June 1, 2014
The Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention.
New York’s golden era had hip-hop luminaries digging in the crates at the legendary Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention. Record dealer John Carraro reflects on introducing old music to the likes of Pete Rock, Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes, Large Professor, Buckwild, Diamond D, Prince Be, Mr. Walt, and DJ Clark Kent, among others.
Trudy Campbell Is A KGB Spy
Who or what broke my kids?
Who or what broke my kids? "The basic premise of the activity is that students must sort cards including probability statements, terms such as unlikely and probable, pictorial representations, and fraction, decimal, and percent probabilities and place them on a number line based on their theoretical probability. I thought it would be an interactive way to gauge student understanding. Instead it turned into a ten minute nightmare where I was asked no less than 52 times if their answers were “right”. I took it well until I was asked for the 53rd time and then I lost it. We stopped class right there and proceeded to have a ten minute discussion on who broke them."
The .art TLD
The .art Top Level Domain. It will be one of the new ICANN generic top level domains. Ten outfits want to manage it (applicant list is closed, winner will be one of those ten). Of the ten, notables are Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd., which has applied for 68 top level domains (at $185,000 US per application) and Donuts (Baxter Tigers, LLC), which has applied for 307 TLDs. At the other end of the scale, two applicants want to create Community TLDs.These are e-flux, an association of art professionals, museum directors, gallery owners, etc.; and well-known online art-slash-community site DeviantART. Here is e-flux's announcement to its members of its intention to apply. TechCrunch has a copy of deviantart's letter to ICANN. [more inside]
Siva in Motion
Multimedia artist Shigeyuki Kihara created Siva in Motion (SLYT), an entrancing exploration of taualuga, a Samoan type of dance. [more inside]
The Courting of Marvin Clark
Ted Shawn, Father of American Dance
You've likely heard of Martha Graham and possibly of Ruth St. Denis, but it was the latter's husband, Ted Shawn, who pioneered and encouraged the participation of men in American modern dance. After the dissolution of their marriage and their boundary-pushing studio, Denishawn [NSFW/nudity], in the early 1930s he went on to form Ted Shawn and His Male Dancers, which frequently performed bare-chested or nude. Keeping with the precedent he and St. Denis had established, their work unapologetically appropriated from many cultures as a way to repudiate [NSFW/nudity] traditional preconceptions about professional dance. The company disbanded when most of its members left to fight in World War II, but the retreat space he purchased in western Massachusetts to house and train his dancers has since evolved to become a dance center and festival hub called Jacob's Pillow. [more inside]
Mystery MH370
Last week it was announced that "Bluefin-21 completed its last mission" and that "the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370". That news came two days after Malaysian authorities released a 47 pages long document of Inmarsat's raw data [pdf]. [more inside]
A Different Kind of Field Trip
Some of us have more toys and bigger homes than others. We all have a lot in common, but there are certain things that make us unique, too. Let’s talk about those things and celebrate them, even.
This is not standard prekindergarten curricular fare, but it’s part of what the 4- and 5-year-olds at the Manhattan Country School learn by visiting one another’s homes during the school day. These are no mere play dates though; it’s more like Ethnography 101. Do classmates take the bus to school or walk? What neighborhood do they live in? What do they have in their homes? - For Lessons About Class, a Field Trip Takes Students Home (SL NYTIMES)
Dear parents, you are being lied to
Scientist Jennifer Raff has put together an extremely comprehensive look, with loads of examples and citations, at all the reasons that the anti-vaccination movement is wrong. [previously] [more inside]
Headless Drummer
Halloween year round
"Pumpkin-style" watermelon carvings, and "watermelon-style" pumpkin carvings, by 'sparksfly' [more inside]
Pope Francis never stops talking about the Devil; it’s constant.
"A modern pope gets old school on the Devil" by Anthony Faiola
"Witness to an Exorcism" -An interview with Anthony Faiola
"The Exorcists Next Door"
In their tidy suburban home, Marion and Larry Pollard have dug deep into the recesses of the Scriptures to save tortured souls—and command demons to get out. Get out now!
"Witness to an Exorcism" -An interview with Anthony Faiola
"The Exorcists Next Door"
In their tidy suburban home, Marion and Larry Pollard have dug deep into the recesses of the Scriptures to save tortured souls—and command demons to get out. Get out now!
Free, streaming Detroit (style) hip-hop from DJ House Shoes and friends
While the name Michael “House Shoes” Buchanan remains unknown to most, he's been involved with the Detroit hip-hop community since '94, producing some beats for an (unreleased) EP by Elzhi in 1998, plus a few other projects in the 1990s, but he really started making noise in the 2000s, finally releasing his own album, Let It Go, in 2012, which he then offered as a free download in 2013. All the while, he's continued to act as "Detroit's Hip-Hop Ambassador to the World," promoting other up-and-coming acts through various channels, including his on-going series, "The Gift," in which he promotes new artists. [NOTE: NSFW lyrics throughout the music] [more inside]
"If you can read this, I have cancer again."
Jay Lake, science fiction and fantasy author, has passed away after a long fight with cancer. MeFi's own jscalzi has posted more here. JayWake, the pre-postumous wake, was held last year. [previously] The film Lakeside – A Year With Jay Lake, detailed his treatments, including participation in whole genome sequencing, in search of a new treatment path.
Wall Street whistleblowers risk retaliation, regulator apathy
The personal price of exposing financial wrongdoing can be devastating. Report for The Financial Times by William D Cohan, including interviews with whistleblowers formerly employed at Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase.
WWDC 2014: Buttons so different you won't want to lick them anymore
WWDC is almost upon us, and with it comes the live-streaming keynote, delivered at 10am PST, in which Apple traditionally announces new software (and sometimes something else to boot). Rumors of an iWatch abound, but just as intriguing is the popularly-believed notion that Apple will be introducing a new design to OS X which matches last year's iOS 7, breaking clean of the Aqua interface which has defined the Mac since January 2000. Rumors abound. [more inside]
"We felt the riff was addictive, like a forbidden thing."
The Making of Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love'. An oral history from guitarist Jimmy Page and the engineers who helped place Robert Plant's vocals at the top of the charts.
Anything is pawsible
Smidgeo.com is a business built on growth, digital, social, disruption, & a proprietary form of smart marketing known as Smidgeo Smarketing. The bottom line? Smidgeo GETS results. Smidgeo's business model may seem complex, but there is an animated diagram so that even the worst can understand. [more inside]
Sunday Times Qatar World Cup Corruption Claim
BBC re-reports: Fifa is facing fresh allegations of corruption over its controversial decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
The Sunday Times has obtained millions of secret documents - emails, letters and bank transfers - which it alleges are proof that the disgraced Qatari football official Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments totalling US$5m (£3m) to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid.
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