Burly.Thurr

The New Yorker

nineteeneighties:

Depeche Mode - Everything Counts [WWF Club 9.9.1983] 

odesea:

primarie:

Have a history teacher explain this if they can.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

 

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named “Ford.”
Kennedy was shot in a car called “Lincoln” made by “Ford.”

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here’s the “kicker”:

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

 

AND……………….:

Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse…
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theater…

 
I saw this had to share just in case anyone did not know.

I WILL NEVER CEASE TO REBLOG THIS

mind fuck

In our ceaseless quest to provide you with the most helpful tips and tricks in the known universe, we frequently refresh old stories with more accurate information. Nothing lasts forever, after all, and life hacks are no exception.

Read more...

I love the Hillary Clinton Twitter bio but I wish she would have lead off with “pantsuit aficionado.”

via fastcompany

With all the stuff going on with surveillance and data privacy — especially the past week — it's worthwhile to revisit this essay by Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University, on why privacy matters even if you "have nothing to hide."

"My life's an open book," people might say. "I've got nothing to hide." But now the government has large dossiers of everyone's activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm.

"But the government doesn't want to hurt me," some might argue. In many cases, that's true, but the government can also harm people inadvertently, due to errors or carelessness.

You might not have anything to hide right now, but maybe a random string of choices that was completely harmless looks a lot like something else a few years from now, to someone sniffing around the archives. The patterns when there are no patterns sort of thing. Personal data without the person. [via @hmason]

The Brewers Association just released data for 2012 on craft beer production and growth. The New Yorker mapped the data in a straightforward interactive.

As of March, the United States was home to nearly two thousand four hundred craft breweries, the small producers best known for India pale ales and other decidedly non-Budweiser-esque beers. What's more, they are rapidly colonizing what one might call the craft-beer frontier: the South, the Southwest, and, really, almost any part of the country that isn't the West or the Northeast.

Most articles and lists on craft beer tend to focus on total production and breweries, so California, a big state with a lot of people, always ends up on top. And as a Californian, I'm more than happy with my access to all the fine brews around here, but clearly, there are many more states to visit. RV trip anyone? [via @kennethfield]

Alternative ending

youmightfindyourself:

Mickey Mouse in Vietnam is a 16mm underground short movie. The director was Lee Savage, the producer and head designer was Milton Glaser. It features the Disney character Mickey Mouse being shipped to Vietnam during the war. Moments after arriving, he is shot dead. It was produced independently in 1969 and has a total running time of one minute. This film was lost for many years until April 22, 2013 when a YouTube user uploaded the video.

Word on the Street

Great ad campaign by PBS but I’m pretty sure they just created all the new fall programming for TLC.

popculturebrain:

NY PBS Creates Ads With Fake Reality Shows | EW

youmightfindyourself:

The Act of Killing is a film about genocide. And it is so surreal, and so disconcerting that one actually searches for reassurance that it’s okay to watch, okay to have watched. Deeply respected documentarians Errol Morris and Werner Herzog are credited as executive producers, one notes. The film has played established festivals. It’s been authorized. And yet its audience was desperate to exit the theater, and with good reason. This is a film about men who did unspeakable things, and who claim to be at peace with what they’ve done, though we aren’t sure we believe them. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the film itself is so difficult to grapple with. Or maybe even saying that is an oversimplification: an attempt, in retrospect, to tidy things up with words.

chrismohney:

It’s going to be a beautiful day out there folks!

muffpunch:

Someone on reddit made a Hilary pantsuit rainbow.

Magnificent.

(via)

neoteotihuacan:

A few months back, a small twitter hashtag got kind of crazy - #overlyhonestmethods

Its a hashtag full of scientists admitting shortcuts in research, along with the daily face palms and annoyances of a scientific lifestyle. Science is hard, yo. 

I decided to steal some of the more popular tweets from the trending hashtag along with some random images of scientists from Google image search and combine them. This is the result. it works, I think. 

The full album can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/x77kL

larhunter:

Salted caramel peanut butter. Vanilla bean espresso peanut butter. White chocolate pretzel peanut butter.

THESE THINGS EXIST.

