Category: SCIENCE
Happy New Year
May 2014 be one of the best years of our lives.
Happy New Year, my old and new friends. I wish you all well. May 2014 be one of the best years of our lives.
Write me and tell me more about yourselves.
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2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats prepared a 2013 annual report for Stillness of Heart.
The WordPress.com stats prepared a 2013 annual report for Stillness of Heart.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
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Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Obama’s 2014 / Why grandmothers exist / Atahualpa’s tomb finally found? / The future of news / Widowed without warning
This week: Obama’s 2014 / Why grandmothers exist / Atahualpa’s tomb finally found? / The future of news / Widowed without warning
Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. 2013’s biggest media stories (and screw-ups)
By Dylan Byers and Hadas Gold | Politico | Dec. 22
“2013 was indeed exceptional: Edward Snowden released the biggest leak in U.S. history; President Barack Obama lost the goodwill of a press corps that not long ago had been accused of being in his pocket; and America’s most established news organizations came under new leadership, from Jeff Zucker at CNN to Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post, paving the way for a new and uncertain future.”
2. Official business behind him, Obama looks to 2014
By Josh Lederman | Associated Press | Dec. 27
“But as campaigning for House, Senate and governors’ mansions kicks into high gear in 2014, Obama may find his efforts to focus attention on his priorities drowned out by the political posturing that reaches a fever pitch in Washington every other year.”
3. How to Make Your Book a Bestseller
By Mary Kary Zuravleff | The Atlantic | Dec. 27
“An imagined guide to successful self-promotion”
4. Why Do Grandmothers Exist?
By Judith Shulevitz | The New Republic | January 2013
“[T]he grandmother hypothesis has gone from oddball conjecture to one of the dominant theories of why we live so long, breed so fast, and are so smart.”
5. I Find Myself in a Dark Wood
By Joseph Luzzi | Private Lives :: The New York Times | Dec. 18
“I had left the house that morning at 8:30 to teach a class; by noon, I was a father and a widower.”
6. The future of news is anticipation
By Amy Webb | Nieman Journalism Lab | December 2013
“One of the most important trends going into 2014 is the wave of sophisticated algorithms and processes that will forever change how journalism is both created and consumed.”
7. For Candidates, the End of the Year is a Deadline
By Ross Ramsey | The Texas Tribune | Dec. 23
“Political candidates are thinking they have a little over a week of fundraising left before an important deadline: Dec. 31 is the last day of contributions that can be reported on a required Jan. 15 campaign finance report.”
8. A toast to the bad old days
By Todd S. Purdum | Politico | Dec. 23
“If the past few weeks in the capital have shown anything, it is that the time-honored traits and tactics that modern politics loves to demonize in fact still have much to recommend them.”
9. Is this the lost tomb of the last Incan emperor?
The Daily Mail | Dec. 19
“The site, discovered by a multinational team of explorers, could be the tomb of Atahualpa, the last emperor of the Incas, who was executed by the Spanish after their conquest of South America.”
10. Doctor, Teacher, Soldier, Spy
By Melinda Miller and Rachel Smith Purvis | Discunion :: The New York Times | Dec. 18
“[Rufus Gillpatrick’s] curious career and violent death illustrates the porous line between civilian and soldier on the frontier.”
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Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Bush’s storms loom over Obamaland / Heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’ / Life lessons from Pinterest / The Civil War in Florida / A new exomoon
This week: Bush’s storms loom over Obamaland / Heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’ / Life lessons from Pinterest / The Civil War in Florida / A new exomoon
Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. Echoes of George W. Bush blues in Barack Obama’s 2nd term
By Alex Isenstadt and Carrie Budoff Brown | Politico | Dec. 19
“They’re two presidents dogged by crises largely of their own making, whose welcome with Americans has worn thin after two marathon elections.”
2. Dick Cheney in Nixonland
By Jon Wiener | The Nation | Dec. 19
“When our most hated vice president visits the library of our most disgraced president, you look forward to a good night.”
3. Found heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’
By Lucy McCalmont | Politico | Dec. 20
“This probably isn’t the Obamacare PR push the White House had in mind.”
