Good Reads

[Laurel]

How a privately educated British schoolboy named John Mellor became The Clash's iconic front man

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/2013/07/30/0913_CULT_Parker_OmnivoreClash/mag-article-large.jpg?mqrjy0

American shrinks know him well: the English boarding-school boy. Privately educated, privately damaged, culturally overstocked, and twanging with the knowledge of his own separateness. Having made an emigratory thrust westward, he washes up, middle-aged, in the therapist’s chair, head in hands, complaining of a sound, a sound: tires on gravel, and the swish of the family vehicle as it slides off the institutional forecourt, abandoning him to Matron, and cold toast, and the other boys.

Was Joe Strummer, 1952–2002, punk-rock paradigm and (ruefully) self-described “spokesman for a generation,” a standard product of the English boarding-school system? Not quite, not quite. But he bore the mark. Deposited at the City of London Freemen’s School at the age of 9, little Johnny Mellor—as he was then—knew what he had to do. “I just subconsciously went straight to the heart of the matter,” he explained in an interview filmed late in his life, “which was: forget about your parents, and deal with this.” The Strummer-voice, as he delivers this speech, is kicked-back, déclassé, woozily emphatic, with an accent impossible to place. He sounds like a very stoned soccer manager, or an American DJ reading aloud from Great Expectations. “It was either bully or be bullied. I was one of the principal bullies. And there was no protection from anyone.” Johnny Mellor is not remembered as a bully by his schoolmates, so what Strummer is talking about here is an interior process: a self-burying, a hardening-up. It was an operation he would repeat 15 years later, to considerably more dramatic effect, when he became the lead singer of The Clash.​

- read the full article Joe Strummer and Punk Self-Reinvention (from The Atlantic)​

 

[Laurel]

On Headsup: The Blog, FEV (Fred Vultee) notes a remarkable confluence of nouns (and one adjective) on the front page of Sunday's New York Post:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/nyp.2013.0817.jpg

Comments by Vultee:

Nothing on here really qualifies as a noun pile, strictly speaking, but it's still impressive by US tabloid standards: four chunks of display type, and not a verb in the bunch:

Shock Murder Claim
Diana Slay Plot
Scotland Yard Probe
Exclusive Author Interview

"Exclusive" is a well-established newspaper noun, but I'd score it as an adjective here, which is something like a single in the top of the 10th after nine perfect innings. Otherwise, we're all nouns, all the time.​

- read the full article The New York Post goes verbless (from Language Log)​

 

[Laurel]

A serial killer finds a newly vulnerable class of victims: white, working-class men.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/2013/07/30/0913_WEL_Murder_ZachNick/mag-article-large.jpg?mrqnzz

Wanted: Caretaker For Farm. Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of hilly farmland and feed a few cows, you get 300 a week and a nice 2 bedroom trailer, someone older and single preferred but will consider all, relocation a must, you must have a clean record and be trustworthy—this is a permanent position, the farm is used mainly as a hunting preserve, is overrun with game, has a stocked 3 acre pond, but some beef cattle will be kept, nearest neighbor is a mile away, the place is secluded and beautiful, it will be a real get away for the right person, job of a lifetime—if you are ready to relocate please contact asap, position will not stay open.​

Scott Davis had answered the job ad on Craigslist on October 9, 2011, and now, four weeks later to the day, he was watching the future it had promised glide past the car window: acre after acre of Ohio farmland dotted with cattle and horses, each patch framed by rolling hills and anchored by a house and a barn—sometimes old and worn, but never decrepit. Nothing a little carpentry couldn’t fix.
[...]
On a densely wooded, hilly stretch, Jack told his nephew to pull over. “Drop us off where we got that deer at last time,” he said, explaining to Davis that he’d left some equipment down the hill by the creek and they’d need to retrieve it to repair the road. Davis got out to help, stuffing his cigarettes and a can of Pepsi into the pockets of his jean jacket. He followed Jack down the hill, but when they reached a patch of wet grass by the creek, Jack seemed to have lost his way and suggested they head back up to the road. Davis turned around and started walking, with Jack following behind him now.

