Speaking of historical figures we can only perceive dimly, cartoonist/historicaster (let’s rehabilitate this word, please) Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant adds a thoughtful, searching comment to a short series of cartoons about Andrew Jackson:
Ah, Andrew Jackson. Love him or hate him (and these days my money is on the latter), you can’t deny that he was a fascinating man. He did some good things. He did a lot of bad things. And it’s not like in his time, no one thought to duke it out with him over it all. The man had so many musket balls in his body you could stick magnets to him…
He did what he thought was good and right to do and he made himself something out of nothing, but he was a hard, racist man, and he doesn’t get to be a hero anymore. In a way I am glad that he’s such a conflicting figure, because most of the time you can’t have it one way or the other. Not all of our historical leaders deserve Nobel Peace Prizes decorating their houses, not all of our heroes get recognized for the wrongs they did like Jackson does.
Electro-acoustic sample wizards The Books have a new album out, and they have a Tumblr that annotates each track. “A Wonderful Phrase By Gandhi” includes a sample of the Mahatma’s voice from a 1931 gramophone recording.
Mostly I think of this track as a P.S.A. Everyone should know what Gandhi’s voice sounds like; it’s timbre communicates so much regardless of what he’s saying, if we can help spread it in our small way it seems worth the 18 seconds.
Nick Zammuto goes on to compare Gandhi’s voice to Einstein’s, whose voice graces a track on the band’s second album. This comparison, and the scarcity of fair-quality recordings of Gandhi’s voice, made me realize how important our memory of an historical figure’s voice can become. Try to imagine FDR, Martin Luther King Jr, or Hitler without thinking of their voice. Yet we don’t know what Lincoln sounded like, or Napoleon, let alone Confucius or Cicero.
Cordoba is a city in southern Spain that was capital of the Umayyad caliphate of the same name during the Middle Ages. In the tenth century, it passed Baghdad the largest city in Islam and may have been the largest in the world.
Cordoba House is the name of a proposed complex on Park Place in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from the World Trade Center site, sometimes called the “ground-zero mosque.”
Newt Gingrich thinks the name is “a deliberately insulting term” that tests “the historic ignorance of American elites.” In particular, he cites transformation of a church in Cordoba into a mosque as “a symbol of Islamic conquest” over Christian Spain.
Notice how carefully he’s phrased his claim to give the impression that during the medieval conquest of Spain the Muslims charged into Cordoba and declared it the capital of a new Muslim empire, and in order to add insult to injury seized control of a Christian church and built the biggest mosque they could, right there in front of the Christians they’d just conquered, a big Muslim middle finger in the heart of medieval Christendom. Essentially, they’ve done it before, they’ll do it again, right there at Ground Zero, if all good Christians don’t band together to stop them.
The problem is, in order to give that impression of immediacy, Newt elides three hundred years of Christian and Muslim history. Three hundred years. The Muslims conquered Cordoba in 712. The Christian church that was later transformed into the Great Mosque of Cordoba apparently continued hosting Christian worship for at least a generation after that. Work on the Mosque didn’t actually begin until seventy-odd years later in 784, and the mosque only became “the world’s third-largest” late in the tenth century, after a series of expansions by much later rulers, probably around 987 or so.
The Great Mosque was actually built to commemorate the defeat of the Abbasids, the Umayyad’s rivals for control of Andalusia. Joint worship emphasized the legitimacy of the Cordoban caliphate and its superiority to the rowdy Abbasids. “Far from ‘symboliz[ing] their victory’,” Pyrdum writes, “the Mosque was held up by Muslim historians a symbol of peaceful coexistence with the Christians—however messier the actual relations of Christians and Muslims were at the time.” Before the Christians, the site hosted ruins of a Roman pagan temple.
Pyrdum’s post was picked up by Crooked Timber, the Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan, and other popular sites and worked its way up from there. On Twitter, David Weinberger wrote: “It’s why we have blogs, people.”
Imagine a newspaper or television station reporting on this story twenty years ago; if they had thought to fact-check Newt’s talking point, they would have either sent a researcher to the library or phoned an historical or Islamic studies expert for comment. Then it may have been cut for space or time. That’s not how things work any more. Knowledge floats.
