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Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail -> BBC: Ep1, Ep2. YT: Ep1, Ep2.
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Jun-4-11

James Arness, the 6'7" actor famous for his long-running role as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, has passed away just a week after his 88th birthday. Arness's younger brother, fellow actor Peter Graves, passed away last year.
comment posted at 11:06 AM on Jun-3-11
comment posted at 1:45 PM on Jun-3-11

Meaghan Smith took an unusual route to the music business. She can't read music, for one thing. She went to school to study animation for another. Yet, along the way, she took her hobby of playing the guitar to work with her, giving impromptu performances of her songs in the stairwell of the animation building for her friends. One thing lead to another, and she just won the Pop Album of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards in Canada for her recording called "The Cricket's Orchestra." Her sound is a mixture of the music of the 20s 30s and 40s with the pop songs of today. Her videos often feature animation. A good place to start is "A Little Love" and also "I Know." Her song "Here Comes Your Man" was featured in the film 500 Days of Summer. She is also a pretty good artist!
comment posted at 4:22 AM on Jun-3-11

Editors of the journal Science have asked the co-authors of a 2009 paper that linked chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus called XMRV to voluntarily retract the paper. Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and executive editor Monica Bradford cited concerns about the validity of the findings, saying other scientists hadn't been able to replicate them, among other reasons.
comment posted at 9:47 AM on May-31-11

This is the story of one of the great lost experimental jazz/rock albums. But is it only a story?
comment posted at 8:41 AM on May-29-11
comment posted at 8:43 AM on May-29-11

SLEBP: My ex Brother-in-Law's shit record collection. "You are bidding on a collection of 50 (approx) 12" singles and LPs of crap music. My sister found these in her attic last weekend, where they has been sat gathering dust for the last couple of decades. They used to belong to her ex-husband, who is one of the biggest arseholes ever to draw breath." A Saturday afternoon amusement.
comment posted at 2:14 PM on May-28-11

Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at the typewriter but recall what I've experienced. --Celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates on the connection between writing and running.
comment posted at 7:35 AM on May-28-11

On May 23, 1861, Spotsylvania County, Virginia voted 1323 - 0 in favor of succession from the Union. Historian John Hennessy provides an explanation of how that vote came to be a perfect 100% in favor of succession. So people rebelling against "Northern tyranny" themselves used tyranny to rig a vote that was undoubtedly going to go overwhelmingly in their favor anyway?
comment posted at 2:55 PM on May-27-11

The McKinsey Global Institute has published "Internet Matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity" [70 Page PDF or just the Summary]. "On average, the Internet contributes 3.4 percent to GDP in the 13 countries covered by the research an amount the size of Spain or Canada in terms of GDP, and growing at a faster rate than that of Brazil... For governments, investments in infrastructure, human capital, financial capital and business environment conditions will help strengthen their Internet supply domestic ecosystems." Found on Marginal Revolution where Tyler Cowen has a few interesting comments.
comment posted at 8:49 AM on May-26-11

Jose Guerena, 26, was a Marine veteran and father of two. He served two tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2005. On May 5th, he was killed in his home by a SWAT team looking for narcotics
comment posted at 4:43 AM on May-26-11

The unearthly countertenor of Alfred Deller, and the Deller Consort. "The most visible icon of the countertenor revival in the twentieth century was Alfred Deller, an English singer and champion of authentic early music performance. Deller initially called himself an "alto", but his collaborator Michael Tippett recommended the archaic term "countertenor" to describe his voice. In the 1950s and 60s, his group, the Deller Consort, was important in increasing audiences' awareness (and appreciation) of Renaissance and Baroque music. Deller was the first modern countertenor to achieve fame, and has had many prominent successors." And here in a 4 part interview "on the countertenor voice!" 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4
comment posted at 4:30 AM on May-26-11

"In 1955 "Rock Around the Clock" went to the top of the charts and turned Bill Haley into the king of rock and roll. Twenty-five years later, he was holed up in a pool house in Harlingen, TX, drunk, lonely, paranoid, and dying. After three decades of silence, his widow and his children tell the story of his years in Texas and his sad final days." (Via)
comment posted at 10:14 AM on May-25-11
comment posted at 3:45 PM on May-25-11

The Busking Project: Tracking a path across the globe to interview, photograph, film, and discover the life and motivations of the world's street artists!
comment posted at 5:00 AM on May-25-11

Warfare: An advancing front - "The US is engaged in increasingly sophisticated warfare, fusing intelligence services and military specialists"
comment posted at 2:01 PM on May-21-11