Davis heard a click, and the word fuck. Spinning around, he saw Jack pointing a gun at his head. Where we got that deer at last time. In a flash, it was clear to Davis: he was the next deer.​

- read the full article Murder by Craigslist (from The Atlantic)​

 

[Laurel]

http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/dnews-files-2013-08-astronaut-corps-new-670x440-130820-jpg.jpg

In a sign of the times, aspiring astronauts were asked to write a Twitter post, a limerick or a haiku as part of their NASA applications. Here’s a winning entry from Victor Glover, 37, a U.S. Navy pilot and one of the eight members of the newly announced Astronaut Class of 2013.

“Eyes fixed gazing off into space
My mind in awe of the human race
This is all dizzying to me
Because I gave so much blood and pee
Happy to be here (by the) colonoscopy place.”​

“That’s funny, if you go through this interview process, specifically the medical portion,” Glover told reporters during the group’s first press conference on Tuesday.​

- read the full article NASA Astronaut Recruits Asked Show Twitter Flair
(from Discovery Channel)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.bloomberg.com/image/iS.7GsBTfkrM.jpg

He’s on County Road 1680 moving like a black-tailed jackrabbit under the big-bowl Oklahoma sky, a tiny dot in his Ford Ranger out on the edge of the world when the flying red stinger ants show up.

Other on-the-job nuisances include hail, mud, diamondback rattlers, wild boars, coyotes, bobcats, porcupines and skunks. Bull keeps on driving. Past stunted wheat fields of drought and disappointment, he rolls.

Fifty, 55, 60 mph. Turning up a driveway, he reaches out the window and, snap, the mailbox opens. Bull is a letter carrier with the longest postal route in America, 187.6 miles (301.8 kilometers) across some of the loneliest territory in the country. He’s 72, and part of the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. labor force -- those who work past their 65th birthdays.​

- read the full article Mailman at 72 With America’s Longest Route (from Bloomberg)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.nypost.com/r/nypost/2013/08/20/pulse/web_photos/081713_Ramen_Burger_6103_EP191342--525x350.jpg

Early Saturday morning, hordes of 20-somethings began lining up for one of New York’s most coveted culinary creations. They passed the three-plus-hour wait with smartphones in one hand and iced coffees in the other. Some napped, curled on the ground, while others stood with friends, foggily recalling the previous night’s adventures.

The foodie throngs weren’t hungrily waiting for a Cronut on Spring Street. They were lined up on the Williamsburg waterfront, ravenous for New York’s newest culinary craze: the Ramen Burger.

A Japanese-American mash-up, the fad food of the millisecond features a hamburger patty sandwiched between two discs of compressed ramen noodles in lieu of a traditional bun. To date, it’s only been available on three occasions — the past few Saturdays at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg food market — and each time, it’s sold out in just a few hours.​

- read the full article Move over, Cronut! The new Ramen Burger has New Yorkers in a foodie frenzy (from The NY Post)​

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Crime of Privilege
-Walter Walker

In the tradition of Scott Turow, William Landay, and Nelson DeMille, Crime of Privilege is a stunning thriller
about power, corruption, and the law in America—and the dangerous ways they come together.

A murder on Cape Cod. A rape in Palm Beach.

All they have in common is the presence of one of America’s most beloved and influential families. But nobody is asking questions.
Not the police. Not the prosecutors. And certainly not George Becket, a young lawyer toiling away in the basement of the Cape
& Islands district attorney’s office. George has always lived at the edge of power. He wasn’t born to privilege, but he understands
how it works and has benefitted from it in ways he doesn’t like to admit. Now, an investigation brings him deep inside the world
of the truly wealthy—and shows him what a perilous place it is.