This week, with your help, I’m going to try an experiment in service of an idea.
Most popular blogs, like most popular media, regardless of genre, spend 99.9% of their time reacting to and arguing about something that’s just happened, or is about to (maybe) happen. Jason’s aesthetic has always been different, because he’s always been just as excited about older things that have just been uncovered or rediscovered, marvelous objects and ideas in weird corners of the web that nobody’s paid attention to, or that have only just made the transition from analog to digital to become part of the web conversation.
Last year, I called this approach “paleoblogging.” Like paleontologists, paleobiologists, paleographers, and paleoarcheologists, Paleobloggers dig up blogworthy material from the past to see what makes it tick. It’s different from “slow blogging,” which you might have heard about; as far as I can tell, that just promotes taking a really long time to write posts that maybe nobody reads. There’s nothing slow or private about paleoblogging. The whole point is to work the archive, work your sources, take what’s still and get it moving again.
So this week will be devoted to things you’ve either forgotten about or have never seen before. I’ll be highlighting posts, articles, and projects that do this well wherever I see them, and rummaging through some dusty card catalogues myself (including some right here at kottke.org) to find things that deserve to be back in circulation.
I’m off for another week — the summer sun is just too tempting, as is another project I’m working on — so I’ve asked Tim Carmody to fill the editor’s seat for me. Tim is one leg of the Snarkmarket tripod; he was a frequent commenter on the site and the two founding members, instead of saying jeez, guy, shuddup already with the comments, invited Tim to join them full-time. Tim is also an academic with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, which is a lot more book learnin’ than I’ve ever had. Things are probably going to be a lot more grammatically correct around here this week. Welcome, Tim.
And a big thanks to Aaron Cohen for helming the site last week (and through the weekend even, a rare occurrence around these parts). I don’t know where this ranks on Aaron’s list of life accomplishments, but my 11-yo self would be super impressed that Who’s the Boss’s Samantha Micelli retweeted not one but two Cohen-penned kottke.org posts from the past week (after explaining the definitions of “post” and “retweet” to tweener Kottke).
I like cover songs. It’s interesting to hear another take on a favorite song. The ones I especially like are covers by bands in a completely different style. A good cover song will add to your enjoyment of the originally, and sometimes let you hear things you didn’t hear before. Wilco’s ‘I am Trying to Break Your Heart” by J.C. Brooks and the Uptown Sound and The Clash’s Train in Vain by Annie Lennox are two that come to mind. I’ve also got a soft spot for acoustic versions of punk songs, but that list could go on a while, so just let the two above take you through Sunday night. Enjoy!
Jamon Iberico, the so-called “best ham in the world”, is made from a breed of pig that has been raised in Spain for 10,000 years. Fear of disease made it unavailable in the US until 2006, when one Spanish importer was finally approved. (An American company, La Quercia in Iowa, is also making waves, though purists will argue…)
In the 1500s, Spanish conquistadors exploring the new world would drop off pigs in the interest of creating a food source should they ever come back around that way again. These pigs were direct descendants of Iberian pigs, but as America settled, these pigs were passed over in favor of pigs easier to raise in captivity. Except for on Ossabaw Island, GA, where the breed remained mostly pure for 400 years. However, since pigs are about as destructive a breed as you can introduce into an ecosystem, Georgia has been working to cull the population on Ossabaw Island since 2000.
Thanks to the efforts of “hamthropologist” Peter Kaminsky, a few small farms in North Carolina are now raising Ossabaw pigs, and working to keep the breed alive. The Ossabaws suffer from insular dwarfism, making the pigs smaller, and low-grade diabetes caused by an advanced fat-storing tendency, but Kaminsky says the meat is a close approximation.
I guess this went around last year, but somehow, I completely missed it. I’m visiting with two English professors this weekend, and apparently this video caused something of a stir in the department. “If you knocked your brother down, would you urinate in his mouth?” is an age-old question, used for generations as a writing exercise. Or something.