4. Important Life Lessons From Pinterest’s Top Pins of 2013
By Erin Gloria Ryan | Jezebel | Dec. 19
“Pinterest is to physically impossible crafts, recipes, and photographs for the homebound and quixotic what Cosmo is to physically impossible sex positions for the recently deflowered.”
5. Florida’s Cattle Wars
By Phil Leigh | Disunion :: The New York Times | Dec. 19
“[T]he Confederacy increasingly looked to a seemingly unlikely source, Florida, as a source of beef for its armies.”
6. Our Thirteen Most-Read Blog Posts of 2013
By Nicholas Thompson | The News Desk :: The New Yorker | Dec. 12
“There’s a certain randomness, or at least unpredictability, to Web traffic. You’re never absolutely certain that a blog post will take off until it does.”
7. How Diplomacy Helped Cause an F-18 Crash
By Dan Lamothe | The Complex :: Foreign Policy | Dec. 19
“[A] series of miscommunications and judgment mistakes … ultimately forced the $60 million fighter — call sign ‘Victory 206’ — into the North Arabian Sea.”
8. Astronomers may have found the first-ever exomoon seen by humans
By James Plafke | Geek.com | Dec. 18
“The planet and moon, located 1,800 light years from Earth, are around four times the mass of Jupiter, and half the mass of Earth, respectively.”
9. Auld Lang Syne NYE tradition thanks to cigar firm
The Scotsman | Dec. 19
“Guy Lombardo, a bandleader who was nicknamed America’s Mr New Year’s Eve, was searching for a song to bridge a gap between radio broadcasts.”
10. Afraid to spend money: The psychological trauma of long-term unemployment
By Adriene Hill | Marketplace Your Money | May 2013
“How do you take control of your finances when, after six years of under- and un-employment, you suddenly have a job?”
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Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Profiles of first ladies / Childfree and loving it / A boring mission to Mars / A Texas-made space telescope / Nixon’s love for Jews
This week: Profiles of first ladies / Childfree and loving it / A boring mission to Mars / A Texas-made space telescope / Nixon’s love for Jews
Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. The First Ladies
C-SPAN | 2013 and 2014
Watch the stunning and fascinating series about the women as intelligent, complex, canny, and noble (if not more so) than the presidents their husbands became.
2. The Choice To Be Childfree
On Point with Tom Ashbrook :: NPR | Aug. 23
“Childless by choice. We look at the trend of couples saying ‘no thanks’ to having kids.”
3. Dating Superman
By Seth Stevenson | Slate | May 2013
“The ultimate superpower would let you find, woo, and mate with the perfect person”
4. Olivia Wilde Takes Center Stage
By Emma Brown | Interview | Aug. 22
“Drinking Buddies is Olivia Wilde’s first time carrying a film, but it is certainly not her last. With upcoming roles in everything from Rush to Spike Jonze’s Her and Paul Haggis’ Third Person, Wilde is the girl of the moment.”
5. Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker | The New York Times Magazine | July 2013
“It would be catastrophic if humanity’s greatest voyage were brought low by the mind’s tendency to wander when left to its own devices. ”
6. Some Newly Uncovered Nixon Comments on the Subjects of Jews and Black People
By Elspeth Reeve | Atlantic Wire :: Atlantic Monthly | Aug. 21
“Richard Nixon was like many a Millennial (or middle-aged politician) who’s gotten busted for sending racy emails or sexts — even though he knew everything he was saying would be archived forever, he still said really inappropriate things.”
7. UT, A&M telescope to be 10 times sharper than Hubble
By Robert Stanton | Houston Chronicle | Aug. 21
“This Saturday, the third mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be cast inside a rotating furnace lab at the Steward Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. It’s the only facility in the world where mirrors this large are being made.”
8. Turkey’s Women Strike Back
The New York Review of Books | Aug. 19
“Just as some Turks have recognized for the first time that violence against the Kurds in the east is no different than the police violence they are now experiencing in the west, they are also becoming aware that state meddling in women’s lives means meddling in the lives of everyone.”
