From Louis Menand’s article on the value of higher education in the June 6 issue of The New Yorker:

“…students and their parents are overvaluing a commodity for which there are cheap and plentiful substitutes. The sticker price at Princeton or Stanford, including room and board, is upward of fifty thousand dollars a year. Public colleges are much less expensive—the average tuition is $7,605—and there are also many less selective private colleges where you can get a good education, and a lot more faculty face time, without having to spend every minute of high school sucking up to your teachers and reformatting your résumé. Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning some race to the top.”

Read the entire article here.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

We’ve been doing a lot of celebrating here at the last word. First, it was the news that a Tintin movie will be released this coming December. Then, it was the 100th anniversary of the death of Mahler, followed by Bob Dylan‘s 70th birthday.

But we’re certainly not going to let the birthday of the late Miles Davis pass without mention. Rather than celebrate with something from Kind of Blue or In a Silent Way, however—groundbreaking albums each, but a little obvious, don’t you think?—I thought it might be nice to share “Autumn Leaves” from Cannonball Adderley’s 1958 album Somethin’ Else.

I was just a kid when I first heard this tune. But Miles’s entrance on the head, halfway through the 24th bar, changed me forever. Check it out:

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

In honor of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday today, I humbly submit my choices for the top five Dylan albums of all time:

1. Blood on the Tracks
2. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
3. Blonde on Blonde
4. Highway 61 Revisited
5. Slow Train Coming

A word of explanation: Blood on the Tracks is one of the best albums by anyone ever, so it’s pretty much a gimme for this list. Numbers 2–4 aren’t exactly controversial, either.

As for Slow Train Coming, well, what can I say? Purists tend to decry it’s spiritual themes, but the song “When He Returns” is one of the most powerful—and gutsy—in Dylan’s entire oeuvre.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

As reported earlier here at the last word, Saturday is Judgment Day. Scoff if you will, but based on this story—in which we read that some chucklehead paid nearly $4 million for a crappy photograph—the end of the world can’t be too far off.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

It’s happening. It’s really, really happening. Please, Mr. Spielberg—don’t ruin this for me.

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Groove is in the Art “celebrates the era that psychedelic graphics and pop art met the mainstream…in an explosion of line art and color.”

A sister site, Symphonie Fantastique, caters more to the classical crowd.

And another, Project Thirty-Three, is “a shrine to circles and dots.”

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

Is there anything cooler than a “5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures“?

Probably not—unless, of course, it’s a picture of Starbuck and Starbuck in Starbucks:

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  comments(2)

There’s a strange tendency of late to superficially apply “brand” to things that, to my mind, were never meant to be branded in the first place. Politicians are some of the worse offenders, branding party platforms, terms, talking points—even themselves.

Case in point: what was once called the “inheritance tax” was made more palatable by the Left by re-branding it the “estate tax,” raising the specter of class warfare. The Right, not to be outdone, re-re-branded it the “death tax,” leaving many to believe that anyone who dies is subject to a penalty. And all the while, the tax itself remained relatively unchanged.

The latest attempt is to re-brand “evil.” Apparently, it’s a matter of empathy deficit disorder. Psychopaths and narcissists should be seen as “disabled.” Conflict resolution is as easy as “two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling”—if only we’d give it a try.

On the substance of the argument, color me skeptical. On the notion that you can change the very essence of something by simply renaming it—and calling it a “re-branding”—well…that’s an insult to good brands everywhere.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  comments(2)