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Entries for December 2019
Do Kids Today Still Like Mister Rogers?
Fred Rogers and his Neighborhood may seem to belong to a bygone age of slow children’s media, but when Mary Pflum Peterson introduced the show to her four children, she found that they engaged with the show like kids back in the 70s and 80s did.
I asked my youngest two, as they obsessed over the fish, what was it about the show that appealed to them.
After a beat, they gave me that look that parents will readily recognize, the one that best translates to “Isn’t it obvious?”
“He likes kids, Mommy,” my daughter said. “Kids know when a grown-up likes them.”
“And he’s not too loud,” my son added. “When we watch him, there’s no noise. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
Kind and calm. So that explained everything. In a world of so much chaos and noise, kids liked calm sincerity.
The Most Popular TV Shows 1986-2019
If you grew up watching TV (and who didn’t?), this bar chart race animation of the 10 most popular primetime TV shows from 1986-2019 is fascinating.
Ranking is based on the following factors: prime-time first 24 hours audience reports, one week of reported statistics for downloaded copies (pirated), one week of streaming services viewership. Numbers are worldwide with significant bias towards US market up until 2002, afterwards it’s balanced by p2p distribution across the globe.
I’d forgotten what a huge hit ER was in the mid-90s. And note that The Simpsons never cracked the top 10. Ah, I didn’t notice that they snuck in briefly during 1996 — thx @ChasingDom. (via waxy)
Former Secret Service Agent Explains How POTUS Is Protected
Jonathan Wackrow spent 14 years as a special agent of the Secret Service and in this video he explains how the Secret Service protects the people under its watch, particularly the President.
It’s a testament to the Secret Service’s training, process, and professionalism that none of the three most recent polarizing Presidents have endured a serious assassination attempt.
Close Before You Doze. If you & your family want to survive a nighttime fire in your house, you may want to close your bedroom doors
Every Kind of Thing in Space
This 12-minute animated video is a tour of all of the different kinds of things “out there” in the universe (as opposed to matter and structures smaller than, say, a human being).
This video explores all of the things in the Universe from our Earth and local Solar System, out to the Milky Way Galaxy and looks at all of the different kinds of stars from Brown Dwarfs to Red Supergiant Stars. Then to the things they explode into like white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. Then we look at all the other kinds of galaxy in the universe, blazars, quasars and out to the cosmic microwave background and the big bang. It covers most of the different things that we know about in the Universe.
A poster of the final drawing is available here.
A design tour of the NYC subway map, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. IMO, this design is superior to the beloved Vignelli map, which looked great but didn’t fit its intended function.
Does Candide Thovex ever ski on snow anymore? Here he skis the Great Wall of China, which is entertaining I guess?
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