i just wanna mcfly

You’re a Grand Old Rag- George M. Cohan Original version...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:39:00 -0500

You’re a Grand Old Rag- George M. Cohan

Original version of the song recorded to an Edison cylinder, before he changed ‘rag’ to ‘flag’.

“In 1905, the toast of Broadway was grand marshal of a parade for Civil War veterans. Riding next to a graybeard who cradled a battle-torn flag in his lap, Cohan asked about it. After a few words about Gettysburg, the old soldier looked down and said, “She’s a grand old rag.” With ragtime all the rage, a song called “You’re a Grand Old Rag” seemed just the thing for Cohan’s next musical. Songsheets and Edison cylinder recordings were already on sale when the show (audaciously entitled “George Washington, Jr.”) opened to scandal. The Daughters of the American Revolution (knee-jerk, even then), and blowhards like President Teddy Roosevelt, accused the star of desecration. In a rare retreat for the headstrong showman, Cohan recalled the sheets and cylinders (missing a few that collectors prize today) and rewrote the song into the piece of cheese most of us learned too well. The 1905 incident proved a rule that George M. coined: there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

from a 2002 issue of Cabinet, which I just found used at mercer books.

full article here

flavors.me beta launch

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:27:00 -0500

It’s up and running!

http://flavors.me/krisnolte

persimmon! the fruit of fruits. 2 for $1 on the street. a little...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:05:00 -0500

persimmon! the fruit of fruits. 2 for $1 on the street.

a little background- persimmons

World's first micro-piano?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:58:00 -0500

World's first micro-piano? :

“Geoff Smith believes he has come up with the first multicultural acoustic piano – what he has trademarked as a fluid piano – which allows players to alter the tuning of notes either before or during a performance. Instead of a pianist having a fixed sound, 88 notes from 88 keys, Smith’s piano has sliders allowing them access to the different scales that you get in, for example, Indian and Iranian music. For good measure, Smith has included a horizontal harp.”

-Mark Brown

[via The Guardian]

perhaps the most humble and inspiring award show moment to...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:15:27 -0500

perhaps the most humble and inspiring award show moment to memory. it’s refreshing to hear such a deliberate, unhurried acceptance speech. simply beautiful.

soupsoup:

mejoe:

“Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence.”

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, ‘I’ll watch the time.” There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly “May God be with you,” to all his vanquished children.”

Do this every single day of your lives, and I promise you will never ever be unhappy.

aaaaaamen! jamesdevito: everyone needs to watch this RIGHT...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:17:46 -0500

aaaaaamen!

jamesdevito:

everyone needs to watch this RIGHT NOW.

in a world…

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:04:38 -0500

in a world…

"We can be grateful that selfish purpose of personal gain, at our neighbor’s loss, less..."

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:31:00 -0500

““We can be grateful that selfish purpose of personal gain, at our neighbor’s loss, less strongly asserts itself.””

- -FDR in 1935

via “Obama’s Thankless Thanksgiving”- The New Republic

bikerfish: robotindisguise: By Happy Accident, Chemists...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:22:14 -0500

bikerfish:

robotindisguise:

By Happy Accident, Chemists Produce a New Blue

In the intense heat, almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the ingredients formed a crystal structure in which the manganese ions absorbed red and green wavelengths of light and reflected only blue.

Fuckin’ awesome! Bluuuuuuuuuuue!

jamesdevito: thewarmingsun: (via ieatcatlitter)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:39:55 -0500

jamesdevito:

thewarmingsun:

(via ieatcatlitter)

this makes me want a pet elephant. (via Big Picture)

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:03:00 -0500

this makes me want a pet elephant.

(via Big Picture)

jamesdevito: peterberkman: Shaqbook Pro

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:59:59 -0500

jamesdevito:

peterberkman:

Shaqbook Pro

it’s incredible (and depressing) how much TV has come to...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:08:08 -0500

it’s incredible (and depressing) how much TV has come to influence the way our culture perceives truth and reason. it’s clear the power of the image far outweighs the power of words for so many people in our country.. we’re gonna be in big trouble eventually if we don’t start addressing media literacy.

marco:

Cynical-C Blog: (via Paul Scheer)

On November 20, 2009, at a Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, Sarah Palin held a book signing event in support of “Going Rogue”. Palin’s supporters wanted her to run for the presidency, but they weren’t exactly sure what she’d do as president. Short on specifics, most of them were uncertain what her policy positions are. They just felt that they liked her. She’s “real”. And that the solution to all of our country’s problems—health care, energy, the deficit, unemployment, and the economy—was to cut taxes and lower spending, and Palin, they said, would solve them by doing just that.