2 questions:
When trying to prompt creative writing, why would you ask a yes/no question?
What were the other 12-13 questions on this exercise?
Watch out for the mustachioed Superintendent, as it is his honor to take you through this night.
The Guardian has the famous last words of 10 authors. As I am fundamentally opposed to lists in slide show format, especially lists with one list item per slide, the quotations are below. Click through to see the pictures. The chance all of these last words are 100% accurate is something much less than 100%. Points to the Guardian for including 2 women on this list. A lot of lists like this would be male-only.
Samuel Johnson - ‘Iam moriturus’ (I who am about to die) Lord Byron - ‘Come, come, no weakness; let’s be a man to the last!’ Emily Dickinson - ‘I must go in, the fog is rising’ Robert Louis Stevenson - ‘What’s that? Do I look strange?’ Anton Chekhov - ‘It’s a long time since I drank champagne’ Mark Twain - ‘Death, the only immortal, who treats us alike, whose peace and refuge are for all. The soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved’ Leo Tolstoy - ‘We all reveal … our manifestations … This manifestation is over … That’s all’ Franz Kafka - ‘Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me … in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches, and so on, (is) to be burned unread’ Virginia Woolf - ‘I feel certain that I’m going mad again …’ James Joyce - ‘Does nobody understand?’
I’ve been meaning to post these since the beginning of the week. Here’s Ezequiel Calvente’s penalty kick for Spain from a U19 game against Italy. He runs up to kick with his right foot, but just before making the kick, Calvente pushes the ball into the other side of the goal with his left foot. Fantastic.
And a bonus amazing sports play. Spiderman in center field.
Here’s a great story of Jami getting her bike stolen last night in Brooklyn. Wait, why is that great? Because, thanks to some internet sleuthing, a lot of luck (!!!), and solid police work from Brooklyn’s finest, she had it back by 11:30 this morning!
While we’re on the subject of bikes, according to a recently filed patent, Apple is looking at making a smart bike. I look to the future and I see 1) Consternation that Apple has signed an exclusive agreement to release the bike on Trek frames only for a period of 3, 4, or 5 years depending on which rumor you believe. 2) Several media stories crediting Apple for popularizing the riding of bikes. 3) Several media stories criticizing Apple for claiming they popularized the riding of bikes, even if they didn’t.make that claim, 4) Much rejoicing 3 weeks after release of the bike when someone has figure d out how to jail break the phone into a fixed gear. 5) 250 posts from John Gruber refudiating predictions of iBike failure. I look forward to all of it.
Lastly, on the topic of bikes. My friend Chris Piascik is drawing all the bikes he’s ever owned. This wouldn’t be a big deal for most people, Chris, however, has owned a gazillion bikes. The drawings are accompanied by vignettes on the bikes and I think the project will end up being more of a memoir than Chris originally anticipated. (Disclosure: If I had to name a favorite artist, it’d probably be Chris, and I post his art often on UW.)
This very long and very fascinating profile of Abd el-Kader is the best long form article you’ll read today, and possibly this week. It was written by a blogger who focuses primarily on the Kansas City Royals (what?). This kind of surprise, a baseball writer stretching out to produce something this special, is one of the things I love about the internet.
Elkader, Iowa, by the way, was founded and named after el-Kader. el-Kader is the only Arab to be so honored.
A new study by the Boston Fed reports on the impact of credit card interchange fees on the prices we pay to merchants. Credit card interchange fees are the 1%-2% charges paid by merchants on credit card transactions. Because almost all merchants charge the same price for cash and credit card purchases, people paying cash end up paying a little bit more, while people paying with credit cards end up paying a little bit less.
On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,482 from cash users every year. Because credit card spending and rewards are positively correlated with household income, the payment instrument transfer also induces a regressive transfer from low-income to high-income households in general. On average, and after accounting for rewards paid to households by banks, the lowest-income household ($20,000 or less annually) pays $23 and the highest-income household ($150,000 or more annually) receives $756 every year.
…From the past. It doesn’t take much to look at this book and imagine the pitch meeting at how Sterling Cooper Draper Price would pitch this.
