weighed in, backing the work by Mother Jones.
Los Angeles: The City In Cinema
Diving horses: from Wild West sideshow to Atlantic City attraction
William Frank Carver was a renowned shooter in the wild west, generally called Doc Carver for his (unused) dentistry training (or possibly his time caring for animals when he was younger [Google books preview]). He went on to put on shooting and wild west exhibitions with Buffalo Bill and others (source). To expand his shows, he turned to other feats of showmanship, including horse diving. Eventually, horse diving eclipsed the rest of the shows, and Doc added his son and daughter to the events. His son Al built the ramp and diving apparatus, while his daughter Lorena was the first “girl on the diving horse.” Going forward, most of the notable divers were young ladies, including Sonora Webster, who joined the show in 1923. She went blind from a diving accident in 1931, but continued to dive until 1942. There's not much video of diving horses due to the whole practice losing general support and/or appeal well before the proliferation of personal video cameras, but here is a short clip of 19 year old "Jackie" Carvan diving 60 feet on a horse from 1923, and two horses diving without riders in the mid-1960s. [more inside]
"I wish there were people who were honest crooks."
The Truth is IN there
The real you Your conscious self evaluation is often different from your underlying implicit reactions in this Psych' study at Harvard that tries to reveal ones prejudices and preconceived biases. [more inside]
To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.
(NSFW) For three decades, Brassai's piercing eye focused on the urban landscape of the City of Light; famously Paris by Night.
One of his subject interests was Graffiti - The language of the wall.
He formed a great friendship with Picasso; An extract from Conversations with Picasso who himself admitted to the occasional graffiti.
Here is an interview from 1970 (Pt II never seemed to make the light of day) and a 1999 pdf article from the Smithsonian.
Letters to my Parents was collected and published posthumously.
And finally many pages.
One of his subject interests was Graffiti - The language of the wall.
He formed a great friendship with Picasso; An extract from Conversations with Picasso who himself admitted to the occasional graffiti.
Here is an interview from 1970 (Pt II never seemed to make the light of day) and a 1999 pdf article from the Smithsonian.
Letters to my Parents was collected and published posthumously.
And finally many pages.
A daring plan to rebuild Syria — no matter who wins the war
In terms of sheer devastation, Syria today is worse off than Germany at the end of World War II. [more inside]
The 87th Academy Awards, also booze
The Oscars 2015: What They Tell Us. Watch out for these 5 types of upsets. It's National Margarita Day, why not drink along to the show with a George Clooney margarita?
Open Source FTW! And keeping it old skool!
Retro Terminal for Linux Old school terminals for people with enough sense to love CLIs, but not enough to use sane modern terminals. (And one other cool proggie.) [more inside]
Anorexia and the media
Sweet
How to Make Handmade Candy (SLYT)
A sweet, young woman’s voice narrates.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice Screenplay [.pdf] Warner Bros. has made the For Your Consideration draft of the full screenplay available for download via: indiewire.com.
Someone hasn't read Tufte.
...we appreciate that it could have been made clearer that the article is not describing a new tool for visualization of data but rather a simpler application of an existing one... Make sure to read the comments and correction.
"I sat in the middle of a catastrophe."
In 1963 novelist Doris Lessing took in a fifteen year old former schoolmate of her son she had never met who couldn't live at home anymore. This teenage girl later grew up to be a writer herself, Jenny Diski (formerly of this parish), and has written a couple of essays in the London Review of Books about her relationship with Lessing. The first, What to Call Her?, was an obituary published shortly after Lessing's death. The second, Doris and Me, is a part of Diski's longer reckoning with her own life following her diagnosis with terminal cancer. [The last essay has been linked previously as part of a megapost.]
Two Films of Johan Grimonprez
Johan Grimonprez is a Belgian multimedia artist, filmmaker, and curator. He is most known for two 'not-quite documentary' films which use experimental forms to explore the relationship between media, politics, history, identity, and manipulation in the second half of the twentieth century: 1997's dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y , which traces the history of skyjacking throughout the 20th century using montages, and Double Take, which explores the Cold War through the lens of real and imagined versions of Alfred Hitchcock and Folger's instant coffee commercials. Both are available online. [more inside]
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