June 10, 2014
Broken Welds and Promises
Troubled Welds on the Bay Bridge: How mismanagement and an inexperienced contractor built a bridge whose stability in an earthquake is in question [more inside]
Cause of death "Hamburger Game"
Avant-Garde in a Different Key: Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind
Act 1, scene 1. "The stage directions read, “Vienna. The Ringstrasse promenade at Sirk Corner. Flags wave from the buildings. Soldiers marching by are cheered by the onlookers. General excitement. The crowd breaks up into small groups.”[2] The newsboys with their “Extra Extra,” announcing the outbreak of war, are interrupted by a drunk demonstrator who shouts “Down with Serbia! Hurrah for the Hapsburgs! Hurrah! For S-e-r-bia!” and is immediately kicked in the pants for his mistake (LTM, p. 69). A crook and a prostitute exchange insults, even as two army contractors, talking of possible bribes the rich will use to avoid the draft, cite Bismarck’s words, in Neue Freie Presse (Vienna’s major newspaper at the time of the assassination of the archduke in Serbia), to the effect that the Austrians deserve kissing. One officer tells another that war is “unanwendbar” (of no use) when he really means, as his friend points out, “unabwendbar” (unavoidable) (LTM, pp. 70–71). A patriotic citizen praises the coming conflict as a holy war of defense against “encirclement” by hostile forces, and the crowd responds by making up rhymes (in Viennese dialect) denigrating the enemy (LTM, p. 72)." [more inside]
The unbelievable truth
On-Street Pedestrian Parking, or, Parklets
Parklets! Parklets are popping up everywhere! Parklets are beautiful! A brief history tells of how parklets started in San Francisco with PARKing Day, a topic previously covered. [more inside]
"On a cloud I saw a child, and he laughing said to me…"
The book is considered the rarest of Sendak’s published work — so rare that it’s practically impossible for even art historians to get their eyes on a copy for scholarly work. To commemorate the 86th birthday of Maurice Sendak (previously), Maria Popova (previously) has published scans of illustrations Sendak did for an ultra-ultra-rare edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence.
You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul
Inge Morath was invited by Robert Capa to become one of the first female members of Magnum
and is perhaps best known for her stills in 1960 on the set of The Misfits.
High quality reportage photography, where she met Arthur Miller who was to become her husband.
Not so well known is the conceptual Masks series with Saul Steinberg shot over several years.
High quality reportage photography, where she met Arthur Miller who was to become her husband.
Not so well known is the conceptual Masks series with Saul Steinberg shot over several years.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor defeated by Tea Party challenger Dave Brat
United States Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, has lost the Republican primary election in Virginia's 7th Congressional District to Dave Brat, a political newcomer and economics professor at Randolph-Macon College. [more inside]
"And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."
"Why I'm sending 200 copies of Little Brother to a high-school in Pensacola, FL." [boing boing] "The principal of Booker T Washington High in Pensacola FL cancelled the school's One School/One Book summer reading program rather than letting all the kids go through with the previously approved assignment to read Little Brother, the bestselling young adult novel by Cory Doctorow. With Cory and Tor Books' help, the teachers are fighting back." [VIDEO RESPONSE]
New Aleister Crowley biography by Gary Lachman
Gary Lachman, occult author and ex-Blondie bass player, has just published a new biography of Aleister Crowley, Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World. Excerpts from the book are online here and here. He is interviewed on the Expanding Mind podcast with Erik Davis and Maja D'Aoust here. [more inside]
The air was humid with a microclimate of marijuana
The Believer takes a longform look at Humboldt County's marijuana cultivation culture. Since the early ’70s, when growing began to replace a foundering timber industry in Humboldt, reliance on the marijuana economy has only increased. By 2012, it was thought that marijuana accounted for one billion of the county’s four-billion-dollar economy. During my stay, I don’t remember seeing a clothing store, bookstore, supermarket, bar, restaurant, supply shop, gas station, repair shop, pharmacy, or burrito shack that wasn’t patronized by someone with direct ties to a pot farm. You could smell the skunk, see the twenties. In parkivng lots, souped-up grower trucks growled by—mostly Toyotas, a status symbol in Humboldt. Somewhere along the way, that back-to-the-land exodus begun in San Francisco some forty years ago, when poor hippies left the city and went north, into the woods, in search of a simpler, cheaper life, their own piece of Arcadia on which food and intoxicants alike could be grown, to offer a thumbnail history—somewhere along the way, that movement morphed into a thriving industry.
Wodehouse on Conan Doyle
Wodehouse on Conan Doyle. I have noted before, while reading Right Ho, Jeeves, how much it draws from and parodies the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In fact, the whole book can be read as if Bertie Wooster is Sherlock Holmes, or at least that he imagines himself to be. [more inside]
So many floating tone arms!
When the Real Nazis Start Teaming Up With the Grammar Nazis
Us vs Them, again, and always.
