November 18, 2015
He made us proud
On November 12th, 2015, Adel Termos threw himself at the second suicide bomber approaching a mosque in the Bourj al-Barajneh district in southern Beirut, minutes after the first bomber struck. He saved potentially hundreds of people.
The Boy They Couldn't Kill
"Lively and engaged, voracious consumers of life."
Prayer Nuts
Sixteenth century European Catholics with sufficiently heavy purses could upgrade their rosary beads with Prayer Nuts, virtuoso boxwood carvings of astonishing detail. You can get lost in these things, and probably the more so back in the day when, some believe, they were infused with scent, mixing the visual with the olfactory. They've been known to hit the market, latterly in the low six figures. [more inside]
Sex, long life, and cooperative breeding
How do you get both cooperation and promiscuity, a rare combination in a world dominated by selfish genes? The key, it appears - at least in birds - is long life. "Promiscuous cooperative species are exceptionally long lived."
People Are Scaring Their Cats with Cucumbers. They Shouldn’t.
A new viral trend reveals a surprising cat behavior, but pet owners should beware. By Brian Clark Howard. SLNatGeo.
Wood Identification
We've talked about wood identification before (previously), but there's so much more than The Wood Database, starting with Identification Of Common North American Woods. [more inside]
And ain’t I a woman?
"Young women could now do more than read about feminist issues and discuss them in class; they could find communities of women on Twitter or Tumblr whose experiences they could relate to—or who could open up new vistas for them on what other women’s lives are like. They could participate in the creation of a new feminism—one that would be a far cry from Friedan’s. By 2011, the writer Flavia Dzodan was famously declaring on her blog: “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.” Her words became a rallying cry."
No litter, no dander, less emotional indifference
With realistic fur, purrs and meows - and sensors that respond to petting and hugs with familiar, cat-like actions - Companion Pets deliver a soothing, joyful experience that inspires smiles, laughter and fond memories for people of all ages. Hasbro is now offering lifelike robotic cats to provide companionship for seniors.
precisely ZERO actresses of color in the Oscar conversation
Two years ago, I was thrilled that three of the six women on our roundtable were black: Oprah Winfrey, Lupita Nyong’o and Octavia Spencer. I thought, perhaps naively, that this represented a sea-change in the film business, and hoped it was catching up with the tectonic shifts that industries all across America have had to make to reflect this country’s diversity. But I was wrong. Stephen Galloway, in The Hollywood Reporter: Why Every Actress on The Hollywood Reporter Roundtable Cover Is White
Triumph of the Will
From National Geographic YouTube channel: The Shaolin (Wushu) Temple Kung Fu Academy is the largest school of its kind in China. Footage was adapted from filmmaker Inigo Westmeier's 2012 documentary 'Dragon Girls' with music from Gener8tio featuring M.I.A. The Academy has a website.
Cats!
Дискоклуб
The Mixtape 24: Soviet Space Disco courtesy of The Calvert Journal: [October]'s mixtape is a collection of cosmic disco music from the archives of Soviet state record label Melodiya. Compiled for the launch of the exhibition Soviet Space Archive: Configuration II (on display at Calvert 22 Gallery between 10 October — 31 October 2015), it showcases the otherworldly highlights of the label’s eclectic Diskoklub series, including the swirling synths and tight brass of groups such as Zodiak from Latvia. For the exhibition opening, curators Rory McCartney and Ella McCartney will host a Soviet Space Disco. This mix captures the futuristic soundtrack to the opening event.
tiny worlds
In an unexpected but effective mix of unlikely media, Toronto-based artist Talwst has created a series of miniature dioramas inside of antique ring boxes that capture wide array of scenes from various historical periods.
http://www.boredpanda.com/antique-ring-box-mini-diorama-talwst/ [more inside]
DeMille's Lost City
“You have lost your mind,” telegraphed Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures. “Stop filming and return to Los Angeles at once.” DeMille refused. “I cannot and will not make pictures with a yardstick,” he wired back to the studio. “What do they want me to do?” he was rumored to have said, according to Higashi. “Stop now and release it as The Five Commandments?” Excavating the "City of the Pharoah," the biggest set ever built for a Hollywood film in the 1920s. [more inside]
AcroCats: The sure-fire remedy for a sucky week
The AcroCats do (and do not do) pretty much everything you would expect them to do (and not do). [more inside]
Such a story...
This is the sort of story we need to hear in these divisive and troubled times. A touching account of a chance airport encounter written by San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
The story behind Everclear’s Sparkle and Fade
"To be alone with the night, and his voice."
"Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown" is a hypnotic, disturbing, and mostly forgotten 1981 radio documentary about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. [more inside]
Grown men and women put tighty-whitey underwear on a goat--competitively
Over the years, gay rodeos have become a centrally welcoming space for LGBTQ people in rural areas and an important place for people of all genders to compete in events which have been historically divided strongly along gender lines (such as bull riding and barrel racing). They've come a long way from their origins as a means of raising money for charity. But the people who participate in gay rodeos are aging and attendence is declining, raising questions about the future of gay rodeo. A new documentary shines a spotlight on this important piece of LGBTQ history.
The flowers and the candles are here to protect us.
In the aftermath of the attack in Paris, a small boy & his father are interviewed. Together they remind us that even in the darkest hour there is light and hope.
Sprint football at Princeton
And here’s the thing: This team that you’re making all these sacrifices for — this team for which you are giving up your body, your Friday nights, your hair — this team hasn’t won a game in 16 years. That’s right. Sixteen years. Zero victories. The Tigers have lost so many games in a row that everybody has lost count. Ninety-eight? But what about forfeits? That would make it 102, or maybe 103. Truth is, no one counts consecutive losses as closely as consecutive wins.
"Why you do something is more important than how."
"In order to recover a bit from a recent feeling of exhaustion, I spent a significant amount of this past weekend diligently sitting on my ass, in front of the television. On Saturday night, I popped in my copy of Woody Allen’s 'Manhattan,' which, among other things, is as stunningly designed a movie as I’ve ever seen. This is largely thanks to the work of Gordon Willis, a master cinematographer who, apart from his incredible work on this film, was also responsible for photographing an alarmingly high share of my favorite movies of all time: 'The Godfather,' 'The Godfather Part II,' 'All the President’s Men,' and 'The Parallax View,' among others." [more inside]
The Forgotten Health Care Need
According to the Urban Institute's Health Reform Monitoring Survey, "Though the Affordable Care Act [ObamaCare] has led to increased health insurance coverage for millions of nonelderly adults, and early signs indicate improvements in broad measures of access to care and affordability, we find that gaps in access to dental care remain even for insured adults and that low- and moderate-income adults in particular face challenges affording dental care." [more inside]
ended up reading the whole thing like I was watching a movie on Twitter
She had posted and removed the story twice before and no one cared. To garner more interest this time, she made it darkly funny while preserving the gist of what happened. And she has no regrets. "I made people who probably wouldn't want to hear a sex trafficking story want to be a part of it," she says, "because it was entertaining."Rolling Stone interviews and fact-checks Aziah "Zola" Wells, whose 158-tweet-long story about a trip to Florida (archived here) became an overnight sensation, receiving accolades from Selma director Ava DuVernay and Missy Elliot (quoted in the title), along with many, many others. The Washington Post has released its own report on the story. A movie is reportedly in the works.
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