Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The priceless Oxford comma / Trump and Spicer tangle with GCHQ / Paris Hilton: Empire builder / Reversing Earth’s rotation / Find free money

This week: The priceless Oxford comma / Trump and Spicer tangle with GCHQ / Paris Hilton: Empire builder / Reversing Earth’s rotation / Find free money

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. White House Tries to Soothe British Officials Over Trump’s Wiretap Claim
By Peter Baker and Steven Erlanger | The New York Times | March 17
“The GCHQ quickly and vehemently denied the contention in a rare statement issued by the spy agency on Thursday, calling the assertions ‘nonsense’ and ‘utterly ridiculous.’ By Friday morning, Mr. Spicer’s briefing had turned into a full-blown international incident. British politicians expressed outraged and demanded apologies and retractions from the American government.”

2. Paris Hilton: I’m not the dumb blonde people thought
By Richard Johnson | The New York Post | March 16
“[T]he Champagne-quaffing, table-dancing party monster has morphed into a businesswoman who’d rather stay home and cook dinner for her boyfriend than go out clubbing into the wee hours.”

3. If Earth’s spin reversed, everything would be different
By Hannah Fry and Andrew Pontzen | BBC Future | March 15
“What would happen if our planet suddenly started turning the opposite way, or slowed to a crawl? One thing is for sure, it wouldn’t be a smooth outcome for civilisation …”

4. Is Trump Trolling the White House Press Corps?
By Andrew Marantz | The New Yorker | March 20
“At daily briefings, Sean Spicer calls on young journalists from far-right sites. The mainstream media sees them as an existential threat.”

5. Lack of Oxford comma costs Maine company millions in overtime dispute
By John Waller | The Boston Globe | March 16
“A class-action lawsuit about overtime pay for truck drivers hinged entirely on a debate that has bitterly divided friends, families and foes: The dreaded — or totally necessary — Oxford comma, perhaps the most polarizing of punctuation marks.”

6. Racing in Cocaine Valley
Witness :: Al Jazeera | February 2017
“In the jungles of Peru, young coca farmers risk everything to win a deadly motor race, now a vibrant local tradition.”

7. The Nazi Spy with 1,000 Faces
By Marc Worthman | The Daily Beast | February 2017
“‘Come and get me,’ he taunted authorities, but this spy and killer could not be taken down — until his Nazi spy masters slipped up.”

8. The Right Words for the Job: How Gendered Language Affects the Workplace
By Deb Liu | Medium | February 2017
“What surprised me was how deep our gender-specific language runs. These words were not said with misogynistic or negative intent, but rather they were used in apparently innocuous ways.”

9. Free, Official Sources to Find Unclaimed Money
USA.gov | February 2017
“There might be unclaimed funds or property waiting for you from savings or checking accounts, wages and pensions, tax refunds, life insurance policies, and a lot more. Companies may offer to find this money for a fee. And scammers may try to trick you with fake promises of money from the government. But you can find your unclaimed money yourself for free.”

10. When J.F.K. Secretly Reached Out to Castro
By Michael Beschloss | HistorySource :: The New York Times | December 2014
“Ambassador William Attwood, a Kennedy delegate to the United Nations, secretly called Castro’s aide and physician, Rene Vallejo, to discuss a possible secret meeting in Havana between Attwood and Castro that might improve the Cuban-American relationship. …”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Psychology of Batman / Middle East’s future / Wedding depression / What’s Sorkin’s problem? / The HIV wars

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. What Makes Batman Tick?
By Linda Holmes | MonkeySee :: Weekend Edition Sunday | July 15
“When you look at Batman with a coldly analytical eye … a few things stand out as potential red flags: the secrecy, the lair, the attraction to danger, the blithe self-sacrifice, the … cape.”

2. The good, the bad, and the ugly: Three scenarios for the Middle East
By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy | July 20
“Although most commentary tends to obsess about recent events (Will Assad fall? Was Hezbollah for the bombing in Bulgaria? Will there be war with Iran? Is the two-state solution really dead? etc.) today, I want to step back and ask what the larger implications of these various events might be.”

3. The Wedding Effect
By Maggie Shipstead | The New York Times | July 18
“There is something numbing about all this marrying. The thrill of the first friends’ weddings, when everybody was young and lifelong commitment seemed wild and transgressive, has worn off, and a jaded peanut gallery has sprung up …”

4. NASA’s Mars rover may be in for blind landing
By Irene Klotz | Reuters | July 16
“That’s because the satellite that NASA was counting on for real-time coverage of the Mars Science Laboratory’s descent into Gale Crater, located near the planet’s equator, was sidelined last month by a maneuvering system glitch.”

5. Sharks tagged off Scotland monitored online
BBC News | July 20
“The movements of eight basking sharks can now be followed online, after scientists fitted them with satellite tags.”

6. ABC’s Ross takes heat for another blunder
By Dylan Byers | Politico | July 20
“Ross came under attack again Friday when he reported that James Holmes … may have connections to the Tea Party — basing that on a single web page that listed an Aurora-based ‘Jim Holmes’ as a member of the Colorado Tea Party Patriots”

7. Jean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history
TED | May 2012
“From changes to language to the deadliness of wars, he shows how digitized history is just starting to reveal deep underlying patterns.”

8. Aaron Sorkin versus reality
By Alex Pareene | Salon | July 19
“The increasingly unpleasant superiority complex of America’s most prominent liberal screenwriter”

9. Semicolons: A Love Story
By Ben Dolnick | Opinionator :: The New York Times | July 2
“To abjure semicolons was to declare oneself pure of heart, steely-eyed, sadly disillusioned.”

10. The early days of HIV/Aids
Witness :: BBC News | June 3
“It’s 30 years since the HIV virus was first identified by medical experts. In the early days, carriers of the virus were stigmatised and treatment was in its infancy.”

******************

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. The Jeff Strahan Band — Supercool
2. The Jeff Strahan Band — Folsom Prison Blues
3. Anna Popovic — My Man
4. Los Lonely Boys — Road House Blues
5. Bernard Allison — The Other Side
6. Zed Head — Till I Lost You
7. Scott Weis Band — Hurricane
8. Blackberry Smoke — Up In Smoke
9. The Derek Trucks Band — Revolution
10. ZZ Top — Brown Sugar
11. Etta James — Purple Rain
12. Brandon Jenkins — Austin
13. The Red Hot Blues Sisters — Bring It On Home

Rebecca Aguilar

#CallingAllJournalists Initiative | Reporter | Media Watchdog | Mentor | Latinas in Journalism

Anna Fonte's Paper Planes

Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

Postcards from Barton Springs

Gayle Brennan Spencer - sending random thoughts to and from South Austin

The Flask Half Full

Irreverent travelogues, good drinks, and the cultural stories they tell.

Government Book Talk

Talking about some of the best publications from the Federal Government, past and present.

Cadillac Society

Cadillac News, Forums, Rumors, Reviews

Ob360media

Real News That Matters

Mealtime Joy

bringing joy to family meals

Øl, Mad og Folk

Bloggen Øl, Mad og Folk

a joyous kitchen

fun, delicious food for everyone

A Perfect Feast

Modern Comfort Food

donnablackwrites

Art is a gift we give ourselves

Fridgelore

low waste living drawn from food lore through the ages

BeckiesKitchen.com

MUSINGS : CRITICISM : HISTORY : NEWS

North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.

Flavorite

Where your favorite flavors come together