July 16, 2012
A Writer, and a Friend, of the Highest Class
Journalist and critic AA Gill writes a moving, heartfelt and beautiful tribute to young colleague Amy Turner [more inside]
Gates
The Gates Foundation's Leveraged Philanthropy: Corporate Profit Versus Humanity
Part I on the Gates Foundation's international aid projects and II on Gates' domestic education projects. [more inside]
Part I on the Gates Foundation's international aid projects and II on Gates' domestic education projects. [more inside]
3D Smith Charts
Bad, Bad Lori Arnold
How comedian Tom Arnold's little sister Lori started the Midwest meth epidemic. (NSFW Playboy link: Instapaper, Readability mirrors.) [more inside]
A Queer and Pleasant Danger
Kitty Wells now a Honky Tonk Angel
Kitty Wells, a pioneer of women in country music died today at the age of 92. Her first big hit, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, was a woman's reply to the Hank Thompson song, Wild Side of Life. [more inside]
Jobs not Jails
"We don’t hire homies to bake bread. We bake bread to hire homies"--Father Gregory Boyle, Jesuit Priest and founder of Homeboy Industries. [more inside]
Kirby's CIA Connection
"At least we aren't BP"
In light of today's news that one of two Shell ships slated to drill exploratory oil wells in the Arctic waters of Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas had slipped its moorings and was headed towards Dutch Harbor, in Alaska's Aleutian Islands... check out a collaboration between the Yes Men and Greenpeace that's been online since June: arcticready.com (Twitter) -- an elaborate site spoofing Royal Dutch Shell Plc, who have uh... promised not to sue.
Google’s Marissa Mayer Becomes Yahoo’s Chief
Yahoo CEO: Tim Koogle, Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz, Tim Morse, Scott Thompson, Ross Levinsohn, Google's Marissa Mayer. Maybe they got it right this time?
What happened with Iceland?
The thick red line.
October 14, 2010: A breach at a bauxite processing plant spilled a million cubic meters of red sludge across the countryside near Ajka, Hungary, killing nine people. Six months later, photographer Palíndromo Mészáros took photos of the disaster site, abandoned save for The Red Line. (via) [more inside]
A Culture of Clutter
Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors, a new book by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), is the conclusion of an unprecedented nine-year interdisciplinary study of the middle-class American home. A team of archaeologists, anthropologists and other social scientists studied the home life of 32 two-income, middle-class families in Los Angeles. What they found was a lifestyle struggling with consumerism, and a staggering accumulation of possessions:
“The first household assemblage we analyzed, of Family 27, resulted in a tally of 2,260 visible possessions in the first three rooms coded (two bedrooms and the living room),” and that didn’t include “untold numbers of items tucked into dresser drawers, boxes and cabinets or items positioned behind other items.”[more inside]
Let's hope the Olympic Village was deisgned with adequate closet space...
The Advocate has compiled a list of all of the openly LGBT athletes who will be competing in the 2012 Olympics. Considering that 10,500 competitors will be traveling to London this summer, it's a very short list. (Warning: gratuitous pagination)
He has been blessed with size
"The more ghoulish and extreme the show becomes, ...the more accurately it captures the reality of the cartels and their business."
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."
Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, died today at age 79. According to Covey's family, the death was due to "the residual effects of a bike accident he suffered this past April." The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People has sold more than 20 million copies since its initial publication in 1989, and is one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential Business Management Books." 7 Habits popularized the concepts of "win/win," "interdependence," and "paradigm shift" in self-help and managerial vocabularies.
"YOU FEEL ME!"
Fall Onto Your Knees For The Hammond Lord!
R.I.P. Jon Lord of Deep Purple. Fused heavy psychedelic rock with classical music. Helped invent heavy metal.
Because proper heavy metal requires an electric organ.
Wikipedia
Reflexions on abstract knowledge
"Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times." -Abraham Flexner, in his 1939 Harper's Article "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" (available at Harper's for money or in PDF from the IAS for free)
The Myth of the Fourth Estate
What is that? Is that a red pen? No, that's not a red pen. That's a rock.
Where Are Your Keys? (WAYK) is a language-learning game that starts with identifying a few simple objects and builds into a conversation dealing with abstract concepts — in the space of an hour or two, with minimal supplies. [more inside]
To find out whether there is an afterlife, turn to page 92
Safari
Jennifer Egan's short story Safari can be read at NewYorker.com (~6600 words), or can be read to you in a wonderful performance by Hope Davis (59:00). Jennifer Egan previously.
"Where were these screaming people a decade ago?"
Prometheus: rebuilding hallowed vfx space
Good evening... and EAT LASER DEATH!
Note: object sizes are not to scale.
Why wouldn't Blind Joe Death be in the shot?
Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store. A frame-by-frame archeology of the records and magazines in the Chelsea Drug Store scene of A Clockwork Orange. [NSFW]
Not like the Queen, but like John Hurt
"We thought we were hosts like the queen is at a posh garden party, when actually we're hosts in the way that John Hurt is in Alien." As the Olympics approach, the scandals, inconveniences, mistakes and problems keep mounting, ranging from the frustrating through the comic to the tragic. For your appreciation, a picture of the London Olympics 2012. [more inside]
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