December 20, 2015
"Folks at NPR thought, 'Oh good grief, we're selling out to Hollywood.'"
In 1981, NPR affiliate station KUSC hatched a bold plan to adapt George Lucas’ Star Wars for radio. Easily the most visual film of the last decade, Star Wars as a listening experience seemed like an unlikely idea, but Lucas sold them the rights to adapt the hit movie for one dollar, and opened the Lucasfilm vaults to the show’s producers: Star Wars sound effects would be available to them in their raw form, along with every note of John Williams’ music. The cast was a mixture of original Star Wars cast members, Hollywood veterans, and future TV and movie stars still in the early stages of their careers. Novelist Brian Daley and Director John Madden then turned the first three films into "movies to watch with your eyes closed." [more inside]
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time
Mincemeat, no I mean real mincemeat
Around Christmas weird vestigial foods reappear. Fruitcake, eggnog, and weirdest and in America all but forgotten: mincemeat pie. The modern take is a sort of sugary glop made by grinding dried fruit, leaving even the homemade stuff mostly miserable and pointless. But it wasn't always like that way as the late (previously) Cliff Doerksen noted. [more inside]
Animation by René Jodoin
Spheres is a short 1969 animation by René Jodoin and Norman McLaren, soundtrack by Glenn Gould, published by the National Film Board of Canada. [more inside]
RIP Rosie Roach
"A professor at Texas A&M University posted these photos to Facebook. 'There has been a dead cockroach in the Anthropology building's stairwell for at least two weeks. Some enterprising person has now made her a little shrine.'" Things escalated from there.
The Adventures of Edward the Less
Back when the Mystery Science Theater guys were still on the Sci-Fi Channel, they made a series of short (very) limited animation cartoons called The Adventures of Edward the Less, a silly Lord of the Rings parody. It seems to have been narrated by the wonderfully-voiced Mike Dodge (RIP). While hard to come by for a while, the whole series is now on YouTube. (Previously) [more inside]
By the book
What A “Racebent” Hermione Granger Really Represents", an essay of increases interest given casting for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
the practice of holding space
Heather Plett: What it means to “hold space” for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well (via) [more inside]
From jackal to giraffe language: a workshop on nonviolent communication
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg's talk on nonviolent communication is wise, practical and surprisingly funny.
Devil's Shingle
"Before leaving this line, mention must be made of a method of riding down the track employed by track maintenance men and long since banned. Wood and metal seats some 3 ft. × 1 ft. were made to fit over the rack rail. These were known as slide-boards, or more popularly, as ‘Devil’s Shingles’. Seated on these, controlling (sometimes) the speed with hand brakes, the men would career down the mountainside. The record time for the trip — as we have said, 3 1/4 miles — was 2 3/4 minutes!" [more inside]
“If money is all that you love, then that's what you'll receive.”
A Darth Vader waffle maker? You really shouldn’t have…by David Mitchell [The Guardian]
“Star Wars, it turns out, is the most ambitious, enterprising and impressive exercise in the marketing of crap ever conceived by man. Crap, that is, apart from the toys. I have to make an exception for the toys because, as a child, I was an enthusiastic collector of Star Wars figures and spaceships. [...] But, toys aside, it really is crap. Anyone who enjoys their Stormtrooper single duvet cover set more than watching The Empire Strikes Back is a very odd person indeed – and unlikely ever to be in the market for a Stormtrooper double duvet cover set. These are all things that you either don’t need at all or you’d be slightly better off with a non-Star Wars version. And I say that as someone whose wife once gave him an R2-D2 eggcup as a present. Because if you love eggs, and you love Star Wars… you’ll still, in general, find yourself using a normal egg cup.”
Hunting with Eagles- Palani Mohan
Hunting with Eagles (MoJo article) is a photography book by Palani Mohan (web site, many photos, navigation arrow on the right of your browser screen).
"The eagle hunters, known as burkitshi, are members of Mongolia's Kazakh minority, living in the remote valleys of the Altai Mountains in the country's far west. Australian photographer Palani Mohan spent five years traveling there, documenting the nomadic lives of the 50 or 60 men who still hunt as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago."
The new preschool is crushing kids
"Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their 'work' before they can go play. And yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations." [Atlantic]
Three SF Stories from 2015: Two Near Future and One Very Far
Martin L. Shoemaker's "Today I Am Paul" and Rich Larson's "Meshed" explore the emotional impact of technological developments within relatively familiar futures, and Caroline M. Yoachim's "Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World" draws on a wide variety of SF motifs to make the future a strange and sometimes poignant allegory for wonders of the past. Each story has been selected for an upcoming year's best SF anthology—either Rich Horton's or Neil Clarke's—and two received mention earlier this year from the unverified @gardnerdozois.
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