When money's tight, humans define 'people like me' as more deserving. [LATimes link, user privacy settings in browser]. 'The recession from which the United States is recovering, unemployment among blacks and Latinos has been deeper and more entrenched; incomes in black and Latino communities have fallen more sharply; and recovery has been slower and far less complete. Labor economists cite a host of structural and institutional reasons for these racial and ethnic disparities - that African Americans, for instance, are more likely to be employed in hard-hit public sector or manufacturing jobs than in business or knowledge-based industries. But new findings from a psychology lab suggest another powerful contributor: in circumstances of scarcity, whites see blacks as blacker and are more likely to identify those of ambiguous or mixed race as black. And given the opportunity to divvy up scarce resources, whites are stingier with those of color than they are to those they identify as white.' [more inside]
We all know things are bad for LGBT people in Russia, right?
In fact, we have no idea. "LGBT organizations declared foreign agents in one fell swoop, gays being blacklisted by banks, employers, and landlords—welcome to the new reality of being LGBT under Putin." [more inside]
24 Russian Photographers
"I think about race and racism every day of my life."
The Racism Beat - Cord Jefferson writes about the repetitive mental strain of being a writer on racism.
Supermarket slave trail
A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand are integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco.So it turns out many of the prawns on sale at your local supermarket are produced by slave labour.
Take it easy babe
Why should I have to hear about a guy comparing his girlfriend to a dog while I’m buying vegetables? [more inside]
"Chess has been called the drosophila of artificial intelligence"
"Just because we have the best hammer"
Presdient Obama gave a speech (video, transcript) at the United States Military Academy last month that outlined American foreign policy.
Reaction has been mixed. [more inside]
The T in February, backwards and forwards.
An interactive visualization of Boston's subway system in February. With it, you can see where trains on the red, blue, and orange lines were at any moment on February 3 were in space and along their paths between stations, among many other things. [more inside]
Not Alone.
"Not Alone" is the title of the first report of The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. This report comes after a number of incidents of sexual assault were under-investigated or ignored at numerous college campus' in the US. [more inside]
There are those who said this day would never come...
A year ago, Microsoft was crucified in the press for the PR fiasco of the Xbox One, with rival Sony winning thunderous applause for its PS4 by simply maintaining the status quo.
But after doing a 360 180 on its hated policies, Redmond is attempting to close the gap with the most valuable package deal since The Orange Box.
A remarkable feat of engineering, Halo: The Master Chief Collection will feature on a single disc the complete HD-remastered campaigns of Halos 1-4 alongside Ridley Scott's Nightfall, the Halo 5 beta, and the holy grail of Xbox gaming: every last one of the series' 100+ multiplayer maps in a single unified matchmaking system incorporating the original engines, gameplay mechanics, and idiosyncrasies of each.
Ten years after Halo 2 (and four years after MS shut the taps), IGN suspects a plan by 343 to rekindle (and data-mine) Bungie's magic for an uncertain Halo 5, while Eurogamer welcomes the return of what it calls online FPS's peak. [More reaction: NeoGAF - Ars Technica - Reddit]
Bungie, meanwhile, stood with Sony to showcase its upcoming Destiny, the vaunted space epic that will beta this summer before facing its revamped forerunners later this year. More E3 coverage: Microsoft (5min) - Sony (5min) - Nintendo (airing noon EST) - SW: Battlefront - AC: Unity - MGS5: The Phantom Pain - Evolve - No Man's Sky - The Order: 1886 - Sunset Overdrive - Grim Fandango - Bloodborne - Arkham Knight - Scalebound - Mortal Kombat X - The Division - LittleBigPlanet 3 - Inside - Uncharted 4 - Crackdown
40 Maps about food in America
All That He Left Behind
In 1965, Army Pfc. Pierre Mathieu Van Wissem left two boxes of personal belongings with his Okinawan landlord, Seikichi Tamanaha. “I decided to keep them for him because I know how much they meant to him,” [Tamanaha] said. “All these years, I had some hope that he would come back one of these days to pick them up.” The soldier never returned. But nearly 50 years after the landlord promised he'd keep the boxes safe, he reached out across the world to return them to Van Wissem’s children. From Stars and Stripes: Returned photos reveal a father never known, 50-year-old promise kept.
First they came for your raw milk, then your Parmigiano Reggiano
This week the FDA announced it will not permit American cheesemakers to age cheese on wooden boards, potentially destroying the ability to make or import a wide variety of artisanal cheeses. Despite being legal in the various cheese making states and having been used for hundreds of years, the FDA is cracking down under the Food Safety Modernization Act. A sampling of cheeses impacted: Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Cabot Clothbound, Marieke Feonegreek, Bleu Mont Bandaged Cheddar, along with parmesan, aged cheddar and the only American produced Limburger. [more inside]
Conducting Idina Menzel from the bathroom at Radio City
John, Paul, George, Ringo need not apply
Finding the Beatles too intense, too lyrical? Try 101 Strings Imagine a person who in the late sixties decided that the Beatles were too intense, too opinionated for them; they loved the music but not the message. That person could get just what they wanted in the form of the 101 Strings
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