February 16, 2014
The Studio One Story
The Studio One Story. 2. Described by Chris Blackwell as the Motown of Jamaica, or ‘The University of Reggae’, Studio One is where the careers of literally hundreds of reggae artists began: Bob Marley and the Wailers, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Ken Boothe, The Skatalites, Burning Spear and Sugar Minott, to name but a few! Studio One is the ‘foundation’ label of Jamaican Reggae and Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd is seen by many as its father.
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Hijacked flight lands in Geneva
At 5:00pm Pacific Time, Ethiopian Flight 702, a Boeing 767-300 (registered ET-AMF) was flying over Sudan when it started squawking 7500. The transponder code, is supposed to indicate a “hijacking.”
With less than 25 minutes of fuel remaining, it landed safely in Geneva. [more inside]
Further refinements in the inhalation of marihuanas
Together, they resolved to invent a vaporizer of their own, one that would do for smoking what the iPod did for music. It would be the perfect meeting of form and function, a sleek, intuitive device that would make vaping “as quick as lighting up.” Why an Apple developer quit his job to help develop the Firefly, the elegant portable weed vaporizer.
Gentlemen
Gentlemen, Formerly. "A gentleman in 1720 could read Greek while mounting a running horse. Today’s gentleman reads GQ in the bathroom. From rapists to stylists, a history of the American gentleman." [more inside]
Look! Up in the Sky! It's a dot! It's a speck! It's the ISS!
When can I spot the Space Station? The International Space Station can easily be spotted with the naked eye. Because of its size (110m x 100m x 30m) it reflects very much sunlight. This simple tool will tell you all of the opportunities you can view the ISS over the next ten days, along with a brightness index and a map tracing its transit across your local sky. The red line shows where the ISS is sunlit and visible. On the blue line the ISS is in the Earth's shadow and invisible or it is less than 10° above the horizon. [more inside]
The Beatles: Anthology 4
Isolated mixes of vocal/instrumental elements of Beatles' recordings have been featured on MetaFilter previously - notably a breakdown of the elements of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the epic mix of the original Revolution 1/Revolution 9 session, and the vocal mix of the Abbey Road Long Medley. Since hearing that Long Medley mix, I've been enjoying a months-long trawl of YouTube, listening to all I can find in this vein, and identifying mixes of notable interest. [more inside]
Publish or perish
Look Who Nick Kristof’s Saving Now. Political scientist Corey Robin on today's public intellectuals, an "entire economy of unsung writers with PhDs," and what Nicholas Kristof doesn't understand when he writes academics have marginalizes themselves and "just don’t matter in today’s great debates." As Aaron Bady wrote, ”He only reads The New Yorker, and then complains that everyone doesn’t write for The New Yorker.”
On some level a director has to be a good general.
“But I think, Wes is by anyone’s definition, an auteur and there aren’t that many. Hollywood doesn’t really… that’s not their game anymore.” (previously)
American Promise
American Promise is a PBS documentary (live streaming through March 6) that follows two middle class African-American boys, Idris and Seun, who enter The Dalton School as young children, and follows them for 13 years. [more inside]
They killed the Giggler
How many people die in Death Wish 3? The answer may surprise you! (SLYT)
Putting off writing
Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators "Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out."
Victorian Calling Cards: Let's get acquianted, for fun and results
Victorian calling cards were a social grace, with their own detailed guidance for design and use (Archive.org web view of Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, by Emily Post, 1922). Calling or visiting cards ranged from basic engraved cards to rather elaborate pieces with flaps and frills, hand-tinting and transparent images, though men typically had more sparse cards. Men also could use acquaintance cards to politely declare their interest in a young lady, with text and/or illustrations.
How Wolves Change The Flow of Rivers
And then he died, of course.
Editta Sherman was a portrait photographer who shot celebrities from Elvis Presley to the young Angela Lansbury to Andy Warhol to Joe DiMaggio to Tilda Swinton. [more inside]
Before Blazing Saddles, America had not come to terms with the fart.