"Sometimes less," he says cheerfully. "Sometimes I get two hours. Someone comes over at three, we have a cup of tea, chew the cud for a bit, go: 'All right, shall we write a song?' And by six, they've gone home and we've done it. Chasing Pavements, that took two or three hours." The life of today's pro songwriter.
comment posted at 6:43 AM on May-19-11

A discussion on BBC Radio 4 of Robert Burton's 17th-century compendium The Anatomy Of Melancholy. Examining the medical, literary, political, and religious influences of this enormous work, as well as how it contributed to those same fields over its many years of revisions and continuing popularity. Not exactly thorough (how could it be?) but an interesting listen.
comment posted at 3:14 PM on May-14-11

The Surprisingly Undetestable Birth of TGI Friday's In 1965, a young Manhattanite just “looking to meet girls” added some sawdust, fake Tiffany lamps and a coat of blue blue paint to the $5000 bar that became, nearly immediately, NY's first and most popular singles bar, and eventually, the progenitor of one of the US's most popular restaurants.
comment posted at 2:49 PM on May-14-11

Exquisitely Corrupt Charles Hugh Smith's predictions on the housing bubble, from almost five years ago, are proving accurate. Previously.
comment posted at 3:21 PM on May-13-11

Big Becky has broken through.
comment posted at 12:17 PM on May-13-11

Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi + Tere Bina Aag Yeh Chandni: Dream sequence from the 1951 Hindi film, Awara. "The film, generally considered one of Kapoor's finest, is notable for its darkly surreal sets... and for its remarkable dream sequence, which echoes this architecture in an evocation of heaven and hell. Despite its ultimate vindication of patriarchy and capitalism, the film became an enormous hit in the U.S.S.R. and, thanks to Chairman Mao’s reputed fondness for it, in China (to this day, millions of middle-aged Chinese can hum its title song)." You can view the other musical numbers from the film here.
comment posted at 4:41 AM on May-12-11

The Last Two Veterans of WWI
comment posted at 3:08 PM on May-3-11

The Corning Museum of Glass (previously), not to be confused with the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington (previously), has named 60 favorites of their own collection and campus. The choices range from ancient, like the glass "portrait" of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep II, to the scientific, like the initial 200-inch disk intended for the Hale telescope at the Mt. Palomar observatory, to modern sculpture, like Family Matter by Jill Reynolds.

comment posted at 11:23 AM on May-3-11

No Life Is Good, by David Benatar. From The Philosophers' Magazine, via New Shelton.
comment posted at 4:48 AM on May-3-11
comment posted at 5:29 AM on May-3-11

"While going through my archives, I found this piece and emailed it to my friends -- most of whom didn't get it at all. There's usually only one way that change ever comes to the eternal childhood immortality of a comic strip, and that's by the strip being cancelled -- and sometimes not even then." How it turned out.
comment posted at 3:19 PM on May-2-11

Bostonography is the study of Greater Boston, Massachusetts through maps and graphics. This site is run by a pair of cartography geeks; Andy Woodruff of Axis Maps, and Tim Wallace.
comment posted at 7:14 AM on May-1-11

A German tourist films a trip to New York City in 1983 and 86: Times Square, The Subway
comment posted at 10:25 AM on Apr-29-11

Is the World Too Big to Fail?
comment posted at 4:47 AM on Apr-26-11

Last year, BBC America noticed a spike in piracy of Doctor Who episodes as fans were either frustrated with the 2 week gap between UK and US premiere and/or spoilers and gossip everywhere. The solution, as demonstrated by shows like The Walking Dead, seems to be to broadcast world wide on the same day.
comment posted at 10:51 AM on Apr-23-11

What Congress Would Look Like If It [Demographically] Represented America (full size infographic). Net worth of lawmakers (related, previously).
comment posted at 11:38 AM on Apr-21-11
comment posted at 12:36 PM on Apr-21-11

Lester Bangs, the late, great early-rock critic, once said he dreamed of having a basement with every album ever released in it. That's a fantasy shared by many music fans—and, mutatis mutandis, film buffs as well. We all know the Internet has made available a lot of things that were previously hard to get. Recently, though, there are indications of something even more enticing, almost paradisiacal, something that might have made Bangs put down the cough syrup and sit up straight: that almost everything is available.
comment posted at 6:39 AM on Apr-21-11

Lovely and haunting photographs of 25 Shipwrecks from around the world.
comment posted at 3:59 AM on Apr-20-11