9. Not-so-empty nests: When adult children live at home
By Adriene Hill | Marketplace Life | May 2013
“There are more than 22 million adult children still living at home with their parents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”
10. The End of Second Acts?
By Shadd Maruna and Charles Barber | The Wilson Quarterly | Spring 2013
“The mass warehousing of convicts is a sign of America’s faltering belief in second chances. Considering how individuals atone for their crimes can help us restore rehabilitation as an ideal.”
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Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Tracking whale sharks / How Nixon chased women / Dead vice presidents / Man-made eggs, woman-made sperm / Chronicling Syria’s bloodshed / Friday’s blues
For this week:
Tracking whale sharks / How Nixon chased women / Dead vice presidents / Man-made eggs, woman-made sperm / Chronicling Syria’s bloodshed / Friday’s blues
Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. Where the Whale Sharks Go
By Christopher Joyce | Morning Edition :: NPR | Aug. 22
“After tagging more than 800 whale sharks over nine years, the team discovered that after feeding, the sharks head off in seemingly random directions. Some travel thousands of miles, and they can dive a mile deep.”
2. How the Nixon Administration Tried to Woo Women
By Emma Green | The Atlantic | Aug. 22
“It turns out that the Republican strategy on women in the 1970s was about as nimble as ‘binders full of women’ ”
3. Have any vice presidents died in office?
By Anthony Bergen | Dead Presidents | August 2013
“Yes, quite a few of our Vice Presidents have died in office, actually — SEVEN out of 47 total, so about 15% of the VPs didn’t survive their term.”
4. Lab-Made Egg and Sperm Precursors Raise Prospect for Infertility Treatment
By David Cyranoski | Nature / Scientific American | Aug. 21
“A technical tour de force, which involved creating primordial germ cells from mouse skin cells, is prompting scientists to consider attempting this experiment with human cells”
5. Syria’s civil war: A chronicle of bloodshed
By Emily Lodish | GlobalPost | Aug. 21
“News of a possible chemical weapons attack in Syria follows a chain of deadly events. Here’s a look at the worst of the worst.”
6. The Latinos turning to Islam
By Katy Watson | Newshour :: BBC World News | August 2013
“With more than 50 million Hispanics living in the US, the Latino community is now the country’s biggest minority. ”
7. Covering Nixon
The New York Review of Books | Aug. 9
“The sheer number, variety, and viciousness of David Levine’s drawings of Nixon provide some sense of his place in The New York Review’s pages during the five and a half years of his presidency.”
8. Bezos, Heraclitus and the Hybrid Future of Journalism
By Arianna Huffington | LinkedIn | Aug. 14
“The future will definitely be a hybrid one, combining the best practices of traditional journalism — fairness, accuracy, storytelling, deep investigations — with the best tools available to the digital world — speed, transparency, and, above all, engagement.”
9. The Man Who Knew Too Much
By Marie Brenner | Vanity Fair | May 1996
“Angrily, painfully, Jeffrey Wigand emerged from the sealed world of Big Tobacco to confront the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown & Williamson. Hailed as a hero by anti-smoking forces and vilified by the tobacco industry, Wigand is at the center of an epic multibillion-dollar struggle that reaches from Capitol Hill to the hallowed journalistic halls of CBS’s 60 Minutes.”
10. Are Apostrophes Necessary?
By Matthew J.X. Malady | Slate | May 2013
“Not really, no.”
******************
TUNES
Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.
1. Gary Moore — Texas Strut
2. Paul Rodgers & Gary Moore — She Moves Me
3. Dr. Wu — Storm Watch Warning
4. Needtobreathe — Prisoner
5. Rick Huckaby — Can’t Miss Kid
6. The Mark Knoll Band — High Time
7. Preacherstone — Old Fashioned Ass Whoopin’
8. Brian Burns & Ray Wylie Hubbard — Little Angel Comes A-Walkin
9. Cody Gill Band — Crazy
10. Ramblin Dawgs — Worse Without You
11. Pat Green & Cory Morrow — Stuck In The Middle With You
12. Bobby Manriquez — How We Started
13. WSNB — True Love
14. Shane Dwight — Boogie King
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
The value of apostrophes / Obama and Nixon / Cicada secrets / Boston Marathon bombing PTSD / A long-lost WWII Marine’s diary
Most of these great items come from my Twitter or Facebook feeds. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. WW2 Marine’s diary: A brief look at a brief life
By Janet McConnaughey | Associated Press | May 27
“Before Cpl. Thomas ‘Cotton’ Jones was killed by a Japanese sniper in the Central Pacific in 1944, he wrote what he called his ‘last life request’ to anyone who might find his diary: Please give it to Laura Mae Davis, the girl he loved. Davis did get to read the diary — but not until nearly 70 years later. …”
2. How Timbuktu’s manuscripts were saved from jihadists
By Sudarsan Raghavan | The Washington Post | May 26
“The scholarly documents depicted Islam as a historically moderate and intellectual religion and were considered cultural treasures by Western institutions — reasons enough for the ultraconservative jihadists to destroy them.”