In 1975, Mel Brooks was riding high on the back-to-back successes of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, and he became the first person to be interviewed twice by Playboy Magazine.
Angel eyes, that old devil sent
"Angel Eyes" is a 1946 popular song composed by Matt Dennis, with lyrics by Earl Brent. It was introduced in the 1953 film, Jennifer. Because of its colourful harmonic changes "Angel Eyes" has become a popular jazz standard. When Sinatra held what he intended to be his farewell concert in 1971, he closed with "Angel Eyes". Some notable recordings include: Frank Sinatra 1958 (interpreted as a heartbroken drunk) , Bob Thompson & His Orchestra 1958, Anita O´Day 1960, Ella Fitzgerald 1960, Chet Baker 1975, Roberta Flack 1993, Sting 1995, Bruce Springsteen 1995 (at Sinatra's 80th birthday tribute), Aleka Kanellidou 2000, Fiona Apple 2007 [more inside]
More LaBeouffary
The Legitimizing of Shia LaBeouf... Let the conversation cease: “Shia is a committed, brilliant and fearless artist and will bring that commitment to anything he does. Shia is on a creative journey right now, and I am sure he is pleased with the conversations it is causing.” - David Ayer, Screenwriter. [more inside]
The Snows Of Sbarro's
In 2011, the upscale White Flint Shopping mall was closed and planned for demolition, but not before someone went in and photographed the interior and food court in all its pastel-neon-plastic 80s glory.
The California Drought: Water and Power
"During the medieval period, there was over a century of drought in the Southwest and California. The past repeats itself." After three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall, California faces its most severe drought emergency in decades. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the deserts of Southern California have been turned into livable spaces only by huge feats of engineering that divert massive amounts of water from other parts of the state and the country. Marc Reisner's 1986 book Cadillac Desert documents the history of acquiring and diverting water to the American Southwest. A four-part documentary based on the book was released in 1997. Part 1: Mulholland's Dream // Part 2: An American Nile // Part 3: The Mercy of Nature // Part 4: Last Oasis
All the bees for my necklace of enemies
Morally ambiguous honey badgers, or what happens when creative people get bored on Twitter.
The Miss Triggs Question: Mary Beard on the Public Voice of Women
"My aim here – and I acknowledge the irony of my being given the space to address the subject – is to take a long view, a very long view, on the culturally awkward relationship between the voice of women and the public sphere of speech-making, debate and comment ... We have to focus on the even more fundamental issues of how we have learned to hear the contributions of women or – going back to the cartoon for a moment – on what I’d like to call the ‘Miss Triggs question’. Not just, how does she get a word in edgeways? But how can we make ourselves more aware about the processes and prejudices that make us not listen to her." Mary Beard, "The Public Voice of Women," from the London Review of Books. [more inside]
"Looks like we're... looks like we're shy one horse."
The movie itself is a classic, and that greatness is evident right off the bat with one of the best opening scenes in film history. [more inside]
On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn
Michael Dunn was convicted on three counts of attempted murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of the first degree murder of Jordan Davis. Davis and friends were sitting in an SUV listening to music outside a convenience store, when Dunn initiated an argument with them that ended in Dunn firing 10 rounds into their vehicle, including several as they drove away. Dunn fled the scene and then remained silent for many hours before eventually claiming self-defense. Ta-Nehisi Coates interviewed Davis's mother in the days before the verdict, and in response to the verdict, he writes a sweeping indictment of America's treatment of young black men.
"We are all staying"
"In early 2013, roughly 300 West African refugees reached the German city of Hamburg, following a long and perilous journey from Libya...The Lampedusa refugees hoped to receive refugee status from the German state. But German authorities, deferring to EU guidelines, refused to provide them with any sort of accommodations, instead attempting to expel them from the city. As refugees, of course, they had nowhere else to go. So they decided to organize a solidarity campaign to counter the intimidation and bullying of the authorities." [more inside]
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