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Sherlock Holmes is running around modern day London. Airing Sundays on BBC1, The BBC has reinvented the master dectective and his sidekick for 2010. Sherlock is cast as a modern day "high functioning sociopath" while Watson is a former army doctor with PSTD returned from Afghanistan. It has been written and created by Doctor Who writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Reviews are in and the update is a stellar success. The series has been sold worldwide, however UK viewers can watch with BBC iplayer. Rumor has it that those unwilling to wait for release can find alternative sources for viewing.
comment posted at 3:53 AM on Aug-2-10

“There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety among religious traditionalists that when you take one step toward egalitarianism, the floodgates are open and everything that seemed self-evident will no longer be. Men go to work, and women raise children. If you undermine that, you have lost your whole universe.”

The Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements of Judaism have been ordaining women as rabbis for decades, but the religion's most traditional sect, the Orthodox, remains a lone, minority holdout against egalitarianism. Last year, Orthodox Rabbi Avraham "Avi" Weiss (political activist and founder of the controversial, liberal, "Open Orthodox" Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Yeshiva in New York) tried to shake things up by ordaining the first female American Orthodox rabbi.
comment posted at 5:32 AM on Aug-1-10

Faces, a short animation by Lei Lei (雷磊), an independent Chinese animator and designer. He's put most of his works on Vimeo, including a short TEDxShanghai talk he gave several months ago.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Jul-30-10

Vintage Series Books for Girls
comment posted at 4:13 AM on Jul-30-10

Youth Jail Chronicles.
comment posted at 4:22 AM on Jul-30-10

"Kids, a film about a bunch of hard-living New York City kids, premiered 15 years ago today. It seems that in many ways the city seems to have forgotten the film, just as many of those involved in the film also seem happy to forget it." Proof that 80s New York was Hella Real (courtesy TMN).
comment posted at 7:13 PM on Jul-29-10

Kevin Kelly has posted a list of what he believes are the best magazine articles ever.
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Jul-28-10

Fire the Bastards... examined the initial 55 reviews that appeared in response to the publication of William Gaddis's masterpiece The Recognitions.
comment posted at 4:43 AM on Jul-28-10

With a population of 36,664 and 2.5 square miles in size Bell, California is number thirteen in the twenty-five smallest cities in the United States. Median annual household income is about $36,000; per capita income for the city is $9,905 with 24.1% of the population below the poverty line. Residents of this tiny city "have a higher property tax rate than homeowners in Beverly Hills." A recent L.A. Times investigative report has revealed that exorbitant salaries are being paid to city officials. Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo collects an annual salary of $787,637 with 12% increases scheduled every July. Assistant City Manager, Angela Spaccia collects $376,288 with a similar 12% annual pay increase. Police Chief Randy Adams who runs a 46-person department earns $457,000, which is 33% higher than that of his Los Angeles counterpart. And ... part-time city council members collect almost $100,000 a year each.* The District Attorney is investigating why the part-time council members take-home $8,083 per month while a $400 monthly stipend was expected.
comment posted at 1:28 PM on Jul-27-10

The New Science of Morality: An Edge seminar featuring talks (with full video, audio and text transcripts) by Paul Bloom, Roy Baumeister, Joshua Greene, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Marc Hauser, Josua Knobe, Elizabeth Phelps, and David Pizarro.
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The BBC Proms season is underway, and this year also they are running some 'late night Proms', second concerts held after the first concert of the evening is over. A couple of days ago, the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires (Wikipedia) took over the cavernous Royal Albert Hall at ten in the evening for an all-Chopin, all-Nocturnes late night recital, attended by nearly 6,000 people. That may sound like a recipe for disaster, but she pulled it off wonderfully; it was an unforgettable experience, and you have until next Wednesday to hear it, on the BBC iPlayer.
comment posted at 4:37 AM on Jul-24-10

"In our need to restore our sense of self-control are we actually going to reward politicians who are not working to bring us together, but instead are forsaking America's beautiful 234-year history of diversity?" Another Op-Ed from a national newspaper? No, it's the note from Bill in this month's Penzeys Spices catalog (.pdf), introducing a new blend called Arizona Dreaming, which combines the flavors of South of the Border "in ways Americans love so much."
comment posted at 2:27 PM on Jul-22-10