3. Why Efforts to Bring Extinct Species Back from the Dead Miss the Point
Scientific American | May 27
“A project to revive long-gone species is a sideshow to the real extinction crisis”
4. There Are Plenty of Reasons Why Parents May Read More With Their Daughters
By Nanette Fondas | The Atlantic | May 21
“Understanding a new study that finds girls get more reading time with their parents than boys.”
5. As Boston recovers from Marathon attack, emotional trauma may be just setting in
By Marissa Miley | GlobalPost | May 24
“PTSD and related stress disorders can take weeks or months to develop — and local organizations are prepared to help.”
6. Obama’s speechwriter: from intern to top wordsmith
By Darlene Superville | Associated Press | May 25
“Current and former White House colleagues, all Obama campaign veterans, praise [Cody] Keenan’s writing skills and work ethic and what they describe as his sense of fairness, modesty and willingness to help.”
7. The Man Who Knew Too Much
By Marie Brenner | Vanity Fair | May 1996
“Angrily, painfully, Jeffrey Wigand emerged from the sealed world of Big Tobacco to confront the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown & Williamson. Hailed as a hero by anti-smoking forces and vilified by the tobacco industry, Wigand is at the center of an epic multibillion-dollar struggle that reaches from Capitol Hill to the hallowed journalistic halls of CBS’s 60 Minutes.”
8. The secrets of cicada survival
By John Matson | Salon | May 24
“A new brood is set to emerge this summer for the first time in 17 years. What’s taken them so long?”
9. Why Obama Is Not Nixon
By Elizabeth Drew | NYR Blog :: The New York Review of Books | May 18
“Compared to Watergate, on the basis of everything we know about what are the current ‘scandals’ amount to a piffle. Watergate was a Constitutional crisis.”
10. Are Apostrophes Necessary?
By Matthew J.X. Malady | Slate | May 23
“Not really, no.”
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
The return of ‘Arrested Development’ / The drone wars / Revitalizing sexual desire / A writer’s dreams / Don’t bring the baby to the bar
Most of these great items come from my Twitter or Facebook feeds. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.
1. Medea Benjamin, the Woman Who Heckled Obama, Is Not Sorry
By Caroline Linton | The Daily Beast | May 24
“Medea Benjamin has spent a lifetime confronting powerful people, so she was a bit baffled when Obama called her a ‘young lady.’ ”
2. ‘Arrested Development’ returns
Arts Beat :: The New York Times | May 2013
The cast discusses the show’s fourth season.
Jason Bateman | Jeffrey Tambor | Jessica Walter
Will Arnett | Portia de Rossi | David Cross | Michael Cera
3. ‘Arrested Development,’ Season 4
By David Haglund and Emma Roller | Slate | May 24
“Panic attack! What if the new episodes aren’t very good?”
4. Jon Huntsman’s Real Challenge
By Scott Conroy | Real Clear Politics | May 24
“To hear Jon Huntsman tell it, his hopes of succeeding in a potential second presidential bid depend largely on one thing: whether enough voters come around to his views on the major issues of the day.”
5. Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That
By Daniel Bergner | The New York Times Magazine | May 22
“The promise of Lybrido and of a similar medication called Lybridos … is that it will be possible to take a next step, to give women the power to switch on lust, to free desire from the obstacles that get in its way.”
