The day in posts: 4/6/2015

April 6, 2015

The truck drivers' troubadour

For years, Esakhelvi reigned supreme and unchallenged, in an universe that existed parallel to the cultured music salons of the elite. This was the world of the working classes of Pakistan, especially it seems the truck and long distance bus drivers. His songs were not classically derived, and his ghazals and folk songs were rendered somehow differently. Before Esakhelvi's arrival on the scene there really was nothing like him.
posted by bardophile at 10:36 PM PST - 5 comments

🌎? 🎨? 🎌?

Lizardpoint [PREVIOUSLY] used to host a decent amount of geography quizzes. If you haven't visited in a while, though, they've vastly expanded. So yeah, you can still ~~kick yourself for not knowing where "Asia" is~~ improve your knowledge of our great planet — but now you can also: quiz yourself ~~on how to distinguish a stick figure from a the Vitruvian Man~~ about the world of Art; learn to ~~tell one crook from another~~ identify world leaders and historical figures; become an expert ~~in ugly dress patterns~~ vexillologist. There's also weekly Geography trivia, study guides and timelines, and games for ~~those of us who've had enough of being made to feel dumb~~ kids. So prepare to ~~boast about how smart you are in the comments section~~ expand your worldly horizons!
posted by not_on_display at 8:26 PM PST - 11 comments

The current approved written history of the Negroni goes like this: Count Camilo Negroni, a supposedly flamboyant Italian gentleman who was obsessed with American culture, walked into a bar in Florence one day and ordered an Americano with gin in place of the soda water.… Now that’s a great story. But it’s a little suspect. Normally, when people substitute something in a drink, it’s a one-to-one substitution. We normally swap vodka for gin. Or lime for lemon. Nobody in their right mind would swap gin for soda water. It’s just not natural. But supposedly that’s what Count Negroni came up with, and he inadvertently spawned an entire category of drinks. The Bijou. The Louisiane. The Tipperary.… But then the story gets even stranger.

posted by Lexica at 4:25 PM PST - 60 comments

Out With The Caraway, In With The Ginger

FiveThirtyEight tracks the trends in US spice consumption over the last 50 years.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:22 PM PST - 64 comments

New Anti-Mine Technologies For The Deep Blue Sea

From Sailors To Robots: A Revolution In Clearing Mines How primitive can “modern” mine warfare get? At least as recently as the 1990s, US sailors hunting mines spent a lot of time shooting dead sheep. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 3:12 PM PST - 11 comments

That dystopian fiction need not be confined to the developed world.

"Why the hero of my YA dystopian novel had to be an angry young Indian girl." [Guardian Books]

Laxmi Hariharan challenges the domination of dystopian western worlds in teen novels, why not a dystopian Asia or Latin America? And how it’s time for the stereotype-busting Angry Young (Indian) Girl to claim centre-stage.

posted by Fizz at 1:24 PM PST - 25 comments

There's something fishy about fish oil

Fish oil: it's been touted as a solution to heart health, dementia, glaucoma, and a host of other ailments. Unfortunately, it turns out that most of the evidence for its benefits is equivocal at best. And it turns out that fish oil isn't particularly useful for our pets, either. Worse, it turns out that the foundational study that kicked off interest in fish oil as a supplement is not quite as promising for fish oils as it is usually construed and cited. Given that fish oil can induce strokes in high quantities (and may interfere with treatments like chemotherapy), is poorly regulated, and is expensive, should we be promoting fish oil supplements as strongly as we do?
posted by sciatrix at 11:33 AM PST - 113 comments

Bradley Ellison and the Homies, picking the pockets of little kiddies

Bradley Ellison, a.k.a. Sugarman, is "one of coin-op's most colorful characters." Vice profiled Ellison on his vending machine empire (also on YouTube, both with NSFW language) and his most lucrative toys, Homies, which he brought to the East Coast from David Gonzales' Los Angeles-based line of miniature figures. In 2003, New York Times profiled the minifigs, which Ellison credits for the downfall of his main moneymaker. But Ellison keeps plugging on, and Homies are still around (warning: auto-playing music).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:21 AM PST - 5 comments

"The audience can be played like a musical instrument."

I wanted to know why Emmett Kelly was such a big name. I mean there was no shortage of tramp clowns. Why was he a star? I was going to make it my business to find out. When the famous Joey[3] joined on in Altoona, I watched every thing he did. There wasn’t much to watch. He had no props. He did no bits. He did not participate in the producing clown’s gags. He simply wandered around eating leaves from a head of cabbage. Mostly, he just sat in the audience, in full costume, looking sad, like Chaplin’s little tramp, eating cabbage. I was mystified, and disappointed. Why would a sharp guy like George A. hire such a lame act to do practically nothing? I didn’t get it. What’s so funny about eating raw cabbage? …

by Lee Kolozsy at Sideshow World [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:59 AM PST - 22 comments