Sunday 4 January 2015

Trivia (should have been 19 October)

Sweethearts of Rhythm: 1940s
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Sweethearts of Rhythm: 1940s
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the pioneering all-girl jazz-swing group, with bandleader Anna Mae Winburn in the 1940s. Guitarist Carline Ray, who died in New York earlier this month [July 2013] at age 88, is third from left.
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Of course, being me, I could not let it rest there with just a picture.
http://youtu.be/94fcqEkPmSk

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The Underwater Sculpture Garden in Molinere Bay, Grenada
via Big Think by Robert Montenegro
Sculpture
Not many art galleries would let you inside wearing nothing but a swimsuit. Visiting the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Garden almost necessitates it.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
On human cruelty
Ian Buruma’s interests – Anne Frank, Clint Eastwood, kamikazes – are linked by a single question: Why do humans behave so atrociously?… more

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Card tricks with Willie Nelson
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder


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Unethical Behavior Begins With Minor Transgressions That Swell Over Time
via Big Think by Robert Montenegro
Do folks who routinely behave unethically just wake up in the morning and decide they want to be evil? While that'd be a nice and simple way of explaining why people do bad things, the truth is probably not as starkly black and white as we'd like to believe.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Good feminist
For a 1970s feminist like Vivian Gornick, there is cause for dismay today. Women’s liberation is in the doldrums, not likely to recover in her lifetime… more

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Beat your brain’s stupid hyperbolic discounting
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Dispassionately, we know that cheating on our diets or procrastinating on our stupid deadlines isn’t worth it, but our stupid brains treat most future consequences as if they’re worth nothing, while treating any present-moment benefits as though they were precious beyond riches – so how do you get the “hyperbolic discounting” part of your brain to shut up and listen to reason?
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The lure of sounds
via OUP Blog by David Crystal
There’s something about the idea of ‘original pronunciation’ (OP) that gets the pulse racing. I’ve been amazed by the public interest shown in this unusual application of a little-known branch of linguistics — historical phonology, a subject that explores how the sounds of a language change over time. I little expected, when I was approached by Shakespeare’s Globe in 2004 to help them mount a production of Romeo and Juliet in OP, that ten years on the approach would become a thriving linguistic industry. Nor could I have predicted that a short documentary recording about OP for the Open University (which I made with actor son Ben in 2011) would for no apparent reason go viral towards the end of 2013, with 1.5 million hits in recent months.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Weapon for readers
Margins are for scribbling, pages for folding, spines for breaking. We have a responsibility to read with a pen in hand. Tim Parks explains.. more

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Brew coffee 19th century style with a balancing siphon
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Looking for a whimsical yet scientific way to serve coffee or tea to guests with showy flair? Consider the Continental balancing siphon coffee brewer developed in the 19th century.
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