March 6, 2014
Let's Get Started!
Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville and musical guest Paloma Faith were recently on The Graham Norton Show. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. This may possibly be the best episode of this or any talk show that will ever exist.
"I guess I’m an artist. That’s my super power."
A short and sweet 10-minute documentary on musician and artist Daniel Johnston. [SLYT] [more inside]
The past is a foreign country, also the present
While you can still follow live events in the Ukraine, with either the compulsively complete live Reddit feed or the constantly updated BBC feed being good choices, there has been increasingly useful analyses of the history and politics of the situation. Yale Professor Timothy Snyder, an expert on the region, wrote a piece in the New York Review of Books describing the roots of the recent uprising, with a great overview of how "people associated with Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Armenian, Polish, and Jewish culture have died in a revolution that was started by a Muslim." Other history is provided by a detailed explainer by the Guardian, in maps by National Geographic, and the dueling arguments about the roots of the conflict from the the semi-official Russia Today and the US State Department.
Miles and Miles of No-Man's Land
"Certainly, there appears to be a large correlation between artists and depression. But I would argue that artistic expression is not a symptom of depression so much as a response to it. I see writing as an act of resistance against an occupying enemy who means to kill me. It’s why I’m writing this now." YA author Libba Bray on living with depression.
Something Doctory to tide us over
Artist Paul Hanley illustrated a 58 figure all-Doctor canonicity-be-damned "Who's Who?" of sorts titled "The Infinite Doctor" 53 men, 4 women, all Doctor. Alternate annotated version.
live to your last day
Last Day for Last Abortion Clinic in the Rio Grande. “Honestly, I think they’ll go south of the border, if they have to,” said a 23-year-old woman who was one of the last patients to be seen at the clinic and who traveled to San Antonio for her abortion last month. “It’s cheaper and it’s closer. To go to San Antonio is so much more of a hassle and costs a lot more.”
Coach Dean Smith's Last Fight
Coach Dean Smith once led the Carolina Tarheels to a record number of victories. Now, at age 83, dementia has robbed him of the memories of the victories his teams won and the players and families who he so greatly impacted. Tommy Tomlinson pens a thoughtful and elegiac article that's as much about dementia as it is about the Tarheels and the winningest coach in men's basketball* *at time of retirement.
"We look at our employees as adults."
Sean Blanda asks, "Do We Really Need Managers?" He interviews one of the founders of Treehouse, a startup company which has transitioned to a structure with no one in a traditional management role. To show that such an approach can work in the long term, Blanda refers to Gore - managerless since 1958. [more inside]
THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE IS PICTURED IN THEIR SPEECH.
This book deals with the Dialect of the English Language that is spoken in Ireland. As the Life of a people—according to our motto—is pictured in their speech, our picture ought to be a good one, for two languages were concerned in it—Irish and English. ... Here for the first time—in this little volume of mine—our Anglo-Irish Dialect is subjected to detailed analysis and systematic classification.P.W. Joyce's 1910 work, "English as We Speak it in Ireland," is a fascinating chronicle of a language's life, and no mistake. [more inside]
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."
Sherwin Nuland, surgeon and award-winning author who challenged idea of dignified death, has died at age 83. The son of first generation immigrants, Nuland survived a troubled childhood and succeeded in medical school only to face near-paralyzing depression, for which he was successfully treated with electroconvulsive therapy (first-person TED talk). His award-winning book, "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter", included realistic descriptions of the process of death and helped to frame the national debate on assisted suicide. [more inside]
My Voice Is Bleach / I'm Only Fluent In Apologies
Hieu Nguyen, at the 2013 National Poetry Slam, on losing your language and your culture.
I love living in the future.
Engaging with trolls
The Articulate Troll. Giant Bomb's Patrick Klepek has a long conversation with a troll. The troll was originally one of the ones featured in Klepek's article Our Internet Empathy Problem, written about the torrent of abuse aimed at Dong Nguyen for pulling Flappy Bird. [more inside]
"Did I mention I'm Jewish?"
"If it thunders, the wild beasts shall undo the humans."