Classical Music’s New Golden Age
comment posted at 2:30 PM on Jul-21-10

Lasers 4, UAVs 0. It's easier to hit things at the speed of light. Raytheon tests a naval anti-aircraft laser, and you can watch it go at the link.
comment posted at 4:18 AM on Jul-19-10

"They are the earliest painted portraits that have survived; they were painted whilst the Gospels of the New Testament were being written. Why then do they strike us today as being so immediate? Why does their individuality feel like our own? Why is their look more contemporary than any look to be found in the rest of the two millennia of traditional European art which followed them? The Fayum portraits touch us as if they had been painted last month." The Fayum mummy portraits were painted between the first and third centuries AD, in Roman Egypt, and preserved by the dry Egyptian climate. Wikimedia Commons. According to Wikipedia, 900 portraits are known to have survived. John Bavaro has been creating modern versions using the Brushes app on the iPhone. Via the Brushes Gallery on Flickr.
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Jul-18-10

War of the words - Science fiction was once driven by a faith in human ability to change the world. These days, the genre seeks to expose the illusions of everyday life. cf. near-future science fiction [1,2] & radical presentism [3] (via mr)
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Jul-17-10

The United States was engaged in the largest two-front war of its, or any nation's history. Though victory was not yet certain, there were discussions on a multi-national level regarding the future peace, and on the President of the United States was looking to the post-war prospects for the nation. With that in mind, the annual address of the President to Congress and the nation was summed up in one word: Security. "And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security -- in a family of nations." This was Franklin D. Roosevelt's third-to-last Fireside Chat, presented on Tuesday, January 11, 1944, which included what he proposed to be the Second Bill of Rights.
comment posted at 3:20 PM on Jul-16-10
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How to listen to Bob Dylan, a guide.
comment posted at 4:23 PM on Jul-14-10

Tuli Kupferberg, poet and co-founder of The Fugs, passed away today at the age of 86.
comment posted at 7:43 PM on Jul-12-10

An interview with caving researcher James M. Tabor. I haven't recently come across a finer link for pure imagination fuel than this brief interview with caver and caving researcher and writer James M. Tabor, author of Blind Descent.
comment posted at 4:25 AM on Jul-12-10

As suburbs become home to more poor people, immigrants, minorities, senior citizens and households with no children and we face what may be the end of suburbia, planners are wondering what do we do with suburbs?
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Ayn Rand's Adventures in Wonderland. Parts two, three, four. By Benjamin Frisch.
comment posted at 10:44 AM on Jul-7-10

Living with the Enemy. "Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture."
comment posted at 4:53 AM on Jul-7-10
comment posted at 11:07 AM on Jul-7-10

On comedienne Whitney Cummings new blog Princess Complex, she contemplates such topics as poorly designed wedding dresses, her eerie resemblance to Doug Henning, camelflage, and cookies that increase your breast size..
comment posted at 5:15 PM on Jul-5-10

"Young Bert Stern was already one of the leading fashion photographers of the 1950's when he resolved to shoot his first film before he was thirty. He made it, with two years to spare. The result, Jazz on a Summer's Day, is a luminously breezy film that brings the rich color palette of Vogue or Harper's Bazaar of those years into the world of the documentary cinema."
comment posted at 1:23 PM on Jul-5-10

Le Patineur Grotesque: Victorian rollerskating in Australia
comment posted at 9:48 AM on Jul-5-10

In the late 90s EMI's Songbook Series released an album, "Where Were You When The Fun Stopped" with tracks chosen by author Hunter S. Thompson along with detailed liner notes. Since you can't get the cool notes or photos, why not enjoy Hunter's country and folk flavored taste at your July 4th revelry of choice? Ballad of Thunder Road - Robert Mitchum : I Smell A Rat - Howlin' Wolf Big Momma Thornton : Spirit In The Sky - Norman Greenbaum : The Hula-Hula Boys - Warren Zevon : Maggie May - Rod Stewart : The Wild Side of Life / It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels - Hank Thompson feat. Kitty Wells & Tanya Tucker : Will The Circle Be Unbroken - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band : Mr Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan : Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed : If I Had A Boat - Lyle Lovett : Stars On The Water - Rodney Crowell : Carmelita - Flaco Jiminez feat. Dwight Yoakam : Why Don't We Get Drunk - Jimmy Buffett : American Pie - Don McClean : White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane : The Weight - The Band : Melissa - The Allman Brothers Band : Battle Hymn of the Republic - Herbie Mann (cover)
comment posted at 9:04 AM on Jul-4-10