"....George finds his friends are not necessarily still friends and a spouse can be unfaithful in more ways than one. And despite threats
at every turn, he is driven to reconstruct the victim’s last hours while searching not only for a killer but for his own redemption."

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15938729-crime-of-privilege

8/22/2013
WCVB
Chronicle TV show
Walter Walker segment
film clips of him, walking in places on Cape Cod
telling the viewers juicy tidbits about the book

http://www.wcvb.com/chronicle/thursday-august-22-books/-/12523032/21483976/-/y6go6m/-/index.html

Walter Walker interview-

I love the warm water of Craigville Beach, the freezing cold water of the National Seashore, the dunes of Marconi, the scattered
lakes and ponds, the Cape Cod Rail Trail, the Beachcomber in Wellfleet, taking out-of-town guests hiking on Great Island in Wellfleet
and then on to Provincetown.

I love the homes of Osterville and Chatham, the live theaters of Dennis and Brewster, Cape Cod League baseball, clamming and crabbing
and playing golf and the fireworks in Falmouth on the Fourth of July.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130721/LIFE/307210304/-1/NEWS

 

[lovetoread]

I want a ramen burger,but I ain't waiting that freaking long for one.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Wait for the real thing, or go without-

Canadian foodies may have taken the cronut craze a touch too far: Several people were hospitalized on Tuesday after eating
a cronut burger, a collaboration of two Toronto restaurants that was created expressly for the Canadian National Exhibition.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/ente...f-cronut-burger-made-bunch-people-sick/68580/

 

[Laurel]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/69416000/jpg/_69416324_hostages.jpg

Forty years on and the term is evoked nearly every time an abductee is found after many years out of public sight. Some argue that its very nature implies a criticism of the survivor - a weakness perhaps.

In a 2010 interview with the Guardian, Kampusch rejected the label of Stockholm Syndrome, explaining that it doesn't take into account the rational choices people make in particular situations.

"I find it very natural that you would adapt yourself to identify with your kidnapper," she says. "Especially if you spend a great deal of time with that person. It's about empathy, communication. Looking for normality within the framework of a crime is not a syndrome. It is a survival strategy."​

- read the full article What is Stockholm syndrome? (from The BBC)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn23640/dn23640-2_300.jpg

TWO years ago, Antonio Melillo was in a car crash that completely severed his spinal cord. He has not been able to move or feel his legs since. And yet here I am, in a lab at the Santa Lucia Foundation hospital in Rome, Italy, watching him walk.

Melillo is one of the first people with lower limb paralysis to try out MindWalker– the world's first exoskeleton that aims to enable paralysed and locked-in people to walk using only their mind.

Five people have been involved in the clinical trial of MindWalker over the past eight weeks. The trial culminates this week with a review by the European Commission, which funded the work; the project has been carried out by a consortium of several major universities and companies.

It's the end of a three-year development period for the project, which has three main elements. There is the exoskeleton itself, a contraption that holds a person's body weight and moves their legs when instructed. People learn how to use it in the second element: a virtual-reality environment. And then there's the mind-reading component.​

- read the full article Mind-controlled exoskeleton lets paralysed people walk (from New Scientist)​

 

[Laurel]

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/19/19589/original/700.jpg?0431

NAPLES, FL—Describing it as a “real close call,” a local seagull suffering from an acute case of diarrhea told reporters that he was barely able to make it to a crowded public beach in time to relieve himself Monday. “Oh, man, I really had to go and there wasn’t a sunbather or occupied picnic table in sight—I honestly didn’t know if I could hold it,” said the gray and white seabird, who reportedly uttered a deep, contented sigh of relief upon finally reaching a densely packed group of beachgoers and releasing a voluminous torrent of loose fecal matter.​

- read the full article Seagull With Diarrhea Barely Makes It To Crowded Beach In Time (from The Onion)​

 

[Laurel]

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/15/article-2144931-131BA44E000005DC-517_468x375.jpg


That hesitation right before a kiss

I don't remember ever learning this

I've never had a valentine before

I'm not a little baby anymore

It's poetry — rhyming couplets written in perfect iambic pentameter, those ten-syllable lines of alternating emphasis made famous by authors of sonnets and blank verse. But unlike your average metered rhyme, these lines were written by Twitter ... with some help from a program called Pentametron.

