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Jig Dolls as a percussion instrument, here played by Jean Ritchie [previously] and The Beers Family. There are modern exponents though - Limberjacking is NOT just for folkies.
comment posted at 7:46 PM on Nov-2-09

Two new biographies examine the life and legacy of Ayn Rand. Johann Hari of Slate reads them both responds with a crystaline and scathing evisceration of Rand's philosophy based on the context of the events of her life.
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Nov-2-09
comment posted at 8:05 PM on Nov-2-09

A blog of strange (found) B&W photography
comment posted at 4:57 PM on Nov-2-09

Who is the real 40 year old virgin?
comment posted at 5:39 AM on Nov-1-09
comment posted at 6:19 AM on Nov-1-09

Esteemed actor Christopher Walken performs Lady Gaga's "Poker Face". Not a cover. Not an impression.
comment posted at 1:37 PM on Oct-31-09

Why Yankee Stadium sucks: "Its design is profoundly un-American. Baseball has traditionally played a unifying role. The ballpark is where people of different classes and races and religions actually mingled. The box seats, where the swells sat, weren't physically separated from the proles. The new stadium is like an architectural system of class apartheid."
comment posted at 4:40 AM on Oct-31-09

The Undertaker"s sketch is an example of dark humor.
comment posted at 3:31 PM on Oct-30-09

Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was a British painter.
comment posted at 8:49 AM on Oct-30-09

Grief among gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, and magpies.
comment posted at 7:55 AM on Oct-30-09
comment posted at 8:11 AM on Oct-30-09

People have studied many things relating to, and regarding Marcel Proust; what they may never have told you is... Proust is funny!! (just not "Lucky Jim" funny.)
comment posted at 4:11 AM on Oct-30-09

When not pressing the valves on his trumpet or the record button on his tape recorder, Armstrong’s fingers found other arts with which to occupy themselves. One of them was collage, which became a visual outlet for his improvisational genius. ... These little stories, illuminating and entertaining syntheses of Armstrong’s passions, now reside in the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College in Flushing, New York.
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Oct-29-09

The first time they came and recorded with me—which was January 23, 1988—they didn't have a band name, and they just had a borrowed drummer, which was Dale from the Melvins. But, yeah, they came and recorded 10 songs with me in one afternoon. I was left going "God, who are these people?" The cassettes I gave out just said "Kurt Cobain and Company" on them, because that's all I knew. - Recording Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana. As Nirvanas first albulm hits 20 years old, with Sub Pop prepare to release a remastered anniversary edition, the Seattle Weekly takes a look back at the album that launched grunge.
comment posted at 3:48 PM on Oct-28-09

Natalie Portman has been a vegetarian for twenty years, but was recently inspired to become a vegan by Jonathan Safran Foer's first nonfiction book, Eating Animals. Portman wrote an essay for the Huffington Post in which she compares the book favorably to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (previously on the blue), and makes this specific criticism of the latter book:

But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

comment posted at 2:02 PM on Oct-28-09
comment posted at 2:30 PM on Oct-28-09

Lucian Freud Interview (YouTubes): 1; 2; 3; 4; 5
comment posted at 4:36 AM on Oct-28-09

Eleanor Powell was born to dance.
comment posted at 7:53 AM on Oct-25-09

Sung in incoherent pseudo-English, Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol (1973) could be thought of as an early example of rap.
comment posted at 4:08 PM on Oct-22-09

More than two dozen bacterial, viral or parasitic infections are known to be transmitted largely or exclusively through sexual contact. U.S. public health authorities focus on a limited set of these STIs. Read more about it in "Facts on Sexually Transmitted Infections in the United States" published by the Guttmacher Institute.
comment posted at 4:46 PM on Oct-22-09
comment posted at 5:41 PM on Oct-22-09

The New Yorker's "Critterati" contest invites you to "take a picture of your pet—dog, cat, ferret, iguana, or any other nonhuman member of the animal kingdom—dressed as a character from literature, and upload it to newyorker.com by October 25th." Gallery | About | Rules | Enter.
comment posted at 3:53 AM on Oct-22-09

Alastair Levy is a photographer.
comment posted at 4:15 AM on Oct-21-09

Today is the 150th anniversary of John Brown's abolitionist raid on Harper's Ferry, and the commemorations are underway.
comment posted at 6:11 AM on Oct-16-09
comment posted at 9:56 AM on Oct-16-09
comment posted at 10:01 AM on Oct-16-09
comment posted at 2:14 PM on Oct-16-09
comment posted at 3:34 PM on Oct-16-09

Artist Mark Bennett's real blueprints for fake places are fascinating. The home of socialite Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson is, not surprisingly, much more intricate than that of Mr. and Mrs. Flintstone. (via CurbedLA)
comment posted at 6:23 AM on Oct-16-09

A New York City film location scout (mentioned before, here and here) revisits the scenes of the movie Taxi Driver (1976) and compares them to what's there now.
comment posted at 1:44 PM on Oct-15-09

After 10 years of silence, Susan Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter Dylon Klebold, discusses her experience and her son in a new essay in O Magazine (abstract/Napstered).
comment posted at 1:13 PM on Oct-14-09

Natasha Mitchell: So it's not a little man or woman inside our heads...