28 Classic pin-ups and their photo references. [NSFW]
comment posted at 2:50 PM on Apr-19-11

9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes - "4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all: Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero... 9. Other countries do it better: no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes broke because of accident or illness" (via)
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Apr-18-11

Bill Moyers interviews David Simon "Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It’s the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. As we said before, economically, we don’t need those people; the American economy doesn’t need them. So as long as they stay in their ghettos and they only kill each other, we’re willing to pay for a police presence to keep them out of our America."
comment posted at 4:56 PM on Apr-17-11

In Defense of Offensive Art - What the hell does Odd Future's music mean?
comment posted at 7:07 AM on Apr-17-11

Palin, the Press, and the Fake Pregnancy Rumor: Did a Spiral of Silence Shut Down the Story? Kentucky journalism professor Brad Scharlott makes a case. Reporter (and former Palin communications director) Bill McAllister, mentioned by name in Scharlott's article, says 'If we ever meet, I'll slap you.' Scharlott writes an op-ed in response.
comment posted at 9:24 AM on Apr-16-11

Is Sugar Toxic? 9 pages, plus 90 minutes of extra science. [Previously]
comment posted at 9:21 AM on Apr-15-11

VegNews, the vegan lifestyle magazine, regularly publishes recipes for vegan dishes, with accompanying food-porn photos. Yesterday, VegNews was revealed to be using stock photos of actual meat dishes to represent their vegan analogues. Vegans are, understandably, appalled. But in an industry where deceptive food photography is customary, is authenticity of food illlustration a valid concern?
comment posted at 8:52 AM on Apr-14-11

Susan Orlean's short essays for The New Yorker have an air of effortlessness to them, as if they were something she just tossed off while taking a break from her more important subjects, but their brevity reveals a true mastery of form, and at their best, they are brimful of surprisingly elegant sentences, self-deprecating wit and a kind of warmly feminine, disarmingly sly charm: On Adopting a Stray Cat :: The Difficulties of E-mail :: The Joys of Snooping :: Books That Changed Her World :: World War I :: Heat Wave :: Fear of Flying :: Chickens
comment posted at 11:53 AM on Apr-12-11

For most of his 81 years, Sir Roger Moore has played invincible leading men. "But behind the scenes he has cheerfully hidden a list of real (and imagined) ailments.You are late,’ says Sir Roger Moore in a deep growl. I apologise. I had thought the interview was at nine o’clock. ‘I am just off to the funeral parlour,’ he continues."
comment posted at 6:22 PM on Apr-11-11

The Death of Downtown Chicago and 20 More Maps Of U.S. Population Change, 2000-2010
comment posted at 6:38 PM on Apr-11-11

Zerosomethings are adorable: angst-free, energetic, usually related to me. They will grab onto one my legs to get a free ride, and I will always give it to them. A precocious twentysomething's artful musings on the series of life-stages most of us have passed, are passing, or will pass through in the course of ordinary survival. Reading "-Somethings" I am reminded of Gail Sheehy's classic Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (read a portion here), a thought-provoking and somewhat more academic investigation of how we change over time.
comment posted at 2:09 PM on Apr-10-11
comment posted at 7:00 AM on Apr-11-11

Ikea's U.S. factory churns out unhappy workers. A union-organizing battle hangs over the Ikea plant in Virginia. Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace, mandatory overtime and racial discrimination.
comment posted at 9:41 AM on Apr-10-11

Recent research on children. (1) Brothers and sisters who argue a lot can improve their language, social skills and outcomes: Guardian article; paper on part of the research (pdf). (2) First findings from Understanding Society. Conclusions include: the unhappiness of children’s mothers with their partners affect children’s happiness, but this is not the case if children’s fathers are unhappy in their relationships; having older brothers or sisters doesn’t appear to affect children’s happiness, but having younger brothers or sisters is associated with less happiness; not living with both natural parents has a greater negative impact on a young person’s life satisfaction than their material situation. (3) A longitudinal study on people now in their forties has found that for these people reading is linked to career success, though not necessarily to better pay, whilst playing computer games and doing no other activities was associated with less likelihood of going to university. In particular, those who owned a ZX Spectrum or Commodore C64 were less likely to go to university. thinq interview with researcher. Guardian article. Telegraph article. (4) Poll about children’s attitudes to losing in sport. Press release. Data from children’s survey. Data from parents’ survey. (All three are PDFs.)
comment posted at 6:52 AM on Apr-9-11