Pentametron — which you can follow at — watches all the public tweets created in a day. "It picks out the ones that happen to be in iambic pentameter," says Ranjit Bhatnagar, an artist and the inventor of the program. "When it finds some of those, it looks for a pair that rhyme, and then it tweets out a couplet."​

- read the full article Pentametron Reveals Unintended Poetry of Twitter Users (from NPR)​

 

[Laurel]

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18eyurj9shxzkjpg/original.jpg

Irene is a great colleague. A senior manager in a large consulting firm, she pitches in when the workload gets heavy, covers for people when they're sick, and stays late when needed, which is often. She's also a leader, serving on boards and raising money at charity auctions. She tries to be home for her kids at dinner time, but often works into the night after they've gone to sleep. That is, on nights when she's not at a business dinner. But if you catch her in a moment of honesty, you'll find out that she doesn't feel so great. In fact, she's exhausted.

Irene can't say no. And because she can't say no, she's spending her very limited time and already taxed energy on other people's priorities, while her own priorities fall to the wayside. I have experienced the same thing myself. So, over time, I experimented with a number of ways to strengthen my no.

Here are the nine practices I shared with Irene to help her say a strategic no in order to create space in her life for a more intentional yes.


Know Your No

Identify what's important to you and acknowledge what's not. If you don't know where you want to spend your time, you won't know where you don't want to spend your time. Before you can say no with confidence, you have to be clear that you want to say no. All the other steps follow this one.​

- read the full article Nine Practices to Help You Say No Without Feeling Like a Jerk (from Lifehacker)​

 

[evesdream]

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18eyurj9shxzkjpg/original.jpg

Irene is a great colleague. A senior manager in a large consulting firm, she pitches in when the workload gets heavy, covers for people when they're sick, and stays late when needed, which is often. She's also a leader, serving on boards and raising money at charity auctions. She tries to be home for her kids at dinner time, but often works into the night after they've gone to sleep. That is, on nights when she's not at a business dinner. But if you catch her in a moment of honesty, you'll find out that she doesn't feel so great. In fact, she's exhausted.

Irene can't say no. And because she can't say no, she's spending her very limited time and already taxed energy on other people's priorities, while her own priorities fall to the wayside. I have experienced the same thing myself. So, over time, I experimented with a number of ways to strengthen my no.

Here are the nine practices I shared with Irene to help her say a strategic no in order to create space in her life for a more intentional yes.


Know Your No

Identify what's important to you and acknowledge what's not. If you don't know where you want to spend your time, you won't know where you don't want to spend your time. Before you can say no with confidence, you have to be clear that you want to say no. All the other steps follow this one.​

- read the full article Nine Practices to Help You Say No Without Feeling Like a Jerk (from Lifehacker)​

I'm not embarrassed to say I've had to Google this before for my own edification. I think I already have this article bookmarked.

 

[lovetoread]

Poor birdy.

 

[rosco rathbone]

The Writer As Reader: Melville and His Marginalia

 

[Laurel]

Poor birdy.

Indeed.

The Writer As Reader: Melville and His Marginalia

Very cool...

 

[Laurel]

http://www.genderacrossborders.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/silence1.jpg

All silences are not equal, some seem quieter than others. Why? It’s all to do with the way our brains adapt to the world around us, as Tom Stafford explains

A “deafening silence” is a striking absence of noise, so profound that it seems to have its own quality. Objectively it is impossible for one silence to be any different from another. But the way we use the phrase hints at a psychological truth.