Thomas Metzinger: ...that looks at pictures. But the experience of looking, of being directed to one's own feelings or to one's sensory perceptions of the outside world, this is itself an image. There is nobody looking at the image, it's like the camera is part of the picture or the viewing is itself a part of the process of viewing. This is how a first-person perspective emerges in our own case, the question is, okay, if it's not a thing, if it's not something in the brain, what kind of a process is it?

comment posted at 1:28 PM on Oct-14-09

The posthumous career of Michael Jackson began at midnight (Eastern time) Sunday with the release of a new single, This Is It. Shortly thereafter, Paul Anka reminded them that the song was the same song he cowrote with Jackson called I Never Heard, which was recorded by Safire. Anka was promptly given his share. Now nothing stands in the way of our seeing Michael Jackson's posthumous last concert.
comment posted at 5:22 AM on Oct-14-09

Today is the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's murder in Laramie, Wyoming. His mother, Judy, continues to speak out against her son's death, the House of Representatives has passed expanded anti-hate crime legislation, the event is being commemorated with the staging of The Laramie Project Epilogue in over 150 cities worldwide, including a special performance in Laramie itself. Meanwhile, some people continue to deny Shepard was killed because he was gay.
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Oct-12-09

The Images of Eyes Gallery exhibits images and paintings of eyes by international artists, featuring work from about 200 artists from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Gallery I contains figurative paintings, oil and watercolor paintings, portraits, charcoal and ink drawings, lithographs, sculpture, digital, and other fine art content. Gallery II exhibits nude paintings, so may be NSFW.
comment posted at 4:20 AM on Oct-12-09

The Origin of The Chipmunks. "Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (who went by the stage name "David Seville") was an actor who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and on Broadway in William Saroyan's Time of Your Life. He wrote novelty dialect songs, including Rosemary Clooney's huge hit "Come On-A My House", and released a few records but his successes never seemed to result in very much money in his pocket. He bought a tape recorder with his last $200 and played around with shifting the speeds, coming up with a novelty song titled "Witch Doctor". He got the single released and two weeks later, he found himself appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show performing the song. The success of "Witch Doctor" gave him the idea of creating characters with sped up voices, so he quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records."
comment posted at 3:30 AM on Oct-11-09

American things that Barack Obama has made unAmerican
comment posted at 3:37 AM on Oct-11-09
comment posted at 3:50 AM on Oct-11-09

He was born in Israel, spent four years in Jamaica, studied cinema and worked as a voice actor. Now, at 29, he sings like Janis Joplin and is the first Israeli musician to sign a four-record label with Sony Columbia. Ladies and gentelmen, presenting Asaf Avidan[youtube].
comment posted at 4:22 AM on Oct-10-09

Roger Ebert on the owning of books.
comment posted at 1:27 PM on Oct-9-09

Barry Letts, classic Doctor Who producer, has died.
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Oct-9-09

It’s the 70s, you’re Czech, sassy, and your future is bright.
comment posted at 4:33 PM on Oct-6-09

Uncle Grandpa!
comment posted at 4:44 AM on Oct-6-09
comment posted at 10:28 AM on Oct-6-09

Mazen had had his pectoral muscles cut off. There were two drill holes in Namir’s left leg, below the knee. Both had been shot in the head, apparently from close range. “Two young men were killed on Thursday,” an unnamed Sadr City official told the Reuters news agency in a story published that same day. “They were sexual deviants. Their tribes killed them to restore their family honor.” How a few New Yorkers are trying to save the hunted gay men of Iraq.
comment posted at 1:34 PM on Oct-5-09

The Conservative Bible Project. Rod Dreher of Belief.net offers further analysis of a budding new Wiki project to rewrite the Holy Bible to eliminate what some young conservatives apparently now view as liberal bias in the scriptures (via Harpers).
comment posted at 1:45 PM on Oct-5-09

One hamburger sent a 23 year-old woman into a coma for nine weeks. When she awoke, she could no longer walk. A lengthy expose in the NYTimes follows the secretive chain of events bringing E. coli into her life. Contemporary carnivores read at your own risk...
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Oct-4-09

Anne Frank - The only known film image of Anne Frank from July 22, 1941, a year later she went into hiding.
comment posted at 3:16 PM on Oct-3-09

Abandoned in 1974, still littered with the personal effects of its former inhabitants, this island of claustrophobically crowded skyscrapers "was once the most densely populated place on earth".
comment posted at 4:41 AM on Oct-3-09