http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs&feature=youtu.be
Yeah, yeah, I know—this makes two Star Trek-related posts in a row. Just watch it. You’ll thank me later. I swear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs&feature=youtu.be
Yeah, yeah, I know—this makes two Star Trek-related posts in a row. Just watch it. You’ll thank me later. I swear.
Some of the best news you’ll read all week: shuttlecraft Galileo (NCC-1701/7) is being returned to its former glory—a “massive, ground-up restoration” by Master Shipwrights out of New Jersey.
Productivity, thy foe is the Amazing Fact Generator. While the degree of amazingness varies wildly*, it’s a lot of fun seeing what comes up next. Here’s a random sampling:
Barry Manilow did not write his hit “I Write the Songs.” He did, however, write State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle.
A newborn giant panda is about the size of a stick of butter.
Viagra can keep cut flowers looking fresh for up to a week longer than their normal life span.
It took three people to compose “The Hokey Pokey.” Roland Lawrence “Larry” LaPrise, Charles Macack, and Taft Baker wrote the tune in 1949 to entertain tired skiers at nightclubs in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Charlie Chaplin once took part in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in a theater in San Francisco. He lost.
*Seriously, “Mary Ann really was prettier than Ginger” is hardly an amazing revelation. It’s patently obvious to anyone with eyes.
It’s easy to forget that some of the greatest works of fiction—Proust, Dostoevsky, Kafka—require the work of a translator to make them available to rubes like me. Thank heaven, then, for Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband-and-wife team that just put its stamp on the last of Tolstoy’s major writings.
“We want to recreate Tolstoy in English,” explained Volokhonsky about their approach to translating the master of Russian fiction. “We want to bring the English reader to Tolstoy, not Tolstoy to the English reader.”
Humanities has the rest of the story.
Another gem from Lapham’s Quarterly, here’s a look at some of the worst jobs of the last 2,000 years—though, to be honest, “subway pusher” sounds kind of fun.
Asked whether market research breeds mediocrity, Wally Olins had this to say:
“If you are going to create something that is truly a breakthrough, you have to rely on your intuition and your judgment.…Finding out what people feel about things that are happening today is extremely useful. Trying to get people to tell you what will work tomorrow is useless.”
So. Still want to move forward with that focus group?
Via Brain Pickings (link).
“Writing is your passion. Why not make it your day job, too?”
Ugh.
Writer’s Digest University is selling this load of codswallop for $199. (“Recession-proof career choice”?!? Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!)
Tell you what: Give me $20 and I’ll “provide answers to all your copywriting questions” myself. And I promise not to use a single cliché.
Keith Houston has done a remarkable job in reducing the history of punctuation down to 530 words. Take a couple of minutes and read it, would you?
Spring seems (finally!) to have arrived in our neck of the woods. Regular readers of the blog know what that means: the Grateful Dead will be in heavy rotation for the next few months. No, I don’t know why. It’s just the way it is.
Care to join me in kicking off the season? “Box of Rain,” from the 1970 album American Beauty, marks the first time bassist Phil Lesh* is featured on lead vocals. It was also the last song performed by the Grateful Dead while Jerry Garcia was still alive, during the final encore at Chicago’s Soldier Field July 9, 1995.
*Lesh studied composition under Luciano Berio at Mills College. One of his classmates was Steve Reich.
A Russian billionaire (sure seems to be a lot of those lately) is building an army of cyborgs…while man-powered robotic spiders are now a reality, courtesy of a British software and electronics engineer. On the other hand, this seems like a pretty good idea. Oh, and it turns out that disco isn’t dead, but merely trapped in a Cleveland-area netherworld.
Despite a long list of shortcomings that includes listening to Bon Jovi and keeping a man-eating tarantula on her desk, today marks Shirlee’s 13th anniversary with helveticka. She must’ve started with the company when she was 12.
Her drink of choice is Patrón (shudder), so be sure you buy Shirlee a shot the next time you see her.
Victoria Ertelt, library administrator at Mount Angel Abbey, poses next to one of the Alvar Aalto chairs on display at SPOMa. Victoria, who was instrumental in securing the permissions necessary to display some of the pieces from one of the largest collections of Aalto’s furniture in the world, was in town last weekend.
Bob Nixon, left, and Glenn Davis visited SPOMa over the weekend. Nixon, who served as a partner at both Walker & McGough and with Royal McClure, is an accomplished photographer whose work plays a prominent role in the exhibit. Davis, who likewise worked at Walker and McGough, proved to be an invaluable and near-limitless source of information, historic imagery, and ephemera from the era. Photo by CK Anderson.
It’s a pity the digital age has somewhat lessened the impact of album cover art. Storm Thorgerson, who died yesterday, was one of the best artists/designers in that particular medium. The co-founder of Hipgnosis created, by his own count, more than 300 covers over a nearly 50-year career. Farewell, Storm. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
If this headline doesn’t reach out of your computer screen, grab you by the throat, and provide a vigorous demonstration as to why you should immediately stop what you’re doing and start reading right now, I don’t know what will: 8 Facts Revealed by Genetic Analysis of the Platypus.