This is one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Why Kids Ask Why (Yahoo! News)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:00:05 -0500

Why Kids Ask Why (Yahoo! News):

psychotherapy:

A child’s never-ending “why’s” aren’t meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others.

This new finding, based on a two-part study involving children ages 2 to 5, also suggests they are much more active about their knowledge-gathering than previously thought.

“Even from really early on when they start asking these how and why questions, they are asking them in order to get explanations,” lead researcher Brandy Frazier of the University of Michigan told LiveScience.

When explanations came their way, the little ones probed further, they found. “Kids are playing more of an active role in learning about the world around them than we may have expected,” Frazier said.

The new findings, which are detailed in the November/December issue of the journal Child Development, can’t be generalized to all children since the sample sizes were small.

Curious chatter

Past research from the early to mid 1900s on child development had suggested that young children were only aware of temporal relationships between two events and couldn’t differentiate cause from effect until about 7 or 8 years of age. More recent work has suggested otherwise, that as early as age 3 children get causality.

Lacking from such studies are kids’ reactions to the information they get to their causal questions.

To figure out kids’ responses to different questions, Frazier and her colleagues examined transcripts from everyday conversations of six kids, ages 2 to 4, who were speaking with parents, siblings and visitors at home. With just six kids, the researchers analyzed the transcripts, more than 580 of them, as their unit of analysis. Overall, there were more than 3,100 causal how and why questions such as, “Why my tummy so big, mom?” “Why not keep a light on?” and “How can snakes hear if they don’t have ears?”

Results showed kids were more than twice as likely to re-ask their question after a non-explanation compared with a real answer. And when they did get an explanation, which was about 37 percent of the time, they were more than four times as likely to reply with a follow-up inquiry as if they had received a non-explanatory response.

Preliminary results from a separate new study of Frazier’s suggest there is such a thing as too much information in a response. “It seems like kids might have an optimal level of detail they’re interested in,” Frazier said.

Odd items

The next part of the new study was lab-based and involved 42 preschoolers, ages 3 to 5, who chatted when prompted with toys, storybooks and videos. The items were designed to create surprising, question-provoking situations. For instance, kids were shown a box of all-red crayons, a puzzle with a piece that didn’t fit, and a storybook describing a child who poured orange juice on his cereal.

The adults who showed kids each item had certain explanatory and non-explanatory responses. So as expected, kids asked about the orange-juice scenario: “Why did he do that?” The adult would then respond with the explanation, “He thought it was milk in the pitcher,” or the non-explanation, “I like to put milk on my cereal.”

They found significant differences in types of reactions to the explanatory answers versus the non-explanatory ones. Nearly 30 percent of the time kids would agree, nod or say “oh” after getting a true explanation, compared with just under 13 percent of the time for non-explanations.

For such non-answers, more than 20 percent of the time kids re-asked the original question. Just 1 percent of kids receiving an explanation did the same.

The newly published study was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:57:25 -0500

The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia:

awesome, can’t wait to go through all these. the john cage entry at the end is pretty intriguing… surprised it was never mentioned in any of my classes

merlin:

mrgan:

I just Instapapered many, many of these.

Me, too, Neven.

If there were a page that best epitomized why I LOVE lists of links (and why I viscerally HATE the way webcocks have turbo-shat on the genre), this would be Exhibit A.

Based on a quick spot check, there’s about two months of unbelievably interesting reading behind that page. (e.g., no way — this was real?!?)

But — spoiler alert — there’s precious little about soaking your dishes, giving zen hugs, or supercharging your turbocharger.

So. You know. Thanks, copybot.

google wave

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0500

if anyone has it, friend me! it’s a bit depressing to try to sustain an interactive real-time collaboration with yourself.

krisnolte@googlewave.com

yes! this guy’s my hero. merlin: Mel Blanc’s cartoon...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:47:21 -0500

yes! this guy’s my hero.

merlin:

Mel Blanc’s cartoon voices VIDEO

I’m 42, and I still find Foghorn Leghorn uproariously funny.

"I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia."

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:58:48 -0500

“I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia.”

- Umberto Eco

Great interview with him here in reference to his latest book, “The Vertigo of Lists”, which examines the history and role of lists in the human experience. Hope to see this exhibition when I’m in Paris (just one month to go!)

hrrrthrrr: Gorgeous underwater photo exhibit. Love this one...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:02:29 -0500

hrrrthrrr:

Gorgeous underwater photo exhibit. Love this one too! See the rest here.

yes! willw: Childhood. (via stweedy)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:00:30 -0500

yes!

willw:

Childhood.

(via stweedy)