November 26, 2019
Twelve Seasons and a Movie and...?
Netflix cancels MST3K after two seasons. Turkey Day has long been the unofficial holiday for Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans, but there is an extra dollop of mourning to go with your turkeys (either on film or on the menu) this year. [more inside]
Fad, Fad Wine
By the mid-two-thousands, though, consumers’ tastes were changing. People who shopped at farmers’ markets, drank craft beer, and ate heirloom tomatoes at farm-to-table restaurants were alarmed by reports of lab-made yeasts, grapes doused in the weed killer glyphosate, and enormous corporate conglomerates. The qualities that had once made natural wines seem unsophisticated or suspect—the obscure grapes, the rustic producers, the occasionally funky taste—began to look like authenticity. How Natural Wine Became a Symbol of Virtuous Consumption [The New Yorker] [more inside]
Björk adapted for opera
Vespertine is the fourth studio album by Icelandic recording artist Björk. First released in August 2001.
Björk performed the entire album along with an orchestra at the Royal Opera House in London (1 Hr 34 min) in December 2001.
Now in 2019 the team of Jan Dvořák, Peter Häublein, and Roman Vinuesa together with the opera singer Ji Yoon, have adapted Björk's Vespertine for a full Orchestra using no electronic instruments. [more inside]
Björk performed the entire album along with an orchestra at the Royal Opera House in London (1 Hr 34 min) in December 2001.
Now in 2019 the team of Jan Dvořák, Peter Häublein, and Roman Vinuesa together with the opera singer Ji Yoon, have adapted Björk's Vespertine for a full Orchestra using no electronic instruments. [more inside]
The post-Christian culture wars
The Trump administration’s two most revealing speeches weren’t given by Trump. Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. They have 27 governorships and governing trifectas in 21 states. But many conservatives — particularly Christian conservatives — believe they’re being routed in the war that matters most: the post-Christian culture war. They see a diverse, secular left winning the future and preparing to eviscerate both Christian practice and traditional mores. And they see themselves as woefully unprepared to respond with the ruthlessness that the moment requires.
A Discussion Of The First Amendment And Freedom Of Speech
In response to a recent incident at Indiana University wherein the business school openly repudiated the bigotry of tenured professor Eric Rasmusen while noting that they could not fire Rasmusen for his comments because of the First Amendment, Lawyers, Guns and Money (and IU alum) Elizabeth Nelson spoke with Greg Magarian, the Thomas and Karole Greene Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, about freedom of speech, the First Amendment, and how courts have shifted from protecting the speech of the powerless to that of the powerful. (SLLGM) [more inside]
In the end, there isn't much `there, there'...at all.
I did it -- I taught "Clash of Civilizations" to my "Intro to IR" students.A single Twitter thread by Paul Poast on teaching Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. [more inside]
Death And The Family
Jan exhales and texts Andy. Andy exhales and gets ready to broadcast a football game. On this day, they've done what mothers and fathers do all the time: A child presented them with a choice. They talked about it. They made a decision. They followed through. It was, by almost any measure, a fairly ordinary act of parenting. Except for this: Josh is not their son.
This is a story about a terrible accident and the unfairness of life and the ineffable compassion of friends and that spindly, ever-spreading spider web of emotion that we all bring to our own interpretations of family: Loss, love and a promise kept for the voice of Auburn football (Sam Borden, ESPN)
This is a story about a terrible accident and the unfairness of life and the ineffable compassion of friends and that spindly, ever-spreading spider web of emotion that we all bring to our own interpretations of family: Loss, love and a promise kept for the voice of Auburn football (Sam Borden, ESPN)
Food access is like a utility, you have to it have for a town to exist
... in many rural, conservative communities struggling to hang on to their remaining residents, ideological arguments about the role of government tend to be cast aside as grocery stores shutter because of population decline and competition from superstores. “Fundamentally, what you have is people that have lived in these rural communities all their lives, and they want these rural communities to survive,” [David Procter, who directs the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University, told the Post]. “And they realize that without access to food, they’re not going to survive.” When a deep red town’s only grocery closed, city hall opened its own store. Just don’t call it ‘socialism.’ (Washington Post; also available via MSN) [more inside]
The Invention of Thanksgiving
My name no one shall know!
The tenor aria “Nessun Dorma,” from Act II of Puccini’s final opera Turandot, is one of the most famous in music. The prince Calaf has won the hand of the icy Princess Turandot by answering three riddles. But she’s not convinced, so he offers her a deal: if she can guess his name by morning, she can execute him. The song is his response to her decree that none of her subjects shall sleep until they discover his name. (And if they don’t, everyone dies.)
First performed in 1926, the aria owes much of its fame to Luciano Pavarotti. It’s a staple of Got Talent shows, including by some surprisingly young singers. It adds drama to soundtracks as varied as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Bend it Like Beckham,
and has been performed by everyone from Anohni (formerly of Antony and the Johnsons) to Jeff Beck.
But the most poignant performance still has to be Aretha’s Franklin’s last-minute substitution for Pavarotti at the 1998 Grammy Awards.
Facebook Politics
“Facebook promised to ban white nationalist content from its platform in March 2019, reversing a years-long policy to tolerate the ideology. But Red Ice TV is just one of several white nationalist outlets that remain active on the platform today. “ White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act (Guardian) “So the fear is that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the Trump administration by not cracking down on right-wing propaganda.” Inside Mark Zuckerberg's private meetings with conservative pundits (Politico) “Internal documents show Facebook’s own marketing strategy was influenced by what it learned from its valued customer, the Trump campaign.” (Buzzfeed) “After the 2016 presidential election, Republican Party officials credited Facebook Inc. with helping Donald Trump win the White House. One senior official singled out a then-28-year-old Facebook employee embedded with the Trump campaign, calling him an “MVP.” Now that key player is working for the other side—as national debate intensifies over Facebook’s role in politics.” (WSJ)
Beauty Pill: "Most songs are about the mouth of the 21st century."
Recently, Time put out their Ten Best Albums of the Decade list which included albums by Beyonce and other big stars... and Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are, a 2015 album and "love letter to sound" by Beauty Pill, an "uncategorizeable" DC-area semi-electronic avante garde? funk? art pop? indie band that's been around for almost twenty years, led by Chad Clark, who was in the influential band Smart Went Crazy and a highly-regarded engineer for Fugazi and other DC bands. Just a taste: the earworm Afrikaner Barista [video has flashy lights]. Afropunk's 2015 review says "Here’s the thing about being ahead of your time: if you wait long enough, eventually time catches up." [more inside]
What has Happened to Me
A powerful manga created by a Japanese artist "tells the story of Mihrigul Tursun, a Uighur woman who was detained three times by the Chinese authorities after returning from Egypt." It has been translated into many languages, including english - as told by The Guardian
How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
In 2006, Coby Beck wrote a series of articles for The Grist "containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming." Bookmark for discussion around the dinner table this holiday season as necessary.
The Real Class War
The Real Class War Julius Krein contextualises inter-class conflict in the United States of America for American Affairs: Everybody’s oxen are gored in the process.
Divorced birds
The search for the Enormous Pippin continues
Botanists scour old Northwest homesteads for long-lost apple varieties. "North America once had 17,000 named varieties of domesticated apples, but only about 4,000 remain... E.J. Brandt and David Benscoter, who together form the nonprofit Lost Apple Project, log countless hours and hundreds of miles in trucks, on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to find orchards planted by settlers as they pushed west more than a century ago."
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