September 11, 2014
The Islamic roots of science fiction
Charlie Jane Anders investigates the Islamic roots of science fiction, including one of the earliest feminist science fiction novels. You may actually want to read the comments this once.
Vaccination map of Los Angeles schools
The Hollywood Reporter gathered vaccination rates from Los Angeles preschools and elementary schools, for the 2013-2014 academic year. They created an interactive map that allows you to click on schools and see what percentage of preschoolers and kindergarteners got the DTaP and MMR vaccinations, and what percentage of families opted out using a Personal Belief Exemption form. Los Angeles is currently in the middle of a Pertussis (Whooping Cough) outbreak, and officials are concerned that it will spread further as herd immunity is threatened by low rates of vaccination.
The happiest place on earth: TIJUANA!
I am on the western edge of the United States-Mexico border to understand more about the most publicised and most crossed border in the world. Ben Stubbs visits one of the most notorious borders in the world and reflects on Australia's frontier issues.
"Ignore him. It's the price of play."
Perils of The Lady Gamer. – a New Graphical Diversion by webcomic artist and writer Shaenon K. Garrity (previously). [more inside]
Time erases everything
The pumpkinification of a nation
Vox digs into America's fall food obsession: The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled was making you want a pumpkin spice latte.
Fire sale?
With the war in Iraq winding down, colleges are are stocking up on surplus military equipment of all kinds at bargain prices from the Department of Defense. As two schools in Louisiana each receive a dozen M-16 weapons, the newspaper asks, "Is this a good idea?"
Insert Coin
Arcades in the Movies, a supercut.
I don't know what I am doing with Face Book!! Love, Grandmaster Flash
Love, Grampa and GrandmaSTER FLASH: Grandmothers accidentally tagging Grandmaster Flash on Facebook.
The 9/11 notes of Ari Fleischer
(Lawrence) Ari Fleischer is the former White House Press Secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003. 13 years on from 9/11, Ari is tweeting the events of that day from his notes (start). [more inside]
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
A gigantic fish-eater (Bigger than a T. rex!) with a crocodile snout and a large sail on its back, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus has always been a strange and enigmatic creature. It may have just become something stranger: a semiaquatic, quadrupedal theropod dinosaur. [more inside]
Do you really think yours was that much better?
An Upstate New York student wants his senior photo to stand out. Schenectady High School senior Draven Rodriguez has a very special senior portrait, and has a petition just in case his school balks at its inclusion.
Blake Judd and Neill Jameson
You may know Neill Jameson as the frontman/honcho for black metal favorites Krieg, who have a new LP Transient for Candlelight Records, or via his involvement in Twilight, the supergroup headed up by Blake Judd of Nachtmystium and featuring members like Thurston Moore, Aaron Turner, Jef Whitehead (Leviathan), Stavros Giannopoulos (The Atlas Moth), and more. But Neill's involvement with Blake Judd goes much deeper than that: Theirs is a friendship that was initally forged based on a mutually shared interest in music many years ago. In the following firsthand account, Neill recalls the history of some of the darker moments of his friendship with Blake Judd, ones that eventually lead to him severing his ties with the celebrated black metal musician, and the stark reality of drug addiction.
the sea is a cup of death and the land is a stained altar stone
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives. Every glistening egg is a memento mori.Annie Dillard ponders the disquieting thrall of the circle of life in her November 1973 essay for The Atlantic: The Force That Drives the Flower. [more inside]
The ancient art of baijiu
"China's traditional grain spirit, baijiu, has evolved—mostly in obscurity—along a trajectory that has no Western equivalent." "Whereas Western grain alcohols are fermented and distilled in liquid form, the Chinese perform both processes in a solid state ..."
MetaFilter Clickbait?
Could season 2 of True Detective be based on The Crying of Lot 49? Elisabeth Moss or Rachel McAdams as Oedipa Maas?
A-moo-ha
“If they spot you first, they’ll definitely come for you,” says Orion Enocencio, manager and hunting guide at Ahiu Hawaii, an adventure company on the Big Island in Hawaii. Some of the most dangerous hunting in the entire United States is to be found on a single island in the most isolated island chain in the world. It’s not grizzly bears or mountain lions or even bison: it’s the wild Hawaiian cow.
RIP, Jaws
Killing the people you're pretending to be
Jacob Brogan of Georgetown University writes in the Washington Post about the ethics of wearing pre-distressed jeans. [more inside]
The slow unwinding
The Death of Adulthood in American Culture (SLNYTimes Magazine), by A.O. Scott: Comic-book movies, family-friendly animated adventures, tales of adolescent heroism and comedies of arrested development do not only make up the commercial center of 21st-century Hollywood. They are its artistic heart.
The respected General continues to enact humble miracles
HEAVEN'S COUNTRYLAND: your 8-bit animated guide to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. (MLYT) [more inside]
Reconciling the Second Amendment with Public Safety Concerns
Gun Wars: the struggle over gun rights and regulation in America, in the aftermath of the Newtown school shootings and the ongoing congressional stalemate over federal gun legislation. An investigative report from "29 students from 16 journalism schools, as well as an experienced staff of editors" for Carnegie-Knight News21. [more inside]
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