In 1964 United States Steel called upon the nation’s electric utility companies to reconsider the current look of our power stations and transmission towers to be both functional and beautiful. Two years later, Henry Dreyfuss and Associates were commissioned to investigate possible design alternatives, and I believe they were documented in a book entitled “Power Styling” which was produced by United States Steel in the mid-to-late 1960s.
Things I learned from this article about a Thomas’ English muffin executive who wants to take a new job with Hostess Foods.
Only seven people “worldwide…know the recipe and manufacturing process that give Thomas’ English muffins their trademark ‘nooks and crannies’.”
Thomas’ English muffins’ parent company is named Bimbo USA.
Bimbo USA is a Division of a Mexican conglomerate called Grupo Bimbo.
English muffins, not found in England, are an American invention now sold by a Mexican company. Still completely delicious, though.
Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, as Ghost of a Dream, create artstructuresculptures out of scratch tickets to show “unfulfilled dreams as well as money that could have been saved and possibly spent on the item itself”. “Dream Car” uses $39K worth of discarded tickets, and “Dream Home” uses $70K. That one’s really nice.
For what it’s worth, Was and Eckstrom aren’t the first to see art in scratch tickets. Rebecca Simering has explored the medium, as has the “I Love My Life The Way It Is” project. ILMLTWII is a project I want to believe in, but before sending scratch tickets to strangers in England, you should be aware of the risks.
Last time dad left me the keys to the Cadillac, I posted this skateboarding video. The Human League soundtrack paired with the fresh take on tricks is magic. There’s an appealing whimsy to that video I think you’ll like even if you don’t like skateboard videos. Here’s some more from Tim and Eric (the other ones) along the same lines.
Also, Fred sent this over last time around. It gets pretty crazy almost immediately, but there’s the same kind of fun involved.
“Don’t use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college.”
Did you know Vonnegut’s daughter was divorced from Geraldo Rivera in 1974? I didn’t. This is part 1 of a lecture Vonnegut gave to Albion College called, “How to Get a Job Like Mine.”
Update: Thanks to a tip from Joseph, I did some digging and found that the title of his Albion College lecture was not unique. A lot of the lectures Vonnegut gave were titled, “How to Get a Job Like Mine”, during which, he would talk about whatever he wanted. Here’s a write up I found of the lecture Joseph remembered from Tufts in 2002. I saw Vonnegut speak sometime in the mid-90s, but I have no idea what the lecture was called.
The number of states with an adult obesity rate of 30 percent or more has tripled, to nine, since 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report today. Mississippi had the highest rate, 34 percent. About 75 million Americans are considered obese, the Atlanta-based CDC said.
‘You’ve got gray, mushy broccoli out? They take a bite of that, and they may never eat broccoli again. Ever. Their whole lives,’ Schwisow said, her eyes wide.
Michael Pollan on $4 peaches and $8 for a dozen eggs.
Sports Illustrated is out with its list of 50 highest paid AMERICAN athletes. (This distinction is important because there’s also an international list.) I wouldn’t say I was surprised by the list, but there were several ‘huh’ moments. For instance, close your eyes. Close them. Now picture the 3rd highest paid athlete on the planet. What sport is he playing? If you said boxing, you’re right. Floyd Mayweather made $60m last year. I’m curious if I were to make a list of the 50 highest paid American athletes how many of these names I would have come up with.
Other tidbits:
$28,847,406 separates #1 Tiger Woods ($90m) from #2 Phil Mickelson.
$73,733,163 separates Tiger from #50 A.J. Burnett.
Shaq still makes more than Kobe, which must really bug Kobe.
#2 highest paid QB is Matthew Stafford, who is the 2nd year QB of the Lions.
#28 Darrius Heyward-Bey is the first player I hadn’t heard of on the list.
There are 15 football players on this list, not one of whom is Tom Brady or Drew Brees.
Maria Sharapova is the only woman on either list, #20 on the international list with around $19m.
There is an international list, which is filthy with soccer players and Formula 1 drivers. For some reason non-American athletes (Ichiro, Pau Gasol) that play in the US are on the international list.