6. China Has Drones. Now What?
By Andrew Erickson and Austin Strange | Foreign Affairs | May 23
“When Beijing will — and won’t — use its UAVs”
7. The Shadow War Behind Syria’s Rebellion
By Rania Abouzeid | Time | May 24
“Qatar and Saudi Arabia each favor different rebel factions.”
8. My Psychic Garburator
By Margaret Atwood | NYR Blog :: The New York Review of Books | May 6
“Should you, as a fiction writer, permit your characters to have dreams?”
9. How Do I Tell a Friend to Stop Bringing Her Cockblocking Baby to Bars?
By Sara Benincasa | Jezebel | May 24
“Our lives and friendships change as we get older, and it’s unfair and also creepy to expect your gaggle of single girlfriends to accommodate your kid at a boozy pre-fuckfest.”
10. Remote Control
By Steve Coll | The New Yorker | May 6
“Our drone delusion”
******************
TUNES
Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.
1. Bob Segar — Come to Papa
2. Rick Fowler — Walk Softly
3. Mike Zito — Natural Born Lover
4. Larry Tillery Band — Natches River
5. Micheal K’s Rumble Pack — Another Kind of Love
6. Pat Green — Let Me
7. Paul Thorn — Crutches
8. Paul Thorn — Will the Circle Be Unbroken
9. Z-Tribe — Since the Blues Began
10. Tony Caggiano — Trouble
11. Zed Head — Till I Lost You
12. Wiser Time — Had Enough
13. The Fabulous Thunderbirds — Wrap It Up
Tell your friends!
Recommended reading / viewing / listening
Alec Baldwin’s new NBC show? / The Met gets a $1 billion gift / The quirks of the DSM 5 / Remembering Thatcher and Firestone / Renaissance art reborn
Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.
1. Alec Baldwin Said to Be in Talks to Join NBC’s Late-Night Lineup
By Bill Carter | Media Decoder :: The New York Times | April 9
“The most likely landing place for a show hosted by Mr. Baldwin would be in the latest of NBC’s entries, the show now called ‘Last Call.’ That half-hour interview program currently stars Carson Daly.”
2. The D.S.M and the Nature of Disease
By Gary Greenberg | Elements :: The New Yorker | April 9
“[T]here is little reason to think that a new D.S.M. will increase the prevalence of mental-disorder diagnoses, and less to think that we will ever really know how many people are sick.”
3. The Man Who Pierced the Sky
By William Langewiesche | Vanity Fair | May 2013
“When Felix Baumgartner set out to make a living by stunt jumping … the young Austrian had no idea where it would take him: to a pressurized capsule nearly 24 miles above New Mexico, last October 14, preparing to free-fall farther than any man in history, and at supersonic speed.”
4. The 21 Books from the 21st Century Every Man Should Read
GQ | April 8
“These are GQ‘s hands-down, most emphatically favorite works of fiction from the new millennium, plus all the books from the past thirteen years the authors want you to read”
5. The lady who changed the world
The Economist | April 8
“The essence of Thatcherism was to oppose the status quo and bet on freedom. … She thought nations could become great only if individuals were set free. Her struggles had a theme: the right of individuals to run their own lives, as free as possible from the micromanagement of the state.”
6. Beautiful Renaissance Paintings, All Done Up Real Handsome-Like as Photographs
By Rebecca J. Rosen | The Atlantic | April 4
“A project co-opts classic Italian art to challenge Europe’s xenophobia.”
7. Death of a Revolutionary
By Susan Faludi | The New Yorker | April 15
“When Shulamith Firestone’s body was found late last August … she had been dead for some days. … Such a solitary demise would have been unimaginable to anyone who knew Firestone in the late nineteen-sixties, when she was at the epicenter of the radical-feminist movement …”
8. Prize-Writing
By Amanda Foreman | The New York Times Book Review | April 5
“Literary prizes have become so numerous and pervasive that just like the invention of the computer, it makes you wonder how writers ever survived without them.”
9. The Invincible Mrs. Thatcher
By Charles Moore | Vanity Fair | December 2011
“Twenty years after Thatcher’s retirement, her biographer Charles Moore re-assesses the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill, one who forged a legacy that will long survive her.”
10. Cubism, Which Changed Art, Now Changes the Met
By Carol Vogel | The New York Times | April 9
“In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.”
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