The secret to a deafening silence is the period of intense noise that comes immediately before it. When this ends, the lack of sound appears quieter than silence. This sensation, as your mind tries to figure out what your ears are reporting, is what leads us to call a silence deafening.

What is happening here is a result of a process called adaptation. It describes the moving baseline against which new stimuli are judged. The way the brain works is that any constant simulation is tuned out, allowing perception to focus on changes against this background, rather than absolute levels of stimulation. Turn your stereo up from four to five and it sounds louder, but as your memory of making the change rapidly fades, your mind adjusts and volume five becomes the new normal.​

- read the full article The deafening silence (from Mindhacks)​

 

[Laurel]

The relationship between words and their meaning is a fascinating one, and linguists have spent countless years deconstructing it, taking it apart letter by letter, and trying to figure out why there are so many feelings and ideas that we cannot even put words to, and that our languages cannot identify.
[...]
No doubt the best book we've read that covers the subject is 'Through The Language Glass' by Guy Deutscher, which goes a long way to explaining and understanding these loopholes - the gaps which mean there are leftover words without translations, and concepts that cannot be properly explained across cultures.

Somehow narrowing it down to just a handful, we've illustrated 11 of these wonderful, untranslatable, if slightly elusive, words. We will definitely be trying to incorporate a few of them into our everyday conversations, and hope that you enjoy recognising a feeling or two of your own among them.

[...]

2 | Italian: Culaccino

http://static.squarespace.com/static/50db2752e4b03955129366a6/t/5215c3f3e4b05ae44360bb36/1377158132950/2-web.png?format=750w

3 | Inuit: Iktsuarpok

http://static.squarespace.com/static/50db2752e4b03955129366a6/t/52134580e4b030489dbfe88d/1376994689864/3-web.png?format=750w

[...]

7 | Indonesian: Jayus

http://static.squarespace.com/static/50db2752e4b03955129366a6/t/52134873e4b049f983e51f5f/1376995444644/7-web.png?format=750w

[...]

10 | Urdu: Goya

http://static.squarespace.com/static/50db2752e4b03955129366a6/t/52134acce4b06d5f9d3632b6/1376996046277/10-web.png?format=750w​

- read the full article 11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures (from Maptia)​

 

[Aquagal]

Often, I'm so curious about things so I can really grasp the concept of pochemuchka, while I ponder being waldensamkeit. Right now komorebi is beautiful as I look out on the cloudless day. I think later I'd like to leave a culaccino, just so I can say it, that's my favorite new word of the bunch. It rolls off the tongue like water in a calm brook.

 

[Laurel]

Often, I'm so curious about things so I can really grasp the concept of pochemuchka, while I ponder being waldensamkeit. Right now komorebi is beautiful as I look out on the cloudless day. I think later I'd like to leave a culaccino, just so I can say it, that's my favorite new word of the bunch. It rolls off the tongue like water in a calm brook.

It does! I like that one a lot. And I adore the idea behind jayus even though the actual word sorta bugs me.

 

[Laurel]

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/interactive/2013/08/us/oldest-cold-case/media/ch1/mittens.jpg

The kidnapping and murder of Maria Ridulph is the nation's oldest cold case to go to trial. It required family members to turn against one of their own and haunted a small town for 55 years. Even now, the case may not be over.
[...]
Winning a conviction in a crime that occurred in 1957 is a remarkable accomplishment – proof that no one should get away with murder, even if justice takes 55 years. But a close examination of the case by CNN raises questions about the strength of the evidence, the motives of some of the witnesses and the ability of the court system to fairly and accurately reconstruct history.​

- read the full article Taken (from CNN)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/01/ff_plasticbody2_large-660x495.jpg

