October 15, 2014
It was a good time for name-dropping.
"What does sound sound like when no music is happening?"
Tuning '77 - a seamless audio supercut of an entire year of the Grateful Dead tuning their instruments, live on stage. Chronologically sequenced, this remix incorporates every publicly available recording from 1977, examining the divide between audience expectation and performance anxiety. [more inside]
Seven cover versions of Ghostbusters from Dream Syndicate's 1984 tour
The earliest version is fairly straightforward, aside from the homage to “Werewolves of London.” By the time they reach D.C., though, they can do anything with it. At the 9:30 Club, guitarists Wynn and Precoda quote “Rock And Roll Part 2” before shredding in the style of Television—it’s a shame the tape runs out. In Stockholm, Wynn sees an opportunity to stir up the audience, and in Bochum, Germany, it becomes the basis for a long jam that turns into “Suzie Q.,” “Sister Ray,” and “L.A. Woman.” Frankfurt gets a slow take on the song that is actually kind of spooky. Seven cover versions of Ghostbusters from the Dream Syndicate's 1984 tour.
I too have flattened India
The Gentrification of the Dosa: "I worry dosas will become their Western definitions—“lentil crepe” or “lentil pancake,” that sanitized screen."
First virus antibiotic has been (partially) figured out.
I killed the monster. Goodnight.
Amid escalating tensions of disease and terror around the world, the national media has focused on yet another Hollywood scandal: is pop singer Janna Hospice really a mass of voles? The social media storm has raged on both sides of the debate, but in a recently released video interview The Onion gets to the bottom of the mystery.
"something so stable about our school was about to change"
"First and foremost was her faith, then came literature..."
I Can't Give Anymore
Hailed as successors to The Beatles, the British band Badfinger had an extended stay in Milwaukee—a bizarre nightmare from which it never recovered. [more inside]
Where the hell is there a gorilla in the movie? We don’t need a gorilla!
Ebola Deeply
Now just 5 years away
Lockheed Martin Says they made a breakthrough in fusion technology:
Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade. Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.
Five seconds of pure joy in dog form
A pair of dogs team up to retrieve a tennis ball from a backyard swimming pool. I could watch this all day.
“I just don’t buy into the nonsense about discrimination.”
The Whiteness Project is a multiplatform investigation into how Americans who identify as “white” experience their ethnicity.
When Science Fiction Grew Up
How renegade sci-fi writers of the 1960s paved the way for today's blending of literary and genre fiction [more inside]
"There was a BEE in my THING!"
The 2014 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Nanning, China ended this weekend. The biggest story line of the meet on the women's side was American Simone Biles, who successfully defended her world title in the All-Around competition and was attacked by a bee. [more inside]
Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso
Brains vs. Brawn in Baseball
The Economist examines the cult of the genius GM.
In sports, just like the rest of life, the rich keep getting richer. Anyone who saw or read Moneyball knows that the deck is stacked against small-market Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. Their only hope of competing, Michael Lewis’s story goes, is to acquire brilliant, innovative general managers (GMs) like his protagonist Billy Beane, who have mastered the “art of winning an unfair game” by outmaneuvering wealthier clubs. The problem with this narrative is that there is nothing to stop the sport’s plutocrats from hiring the finest minds money can buy, just as they sign the best athletes.The deep-pocketed Dodgers have lured away small market Tampa Bay's heralded GM Andrew Friedman to find out what happens when a man who consistently builds winners with one of the smallest revenue streams in the game can do with a payroll in excess of $200 million.
"When you hold a weapon, you don't cry, you just shoot."
Commander Pigeon is a collector of lost and exiled men. The quietest soldier once belonged to the Taliban. He had been captured by local police, escaped, and having heard about Commander Pigeon, walked miles to reach her home. He fell to his knees and begged for protection. She made him swear loyalty. I asked how she knew he wouldn't rebel. "I'm watching him closely," she said. "I'm converting Taliban to normal people."[more inside]
Jen Percy for TNR: My Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord, Commander Pigeon.
“ 'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,”
"The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West."
- The Secret Casualties of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons (SLNYT) [more inside]
Selfie with Comet
The Rosetta Mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko took this picture of itself with the comet 16km away in the background.
European Space Agency description of the image.
Phil Platt's Bad Astronomy story.
A Game of Thrones
HBO Says It’s Going to Start Selling on the Web Next Year. Maybe because Netflix now has more subscription revenue than HBO? But wait, is A la Carte the Worst Idea Anyone Has Ever Had?
We could use a few pointers on prudence.
"During the 2013-2014 flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 46 percent of Americans received vaccinations against influenza, even though it kills about 3,000 people in this country in a good year, nearly 50,000 in a bad one." [more inside]
Simmons is free.
Bill Simmons returns to ESPN today after a three-week suspension for calling Roger Goodell a liar. There's a lot of speculation over his next move.
America's Worst Colleges
Washington Monthly has attempted to identify America's worst colleges.
Mad for Ads? Add Ads to Mad
Madison is a new Vintage Ad archive from the New York Times. "But the Times is inviting readers to do more than just view the ads. It's also asking readers to help shape the archive by sifting through the ads, identifying them and even transcribing their text." [more inside]
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