March 19, 2013
I used to be psychic, but I drank my way out of it
The Savage Wit Of Mark E Smith, frontman and only consistent member of English post-punk band The Fall.
Skydog
"The Allman Brothers Band produced the sound at the heart of Southern rock. At Fillmore East, the live double album that launched Duane and Gregg Allman into the rock stratosphere, was recorded 42 years ago this month. But on Oct. 29, 1971, just days after the record was certified gold, 24-year-old Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident. He left behind a wife and a 2-year-old daughter, Galadrielle.
Now, Galadrielle Allman has helped produce a compendium of her father's work. Skydog, titled after his nickname, is a seven-CD box set tracing his slide guitar virtuosity from his earliest days to his last.
Here, Galadrielle Allman speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about the role that music played in her father's life — and her own."
rrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnn
No One is Born Gay (or Straight): Here Are 5 Reasons Why
10 Fan letters from famous authors, to famous authors
Ask Nicola
Reel 2 Real: Sound at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Reel 2 Real: Sound at the Pitt Rivers Museum is a digitization project that is taking the archival field recordings of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford University's museum of ethnography and anthropology), digitizing them, and placing them online with Soundcloud. [more inside]
Imagine how fabulous that housewarming party will be.
The house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church is now a Gay Pride centre... and rainbow flag. I never knew I could type and tag a post while simultaneously laughing this hard.
ba boom
Operation Overlord
PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000 royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse sets, which include 2700+ images from the US and Canadian National Archives.
Please Pass the Snotwinkles
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Santa Fe officials are encouraging same-sex couples to apply for marriage licenses, pointing out that the state doesn't need to pass a marriage equality law because New Mexico law already allows same-sex marriage.
"There will be plenty of time to edit and stylize it later."
Victorian England and the American lockpicker
Given the failure of all previous picking attempts, the arrival on July 21 of a letter, headed “American Department, Crystal Palace,” at the firm’s offices likely brooked small concern. “An attempt will be made to open a lock of your manufacture on the door of a Strong-room at 34, Great George Street, Westminster, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 11 o'clock A.M. You are respectfully invited to be present, to witness the operation.”
Windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth, Australian study finds
Sickness being attributed to wind turbines is more likely to have been caused by people getting alarmed at the health warnings circulated by activists, an Australian study has found. Complaints of illness were far more prevalent in communities targeted by anti-windfarm groups, said the report's author, Simon Chapman, professor of public health at Sydney University. His report concludes that illnesses being blamed on windfarms are more than likely caused by the psychological effect of suggestions that the turbines make people ill, rather than by the turbines themselves. [more inside]
Hmmmm, Only $50,000....
With the current hard times a lot of organizations are looking for alternative funding sources. This is almost exactly not like that.
Iraq: 10 Years After Invasion
Iraq: 10 Years After Invasion. "The United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003 on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The mass destruction of the invasion, occupation, and civil war followed, and amplified the societal and health disintegration caused by the previous decade of sanctions. Iraqi lives and communities remain war-devastated ten years on. American military and contractor families struggle with the loss of loved ones as well as the emotional and economic burdens of living with long-term injuries and illnesses. Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion." [more inside]
In Russia, Office Escapes You
Monarch in the Middle
Amid the social and political transformations reshaping the Middle East, can King Abdullah II, the region's most pro-American Arab leader, liberalize Jordan, modernize its economy, and save his kingdom from capture by Islamist radicals? - Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic
In Kansas City, they wouldn't let him back on the bus.
The trip was fine. I've never seen that part of the country from the highway before. There just were a few incidents on my way home that chipped away at my resistance. I really do try to remember how incredibly fortunate I am. I really do. I just can get worn down.Freddie DeBoer messed up his airline reservation for a conference in Vegas, so ended up taking a bus home to Indiana. He meditates on the people he encountered on his trip in his blog.
