March 7, 2017
So you wear a hat...that's funny
the live podcast is a tresure Norm MacDonald Live is a weekly podcast hosted by Norm MacDonald and co-host Adam Eget. The show features interviews with comedians, actors, and other members of the entertainment community.
Adam Sandler
Bill Hader
Jokes
Carl Reiner
And much more. Worth a look. [more inside]
Adam Sandler
Bill Hader
Jokes
Carl Reiner
And much more. Worth a look. [more inside]
Three women recall their first vote in the NZ election of 1893
Listen to three women, Mrs. Dickson, Mrs Hills and Mrs Mankelow recall their first vote in the general election on November 28, 1893. Recorded in 1963. [more inside]
The friendship of a dog is precious.
Dogs, amirite? Use them for a pillow once and the next thing you know they're up in your grill trying to be your friend [music and cat snark]. [more inside]
Whale Lifts Up Kayakers With Its Back
Two kayakers paused to take a closer look at some whales off the coast of Argentina, but got an unexpected surprise when one of the giant creatures lifted their boat onto his back. The two very surprised humans on its back are taken along for the ride, but manage to keep their cool.
Masterpieces from the Kermitage
"If you raised the pig a smidge to adjust her relationship to the house, that threw off the balance of the frog to the pitchfork." Michael K. Frith, former Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions, on the making of Miss Piggy's American Gothique.
Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?
Some people think that to make an advance in mathematics is to invent something (perhaps it is to invent new uses for language). Others think that to make an advance in mathematics is to discover something (perhaps it is to discover facts about abstract objects that live in Plato's heaven). In Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?, Season 7, Episode 9 of the interview documentary series Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn talks with Roger Penrose, Mark Balaguer, Gregory Chaitin, Stephen Wolfram, and Frank Wilczek about whether mathematics is invented or discovered. [more inside]
The villain in your history
The Hamilton Hustle. Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder
The Mail Order American Dream
Kit houses, once a staple of suburbia, were complete, easy-to-assemble houses you could order from a catalog and have shipped via rail to your building site. Via the always-excellent McMansion Hell, you can learn more about the history of mail-order houses in America, and tips and tricks for identifying them in the wild. [more inside]
Imagine aquatic animals the size of elephants that we just can't find
The first underwater video (Washington Post article with embedded video) of True's beaked whales (Mesoplodon mirus) show a cohesive group of three adult or subadult whales swimming together in the Azores. The video was released in conjunction with a detailed new study in the journal PeerJ that combined data from strandings and sightings with genetic analyses of individual whales from both the northern and southern hemispheres (full paper online). [more inside]
of salary men, ikumen and lunchbox boys
Sweetness and Lightning's Counter-Hegemonic Masculinity -- Youtuber Pause and Select examines how one of lat year's most adorable anime series showcases the changing nature of masculinity in Japan.
Wheelchair man: Turning myself into a superhero
Mohammad Sayed was abandoned by his family in Afghanistan after his house was bombed and he was left paralysed. Now he has become a US citizen, and designed a comic book superhero - Wheelchair Man - based on his own life story. [more inside]
Iceland, Poland ...and America?
On March 8th ..."The International Women’s Strike or “A Day Without a Woman” is asking women to walk out of their jobs (if they can), abstain from both paid and unpaid labor, and take to the streets to emphasize the importance of their contributions to society and what is lost when they elect to withdraw them. No home-cooked dinners. No meetings. No cleaning". - The Only Way To Know if Striking Works Is To Do It (NyMag)
I'm a groan woman!
Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you. “Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from? (previously)
ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions -- Peter Rubin, Wired [more inside]
ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions -- Peter Rubin, Wired [more inside]
Let the teaching begin!
Speech, protest, and violence at Middlebury College. On March 2nd, Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute fellow and author of The Bell Curve (1994), visited Middlebury College to give a talk on Coming Apart (2012). [more inside]
There is nothing illusory in this tiny heaven.
Before illustrator and writer Maira Kalman's And The Pursuit of Happiness was made into a book, it was a series of opinion pieces for the New York Times. Starting with Celestial Harmony, Kalman pursues happiness, hats, dogs, uncertainty, history, loss, and cake. [more inside]
にゃんごすたー
Nothing is New: 500 year old economic theory works great for hedgefund
500 years ago, the School of Salamanca to the west of Madrid, reformulated the concept of natural law; stating that all humans have the same nature and the same rights to life and liberty. This was dismissed as a novelty (particularly in light of the views of Europeans towards the indigenous people of the Americas).
But this post is not about their take on ius gentium (rights of peoples). This post is about a 500 year old concept that a hedge fund in 2017 is using to achieve the best returns of it's peers. [more inside]
Single Cell Life
Musings on Iraq
Musings on Iraq. Since 2008, journalist Joel Wing has kept a comprehensive, often day-by-day account on the politics and military actions surrounding the ongoing war in Iraq. His blog entries are at length, detailed, and thoroughly cited. [more inside]
Western depictions of women in power from the Ancient Greeks onwards
If the deep cultural structures legitimating women's exclusion are as I have argued, gradualism is likely to take too long for me, thank you very much. We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured. To put it another way, if women aren't perceived to be fully within the structures of power, isn't it power that we need to redefine rather than women?–Women in Power by Mary Beard, also delivered in an extended version as a lecture, and she took questions afterwards. She discussed her essay and modern politics on the Talking Politics podcast (starting at 16:00).
What writers really do when they write
An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing one’s intention and then executing it does not make good art. Artists know this. According to Donald Barthelme: “The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do.”
F-rated
"Trapping the icky smell of your devil's doughnuts."
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