The horror of Gallagher
comment posted at 11:51 AM on Jul-2-10

Who are they? Jenny Turner looks inside the Institute of Ideas, one of Britain's strangest think tanks, composed largely of entryist Trotskyites turned radical libertarians.
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Pleix makes a great case against the death penalty.
comment posted at 4:01 AM on Jul-2-10

This year 45 Jains have already embraced Santhara.
Voluntary death by starvation also know as Sallekhana.
Fasting is very common in Jain spirituality. It's not suicide,”... “You have to understand that for us death is full of excitement.” Jain's produce some of the most beautiful stone carved temple art in the world.
comment posted at 4:32 PM on Jul-1-10

How I Got Arrested and Abused at G20 in Toronto, Canada We are thirsty again; it's been 15 hours in police custody. Still 39 guys overcrowded. Getting very scary. Awake for around 30 hours. Had one sip of water and cheese bun. People are detained, kept cuffed in cages for 23 hours with insufficient food, water, hygiene, and space. Many of them just happened to be in the wrong part of Toronto and had no connection to the protest.
comment posted at 4:03 AM on Jul-1-10

Nabokov in Berlin. 'Vladimir Nabokov was starting his career as a writer when he found himself in Berlin. "It is clear, for one thing, that while a man is writing, he is situated in some definite place; he is not simply a kind of spirit, hovering over the page...Something or other is going on around him." The short 1934 novel Despair from which this quote comes is already heavily self-ironising compared with the stories of the previous decade. But like them it is studded with incidental Berlin experiences, from the shape of the city's S-Bahn train line on the map to the comedy of a German misspeaking English. "I suppose only the pest. The chief thing by me is optimismus." If Nabokov's Berlin was in his head, it was nevertheless not invented.'
comment posted at 4:15 AM on Jul-1-10

Given it is Sunday, feel free to get your Jesus on with The Mighty Clouds of Joy. Somebody say Amen.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Jun-27-10

Nearly 122 years ago, The first field recording was made. In the Crystal Palace, London, 4000 voices were recorded singing Handel's Israel In Egypt.
comment posted at 2:47 PM on Jun-26-10

Bionic feet for amputee cat
comment posted at 1:30 PM on Jun-25-10

Looking back one year later Silent Bob Speaks: Selling Out Carnegie Hall
comment posted at 4:34 AM on Jun-24-10

Harlem Yodel. The Dandridge Sisters and the Cats and the Fiddle teach us how the yodel is done above 110th Street.
comment posted at 4:39 AM on Jun-24-10

rialtoscuro n. disorientation when you step outside a movie theater into unexpected darkness, a twinge of jet lag from two hours of escapist fun which only diverts you from making the sequel to your youth—an old cult classic with wild shifts in tone, dropped subplots, major characters that appear out of nowhere only to vanish without explanation, and an ambiguous ending—but this time, it’s personal. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
comment posted at 11:45 AM on Jun-22-10

Newsweek was put up for sale in May due to multi-year losses. Last week, China’s Southern Daily Group made an unsuccessful bid to buy it. It was the first Chinese bid for a Western publication, and the Group expects to make similar purchases in the future. "It is like dating… it doesn't matter if one date does not like you. You grow from it."
comment posted at 11:17 AM on Jun-21-10

Vintage Vanguard is a Japanese web site featuring the cover art for every Blue Note album ever released. Other labels are featured as well.
comment posted at 3:45 AM on Jun-21-10

Performances [MLYT] from the 2010 Old-Time Piano Championship in Peoria. Featuring early March, Cakewalk, Ragtime, Boogie, Stride, Blues, Novelty, Jazz, Classical, and popular song styles from before 1930.
comment posted at 12:35 PM on Jun-20-10

"...Arctic sea ice – frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface – is now at its lowest physical extent ever recorded for the time of year, suggesting that it is on course to break the previous record low set in 2007.
...
Earth has been 0.65C warmer over the past 12 months than during the 1951 to 1980 mean, and that the global temperature for 2010 will exceed the 2005 record."

2010 set to be the warmest year on record.
comment posted at 5:14 AM on Jun-20-10