The Parade of Horrors is Delayed
The Supreme Court has held that the First Sale Doctrine applies to copyrighted material manufactured and sold abroad. (Previously) [more inside]
Bill Stout Bootleg Record Cover Art
If anyone has heard of artist Bill Stout, it is probably because of his paintings of prehistoric life, or perhaps you recognize some of his movie poster art. Early in his career, Stout produced cover art for bootleg records issued by the Trademark of Quality label. The artist recently published a three-part interview about his work for that label. It has lots of wonderful anecdotes, but most importantly, lots of great art. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
The Canon Drone
We've all seen it. The off-white UAV is seen side on, nose tilted slightly down, a stubby missile caught at the moment of launch beneath it, a blue and grey landscape of treeless mountains behind it. There's no motion blur and none of the markings on the aircraft have been obfuscated. It's a perfect shot. Except for one or two details. [more inside]
Mouth music
Canntaireachd (Scottish Gaelic: literally, "chanting"; Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [kʰãũn̪ˠt̪ɛɾʲəxk]) is the ancient Scottish Highland method of noting classical pipe music or Ceòl Mòr by a combination of definite syllables, by which means the various tunes could be more easily recollected by the learner, and could be more easily transmitted orally. [more inside]
So much more sense this way
"Our brackets have culled out all of the superfluous information and reduced the [NCAA] tournament to what matters most: colors and logos."
1,000 troops, 27 cannon, 3,000 cannonballs ... that's what it takes.
"A Scottish version of Storm’s End, impregnable, unbreakable." Freelance travel blogger Mike Sowden is waxing quite eloquent about Scotland in a series of on-going posts. His most recent entry takes on not only Edinburgh Castle (even comparing it to a certain magically-defended castle in Westeros), but the long-long-ago violent geology that birthed its base, as well as that of Arthur's Seat nearby.
"God hates fags." - Michelle Shocked, 3/17/13
Folksinger and self-described "sophisticated hillbilly" (and born-again Christian) Michelle Shocked went onstage at Yoshi's in San Francisco Sunday night for what audience members assumed would be a traditional folk concert. Into her second set, she began an anti-gay rant that included her saying, "When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back." She also reportedly told fans, "You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.'" Most of the audience walked out, and the staffers at Yoshi's kicked her offstage and banned her for life.
Grappling for survival
Wrestling Out Of The Olympics - The Gods Must Be Crazy Mad
The whole lucrative sham of it all was exposed once again this week when the executive board of the IOC — Informal Motto: "Me Some Too, Yes?" — recommended that wrestling be dropped as an Olympic sport in the 2020 Summer Games, which are supposed to be held in Istanbul, Tokyo, or Madrid, depending on whose checks clear first, I believe. According to the board, wrestling is no longer a "core sport" in the Olympics and it will have to petition for inclusion in 2020 along with, and I am not making this up, sport climbing and wakeboarding. This is terrific. Why don't we just hold the Olympics in an REI outlet store somewhere?[more inside]
Nagel on the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature
Andrew Ferguson explains and defends eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has been stirring up outraged refutations (e.g. here or here) with his new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Also in the defense column is philosopher Edward Feser's extensive series on Nagel's book.
Compare and contrast, bits vs dead trees
As lexicographers revel in the capabilities of online dictionaries, one person notes the death of print encyclopedias.
E1M1: City 17
"Urgent… Have possibility of taking photos… Send film" -Auschwitz 1944
Is looking at photographs like those of the bloody birth of Bangladesh (possibly NSFW? one photo is of corpses) "an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence?" In The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to voyeuristic tendencies. An excerpt.
flashing fish brains
Predicting is hard, especially the future
"During a summer in the late 1960s I discovered an easy and certain method of predicting the future. Not my own future, the next turn of the card, or market conditions next month or next year, but the future of the world lying far ahead. It was quite simple. All that was needed was to take the reigning assumptions about what the future was likely to hold, and reverse them. Not modify, negate, or question, but reverse." -- science fiction critic and writer John Clute discusses the secret of predicting the future for Lapham's Quarterly's Future theme issue.
Bill Walton on Boris Diaw
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