If William Shatner did this interaction spoken-word style, well, that would be fantastic, wouldn’t it? Need something to take you through the night? Let it be this video of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy discussing the theft of Nimoy’s bike. By Shatner.
In an announcement on the Google Blog, Urs Hoelzle eulogizes Google Wave. The site will be live through the end of the year, and Google is going to try to move the technology to other projects. Personally, I tried to use Google Wave a couple times, but was never really able to get used to it. It was hard!
But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.
This was going to be a separate post, but what the hey. For those of you concerned or curious about the amount of data Google’s getting on you, Jamie Wilkinson has put together a Firefox add-on that will alert you audibly and visually whenever your information is being sent to Google.
Flavorwire has a post on the etymology of 10 musical genre names. This is the type of thing that you wonder about from time to time, but probably never bothered to look up.
Punk: While “punk” was once (and still, occasionally) catch-all slang for a young delinquent, “punk rock” first appeared in a 1970 Chicago Tribune article, uttered by Ed Sanders of The Fugs. Although the band was one of punk’s immediate ancestors, Sanders went on to define the term as “redneck sentimentality.” The next year, Dave Marsh of Creem used “punk rock” to describe ? and the Mysterians. Its meaning evolved from there, originally encompassing a slew of Nuggets-era garage-rock bands and eventually solidifying into a more rigid description of the mid-’70s bands we think of as “punk.”
Comedian Jon Gnarr recently won election as mayor of Reykjavik and has already gotten to work on his campaign promises of free towels at public swimming pools and a drug-free Parliament by 2020. Gnarr founded the The Best Party late last year, and other Best Party candidates, including members of the Reykjavik punk rock community, won 6 of the 15 seats on the City Council. The best part of all is that Gnarr “needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of ‘The Wire’.” That seems like sound policy to me.
On The Best Party, Gnarr has this to say:
No one has to be afraid of the Best Party, because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.
This is a mashup of Daft Punk with scenes from Tron and Tron Legacy by Electric Method. Let’s see… Daft Punk? Check. Tron? Check. I’m CERTAIN it is relevant to the interests of a lot of you.
While I felt that it was important to show certain shapes aboveground, I also felt that it was important to leave out certain pieces of belowground information. There are several places where the subway tunnels cross and overlap each other beneath the surface. This may be important information for city workers or utility companies trying to make repairs, but for the average commuter, showing these interactions just creates visual noise. I tried to reduce that noise by cleanly separating the lines on the map so they don’t overlap. Consider the different depictions of the 4 line and the 5 line in the Bronx; sure, the MTA’s paths may be accurate, but they’re also confusing, and riders don’t really need to see those particular details to understand where they’re going.
Tom Junod, in Esquire, tells the story of living on top of an Argentine Ant colony. In it, we learn that ant scientists estimate there are 1.6 million ants per person. For what it’s worth, ant colony is in the top 3 of my “List of things I do not want to live on top of”. I urge you not to click this link if you’re the type of person who can see an ant hill on a walk and then spend the next four hours feeling phantom ants on your legs and elbows.
They’re not just passing through, you see, on their way to somewhere else. They’re not in your underwear by accident. They’re nation-building.
I’ve now given myself the heebie-jeebies and will spend the next four hours brushing away every gasp of wind and brush of paper against my skin. Thank you.
whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com is certainly a veritable and powerful social media strategy generator for any business. If you need a social media strategy, you should start here before interviewing folks. You know, to make yourself conversant in the lingo. That said:
Wikipedia has a page dedicated to controversial album art, which I found recently while looking up background on the 23rd birthday of Appetite for Destruction (yipe).
Eric Bana - Out of Bounds (1994)
The cover art features Bana naked from behind while streaking at a crowded AFL game. He is reaching for the ball and his buttocks are covered with the message “contents may offend”. The scene was created digitally, with the overlap of two photos. An alternative cover for the album was later released.
I was really hoping Eric Bana had a musical release in his background because musical releases by actors are usually hilarious, but this one appears to be comedy. Sigh.