Three thousand years ago, more or less, a Tyrrhenian farmer was working his land when a little boy appeared before the blade of the plow, as suddenly as though he'd risen from below the ground, or had been transformed from a clod of earth. This boy, who was called Tages, had the wizened face of an old man and the gift of prophecy, and he immediately began to speak on how the future might be discovered. The twelve Etruscan peoples gathered around to listen to him and write down his teachings, from which two schools of divination would develop: haruspicy (the future read in the livers of sheep) and brontoscopy (the future read in thunder.) Translated excerpts from a brontoscopic calendar, which assigns meaning to thunder on every day of the lunar year, may be found here.
How making 'Veronica Mars' changed the movie business.
Ever since Rob Thomas’s beloved TV show Veronica Mars got canceled, he’s wanted to make it into a movie. Turns out all he needed was the help of 91,585 of his biggest fans. [more inside]
Swimming with sharks
Is that the world's smallest violin I hear playing?
Forbes has brought forth its annual string-of-zeroes-envy/porn-list of the world's gazillionaires. Missing from the list is Eike Batista, recently the seventh wealthiest individual in the world who lost over 99% of his wealth in eighteen months and his assets are being sold off. [more inside]
Finger-snap your way to nirvana
Have you heard The Whistler? Old time radio mystery and horror
I am The Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes... I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak. So tonight, I tell you this story.... If you lived near a west coast CBS radio affiliate between May 16, 1942 and September 22, 1955, you probably heard The Whistler, or at least knew of the radio mystery series that was somewhat in the style of the better-known franchise, The Shadow. If you missed it, you can catch up on Archive.org, with selections from 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 and '52, or browse through a collection of 502 episodes. [more inside]
Ended, the Clone Wars has.
On March 7th, 2014, Star Wars: The Clone Wars series comes to a close with the release on Netflix of the Lost Missions, 13 final episodes that represent a shortened season 6. Hyping the release is a nearly three minute long trailer which reveals, among other things, foreshadowing of Order 66, the secret order to eliminate the Jedi programmed into the clone army, and of force ghosts, among trying to help tie the prequel films together. [more inside]
von Karajan in diapers
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. (Wiki). Case in point (SLYT)
Heigh Ho, to Europa we will go
NASA's 2015 budget request has been released (PDF, OMB Summary), with an interesting mission study : $15 million to look at a unmanned mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. Why Europa? It may have more water than Earth, sloshing around under a thick ice, which makes it a major contender for harboring life. Don't get too excited just yet though. The mission would't launch until around 2025 and would arrive in Jupiter's orbit in the early 2030s. That's a long way off, but a particular US Congressman really wants this mission to happen.
Foreigners Abroad.
Full Spectrum Warrior
There is no center
"On Monday, veteran Washington Post editor and New Yorker contributor Marc Fisher published a deeply reported, scrupulous Columbia Journalism Review cover story on how the Internet’s metabolism and economy [including instant-headline video start-up NowThisNews], which places a premium on being first to a story and on attracting clicks, has led to compromises when it comes to the whole accuracy thing. As if on cue, a fun news story has been making the rounds in the past few days: A survey found that 11 percent of Americans believe that "HTML" is a sexually transmitted disease. Other findings included that 20 percent believe a "motherboard" is a cruise-ship deck and 15 percent believe "software" is a type of clothing. The survey itself... may not exist." -- TNR on the Circular Fact Checking ecosystem of online news reporting.
Administrative, not faculty, salaries are driving rising tuition
Administrator Hiring Drove 28% Boom in Higher-Ed Work Force, Report Says The report, "Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive: Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education," says that new administrative positions—particularly in student services—drove a 28-percent expansion of the higher-ed work force from 2000 to 2012...What’s more, the report says, the number of full-time faculty and staff members per professional or managerial administrator has declined 40 percent, to around 2.5 to 1. Full-time faculty members also lost ground to part-time instructors (who now compose half of the instructional staff at most types of colleges)...And the kicker: You can’t blame faculty salaries for the rise in tuition. Faculty salaries were "essentially flat" from 2000 to 2012, the report says. And "we didn't see the savings that we would have expected from the shift to part-time faculty," said Donna M. Desrochers, an author of the report.
The Face Behind Bitcoin
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection." Newsweek claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. [more inside]
From the... erm... more than 5 boroughs.
narcoleptic squirrel song
a song.... about a narcoleptic squirrel...
and, for those of you with little kids, LOTS of neat songs (including "kitten sleeping in a cup", "Shark Cat" , and, my own favorite "Snow Dogs")
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