December 9, 2017
New Zealand’s First Christmas
The Christian origins of Christmas meant that before European contact, the celebration had no place in the calendar of Aotearoa. The first celebration of Christmas in New Zealand coincided with Abel Tasman’s voyage to New Zealand in 1642. Unfortunately, things did not get off to a good start.New Zealand’s First Christmas [more inside]
Psion, the Next Generation
The lines are all the same shape
A New Optical Illusion Was Just Discovered, And It's Breaking Our Brains - "Researcher Kohske Takahashi calls it the 'curvature blindness illusion' and it's very trippy." [more inside]
There are only two styles of portrait painting—the serious and the smirk
Learning something new can be challenging, but sometimes, it can take you places you’d never imagine. Kimiko Nishimoto was 72 years old when she picked up a camera, and it’s transformed her life over the past 17 years. Now at 89, she's enjoying wide-spread attention for her creative self-portrait photography. [more inside]
What's College Good For?
If schools aim to boost students’ future income by teaching job skills, why do they entrust students’ education to people so detached from the real world? "As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education. The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race." [more inside]
Everything was creaky and it was just so crowded with books
Call Me Ishmael, a "novel way to celebrate books and life." The Call Me Ishmael project is simple: Leave a voicemail at (774) 325-0503 about a book you loved and a story you have lived. Your voicemail will be transcribed, typewritten, and posted on the site for other readers to enjoy your story and your book. The project has expanded to include rotary phones in bookstores for patrons to listen to selected voicemails. [more inside]
Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night…
“Cat Person” is a short story by Kristen Roupenian in the latest issue of The New Yorker. It’s about a brief modern relationship.
The magazine has also published an interview with Roupenian on the story. [more inside]
The magazine has also published an interview with Roupenian on the story. [more inside]
“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / and eternity in an hour.”
Here's the full World Premiere of Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding from The Game Awards. [Youtube][Trailer] “Tonight we got an extended look at Hideo Kojima’s next big project, Death Stranding. It appears that Norman Reedus’ character has crash landed somewhere dangerous, where invisible creatures roam the land. The whole thing gives off a horror game vibe, so maybe we don’t have to be sad about never getting that Silent Hills collaboration anymore. The footage is flippin’ bonkers. There are giant shadow men, a fetus, golden deteriorating skulls, suicides, and an apparently pregnant Norman Reedus. “Once there was an explosion, a bang that gave rise to life as we know it,” Reedus growls. “Then came the next explosion. An explosion that will be our last.”” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
Sufi Soul
William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer who lives in India. He has featured now and again on the blue (see below the fold). A good place to start is the documentary he made about Sufi music: Sufi Soul [more inside]
A lot of information about kefir (and other homemade natural foods)
This is the homepage of Dominic Anfiteatro, which contains a lot of information about kefir, kombucha, soy milk, and other hippie foodstuffs. Enjoy the non-ironic retro design!
“There was a real sense of a kind of moral corruption around the media”
“This means there's no commercial justification anymore for producing broad generalist news packages. It means we can expect private sector media to narrowly target people who are well-off and well-educated, because they are the ones who are the most interested in news, the ones most able to pay subscription costs, and the ones advertisers most want to reach. That's not great for democracy: We can expect to see a growing gap in political knowledge and participation.” PUBLIC BROADCASTING: ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE - the argument for public funding of news media.
Big lizard in my noodles
On Wednesday, Twin Cities' renowned Asian grocery store United Noodles found a surprise guest lurking in their produce. The chill critter has since found a permanent home with the Minnesota Herpetological Society. In honor of this happy ending, please enjoy these videos of lizards eating noodles. [more inside]
Forever Professor
"Forever Professor" is a 30-minute documentary about Mark McKinley, a psychology professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio who collects talking clocks and watches. In fact, he holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of talking clocks. He has also attempted to be recognized for the largest collection of talking watches, an endeavour that has yet to bear fruit. His Youtube channel contains close to 200 short videos of some of the clocks in his collection. He also maintains the online International Society of Talking Clock Collectors Museum. [more inside]
no Dr. Chandra
In 1961, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign created a computer networking system that would have messaging, avatars, online gaming (and most famously, Empire), smileys, doodles, and message boards: How the PLATO system, a pre-internet online platform that first came to life at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the 1960s, quietly fostered some of the first digital natives. [more inside]
Looks like a fun guy
Art, awareness and the refugee crisis
"Irregulars" - a symbolic documentary about a refugee's journey, by Fabio Palmieri and Cyrille Kabore.
"Human Flow" (trailer) - a film about current refugee migration, by Ai Weiwei.
"Amadou Sumaila (portrait)" - from Passengers, a series by photographer César Dezfuli.
"Molti" - an installation, by artist Antonio Biasiucci. [more inside]
Patriotic trolling
What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon? In Bloomberg News Lauren Etter dives deeply into how trolls, targeted abuse, fake news, fake accounts, and Facebook help strengthen Philippine president Duterte and go after his enemies. [more inside]
"Their Spirits Were Trapped In Those Masks"
At the end of the Southern Plains or "Red River" wars in 1875, the U.S. War Department shipped seventy-two Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Caddo Nations prisoners of war held without formal charges or trial from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1878, the Smithsonian commissioned “life masks” — faces molded from clay — to be made of the Fort Marion prisoners. An American war trophy, the masks would become part of the United States' nationalistic propaganda effort to "depict indigenous peoples as vanishing, as nearly 'extinct,' and thus worthy of museum dioramas, not political rights." The masks are now stored in the Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology's collection at Harvard University. But to whom do they really belong? [more inside]
Cat memes from 1911
Kittens and Cats; a Book of Tales by Eulalie Osgood Grover.
The Chimney Map
The chimney map is one of only three known copies of a 17th century map of world produced by the Dutch engraver Gerald Valck, which was found stuffed up a chimney in Aberdeen and saved by the National Library of Scotland. The story of its finding, conservation and unravelling has been told across three short films, as well as in the library's magazine (pdf, pages 15-18).
Silent Night, Bloody Night
Jurassic Bunk
“It’s either really a new dinosaur, which would be awesome, or it’s been tampered with and I really hope that’s not the case" Ed Yong on the case of the bogus bones (SL The Atlantic). [more inside]
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