You may have heard recently that Kanye West’s Twitter account is really something special. If you heard that, it’s true. If not, you’re hearing it now. Paul and Storm and Josh A. Cagan have made Kanye’s Tweets even better, though, by matching them with New Yorker Cartoons. Scroll through their Twitter feeds and you’ll find gold.
The percentage of Americans who drink is up a bit this year (67%) from last year, and is at its highest level since 1985. Another fact: Since 1992, beer has been the most popular alcohol (though down slightly this year) every year except 2005, when the most popular drink was wine. Dollars to doughnuts it was Sideways that caused that.
A Russian man has come forward with his collection of CPUs, which could be the largest in the world. The collection consists of vintage Soviet CPUs, as well as several newer models. I’m a little out of my comfort zone with this one, and it’s completely possible this is a hoax. If so, it’s worth it just for the picture of the dude in a muscle shirt displaying his collection. Click through and tell me it’s not.
This is the type of video you’ll see the title of and just skip right through in your hurry to clear your RSS reader. Sure, you could do that with this video, but it’d be a mistake. Mary Carillo’s rant is going to take someone through the night, it may as well be you.
Is there a word for a scientific fact that is accepted, only to be proven false some years later? Pluto Brontosaurus
and now Triceratops
I’m sure there are more of these, vagaries of science we learned as children ripped cruelly from our pathways in an effort to embarrass us in front of our children (well, your children, mine are imaginary). Let’s make a list? Hit me with an @reply if you know of something that should be on this list.
Update:
This post didn’t quite come out the way I wanted. The triceratops was only momentarily in danger as scientists decided to do away with the Torosaurus instead. Also, Jason wrote a post about a similar topic a couple months ago. Mesofacts are the name for facts that change slowly over time. It’s an important distinction, though, that these ‘facts’, Pluto and Brontosaurus, at least, were ripped away suddenly, instead of changing slowly over time. The only Twitter suggestion I thought fit completely was the loss of RBI as a telling baseball statistic.
Lindsay Lohan is out of jail today and thus ends my favorite part of the internet for the past 3 weeks. Dear Lindsay Lohan will not be updated anymore, but the previously written postcards will remain as letters to posterity.
Smoothie shop Jamba Juice is responding to McDonald’s jump into the smoothie market with a mock campaign selling a smooth and creamy cheeseburger smoothies. The video is a nice touch.
Somewhat related to this story, the large McDonald’s smoothies have more calories than a cheeseburger. But it’s the good kind of calories. Now all I want to know is if the smoothie cheeseburger has more calories than either the regular cheeseburger or the fruit smoothie.
The new menu at Alinea is 21 courses long and takes about 2.5 hours for a meal according to a Tweet by Alinea chef Grant Achatz. In June, Alinea announced they would only be offering one menu, down from two, though that menu was discussed as 15-16 courses.
“So here’s some advice I wish I would have got when I was your age… Live every week like it’s shark week.” - Tracy Jordan
In its 24th year, the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is really coming into its own on the internet. At least on the meme-filled internet of Tumblr/Twitter/Reddit etc. Add in the clever guerrilla marketing of having sharks appear off the coast of Cape Cod and NJ this past week, and you’ve got the makings of a media phenomenon I can hardly bear.
In case you missed it on Friday, NBC announced that the October 14th episode of 30 Rock will be performed live. In fact, they’ll be performing 2 shows, one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast. (Pro tip: Air the opposite coast’s episode before the next week’s show.) I am, of course, excited to see the Tracy Morgan/Tracy Jordan combo live.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry for Live Television is jam packed with interesting nuggets such as an incomplete list of notable live television episodes (West Wing, 2005. ER, 1997). Also, the last scripted series to “do it live” regularly was Roc in 1992.
I am off this week and cajoled Aaron Cohen from Unlikely Words into filling in for me again on kottke.org. Aaron said that he was going to upload some interpretive dance video of what he thinks I’m doing on vacation but let’s hope he just shares what he finds interesting on the internet (that includes Gopher!) this week instead.
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