The 68-year-old scientist who runs this factory of desiccation and dissection spends his days shuffling through its corridors with his lapdog, Bella. They are often the only living things in sight, and Bella’s yaps echo among the carved-up corpses that line the halls in obscene and fabulous poses. One looks like a flayed Harry Potter, riding on a twisted broomstick that is, upon closer examination, his own spinal cord. Another sits with a rod in hand, dangling a fish, while his body has been exploded into parts that hang from a rack on fishing lines. There are horse heads too, their flesh corroded to reveal clouds of blood vessels, and yaks and pigs with their ribs spread out like wings. Von Hagens calls the place his Plastinarium. It’s the first permanent display of specimens from his stupendously successful traveling exhibition of flesh preserved with plastic. Body Worlds has made its way to London, Tokyo, Istanbul, Boston, and scores of other cities since the 1990s; it has inspired copycats and lawsuits and sold more than 35 million tickets.
[...]
It took years to get the details right, but eventually von Hagens figured out a way to turn his method into a morbid empire, devoted to the processing of animal and human cadavers, with outposts in Kyrgyzstan and China. At its busiest, the complex in Guben employed 220 people and churned out specimens for exhibition, along with those that could be sold to medical schools around the world—limbs and joints for orthopedics, jaws for dentistry, spinal columns for neurology, and $75,000 plastic-filled corpses for gross anatomy.

But on the morning of December 29, 2010, the anatomist, inventor, and entrepreneur stood at the center of his factory, before his army of employees, and began to cry. The business that he’d worked so hard to build was crumbling. Revenue from Body Worlds had begun to taper off, and sales of body parts to universities had always been propped up by the exhibits. His plastination plant in China was nearly defunct, and his would-be partnership in Siberia had ended in a scandal. Here in Guben, the operation had gotten to the verge of bankruptcy. The staff would have to be cut back, von Hagens said; two-thirds of his employees would be let go.

The doctor too was in decline. “My hand trembles, my language is vague,” he stammered. Two years before, he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and the symptoms had grown so intense, so rapidly, that he could no longer keep them secret. There is no cure for his disorder, no way to prevent his brain from shrinking. With each passing month, von Hagens’ limbs will get more rigid and his face more like a mask. After a career spent staving off rot and giving life to stiffened corpses, the man the tabloids call “Dr. Death” faces his own.​

- read the full article The Plastinarium of Dr. von Hagens (from Wired)​

 

[Laurel]

The “umami” craze has turned a much-maligned and misunderstood food additive into an object of obsession for the world’s most innovative chefs. But secret ingredient monosodium glutamate’s biggest secret may be that there was never anything wrong with it at all.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr06/2013/8/15/20/enhanced-buzz-30710-1376612695-16.jpg

In the last three years, perhaps the boldest thing Chef David Chang has done with food is let it rot. In his tiny Momofuku research and development lab in New York’s East Village, Chang and his head of R&D Dan Felder have obsessed over the many delicious things that happen when molds and fungi are treated like gourmet ingredients rather than evidence that you need to clean out your fridge.

Without fermentation, we would live in a sad world without beer, cheese, miso, kimchi, and hundreds of other delicious things humans have enjoyed for centuries. But in the carefully labeled containers stacked around the cramped confines of their lab, Chang and Felder have been fermenting new things. They’ve turned mashed pistachios, lentils, chickpeas, and other legumes into miso-like pastes Chang calls “hozon” (Korean for “preserved”). They’ve created variations on Japanese tamari — a by-product of miso production that’s similar to soy sauce — with fermented spelt and rye they call “bonji” (“essence”). They’ve even replicated the Japanese staple katsuobushi (a log of dried, smoked, and fermented bonito that’s shaved into bonito flakes) using fermented pork tenderloin instead of fish.

The flavor Chang and Felder are chasing in creating these new fermented products is umami — the savory “fifth taste” detectable by the human tongue along with salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. When bacteria and fungi break down the glucose in foods that are fermenting, they release waste products. And the waste valued in Momofuku’s lab above all others is glutamic acid, the amino acid that creates the taste of umami on our tongues.​

- read the full article The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success (from Buzzfeed Buzzreads)​