January 11
"As a baby, Todd was fed only fresh vegetables, fruits, and raw milk; when he was teething, he was given frozen kidneys to gnaw. As a child, he was allowed no junk food; Trudi sent Todd off to birthday parties with carrot sticks and carob muffins. By age three, Marv had the boy throwing with both hands, kicking with both feet, doing sit-ups and pull-ups, and lifting light hand weights." The Man Who Never Was is a 2009 Esquire profile of Todd Marinovich, whose father programmed him from birth to be a great NFL quarterback. He almost succeeded.
posted by escabeche at 8:19 AM - 1 comment
There is
Housing Works in NYC, which raises money for community based AIDS/HIV treatment and housing for the homeless. Here in Chicago we have
Open Books, who uses the money raised from selling donated books to run literacy programs and tutoring programs for children.
Now Minneapolis is getting
Boneshaker Books; an all volunteer run radical bookstore that will house the
Women's Prison Book Project and offer bike book delivery.
posted by bibliogrrl at 7:20 AM - 8 comments Gallica (the digital section of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France) has put Charles Baudelaire's heavily annotated proofs of
Les Fleurs de Mal on line.
posted by Lezzles at 5:41 AM - 2 comments January 10
"The
Szpilman Award
is awarded to works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time. The purpose of the award is to promote such works whose forms consist of ephemeral situations." This years winner is
Treebute to Yogya. The organisers also maintain a
blog and an
encyclopædia of ephemeral works.
posted by unliteral at 4:39 PM - 7 comments In an age of information wealth, how do we decide what's true & what's not? Allow me to introduce the world of discussion mapping. First up we have
zest (
demo here), a simple tool for threading mailing lists for easier navigation. It lacks the advanced features of the others but it's an easy starting point for structuring your discussions.
[more inside]
posted by scalefree at 11:53 AM - 6 comments January 9
Debbie Friedman passed away today. She was the most well known and influential composer of Jewish music and litergy in the United States.
The Jerusalem Post says that "Friedman’s music is performed in synagogues around the world more than that of any other modern composer."
Her most well known song is a setting of
Mi Shebeirach, a prayer for healing.
posted by kdern at 12:07 PM - 23 comments
In 1989, Milton Bradley debuted
HeroQuest, a board game in the style of Dungeons and Dragons. Not to be bested at their own game, D&D's parent company
TSR released
Dragon Strike (reviewed
here by
Angry Video Game Nerd's James Rolfe.) Packaged with the board game was a
low-budget fantasy short film meant to simultaneously set the mood, demonstrate a potential adventure and explain the rules.
posted by griphus at 10:01 AM - 69 comments On Friday evening, Trent Reznor sat down with Jon Pareles (music critic for the NYT) for a lengthy, candid interview about his work on The Social Network soundtrack, Nine Inch Nails, How To Destroy Angels, and his creative process. The interview runs 1h15m, and is available for download in both
video and
audio versions.
[more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:33 AM - 17 comments The Romanian government has changed its labour laws, and in doing so has added a number of professions which weren't previously recognised but which are now subject to tax. Car valets, embalmers and driving instructors are unhappy to be added, but their protests aren't likely to be as scary as those of the...
witches.
[more inside]
posted by reynir at 8:45 AM - 18 comments « Older posts