(via Watch: Graphics FX Montage from Kosinski’s ‘Oblivion’ by Munkowitz | FirstShowing.net)

I was 28, a professional living in Palo Alto, six months into my marriage, when I suffered a stroke in my sleep.

It was a surprise. I’d been a college athlete and marathoner.

The diagnosis was idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. To translate to English: heart failure. The doctors didn’t know why, but my heart’s ability to pump blood was so diminished that I needed a new heart. The doctors weren’t sure when I would need the transplant; it could be eight years or eight months.

I was admitted to Stanford University Medical Center, and my condition continued a rapid decline. In a matter of weeks, I lost nearly half my body weight, my lips turned blue, and my skin took on a yellowish hue. I was dying.

The doctors listed me for a transplant, and the wait began. Would I get a heart in time? As I passed in and out of consciousness, I heard stories about people on my floor who were also waiting for hearts. Several died. I prayed for a new heart. I envisioned running another marathon. I pictured camping with my wife, Kendall, in the Sierras. I even prayed for rainy nights, which would increase the possibility of accidents and donors.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on May 2, 2001—eight weeks after my diagnosis—a doctor opened the door of my hospital room. He was short and wore a surgical cap.

“We have a heart for you; do you want it?”

I asked if my friend, Dr. Marc Pelletier, would perform the surgery. The doctor, standing in my doorway, raised his eyebrows, glanced at the many beeping machines keeping me alive, and smiled. He nodded yes.

In the course of our brief exchange, it hit me. I was getting the gift of a lifetime. With tears in my eyes, I said I wanted the heart.

I punched the numbers on the phone next to my bed. My voiced cracked as I told my wife they had found a heart for me. In minutes, she was sitting next to my bed.

I had to wait until morning for the surgery. During those seven hours, I was at once terrified that I might not survive the surgery, hopeful that I might regain my life, and grateful that I was being given this incredible gift.

And sad, deeply so, because I knew my chance at life meant that someone had died.

Across the Bay, two parents were having a very different night. Their eldest son, Tommy, had been killed in a car accident. I later learned that he was a much-loved 19-year-old youth minister. His first priority was helping others, yet God had chosen to cut his life dramatically short.

On the worst night of their lives, Tommy’s parents thought of people in need, people they had never met, people who desperately needed Tommy’s organs. On May 2, Tommy saved six lives, including mine.

I awoke from the transplant with an overwhelming, almost crushing sense of guilt. My prayers for a “rainy night” had gone answered. I spent entire days in tears. I met with psychiatrists and priests, but nothing assuaged my overwhelming survivor’s guilt. At the very least, I wanted desperately to thank the family that had saved my life.

To prevent additional emotional anguish, Stanford closely monitors communication between recipients and donor families. When I wrote a letter of thanks, I gave it to an intermediary, a social worker, who in turn passed it on to the donor family. For the next nine years, I sent them a letter of thanks every May 2. I realized that the family might not want to hear from me, but writing the letters brought me some small solace.

Nearly 10 years after the transplant, I received an unexpected letter from my donor’s father. We corresponded with some regularity over the next few months, and, in mid-May 2011, I met Tommy’s dad in a pizzeria. Tom Sr. was a tall, muscular man. His eyes welled up when I walked in holding my 2-year-old son, Lane. My wife held our 6-year-old daughter, Carlie, by the hand. I put Lane down and gave Tom an awkward hug. It wasn’t long before Lane was sitting on his lap.

That day, I was able to say thank you in person. I told Tom Sr. I’d been practicing for this moment for the past 10 years.

A year later, I met Tommy’s mother. I hugged her for nearly 10 seconds. When she talked about her son, she smiled and wiped her eyes.

You know that feeling you get when you see someone in a military uniform and you have an overwhelming desire to say thank you? But you know that saying those two measly words isn’t nearly enough? That’s what saying thank you to Tommy’s parents was like.

I could never tell them how much their selfless act has meant to me. But it was a start.

If you’re a fan of behavioral economics on the radio, check out BBC Radio 4′s new weekly program The Human Zoo. It is hosted by Michael Blastland, a journalist, and Nick Chater, professor of behavioral science at the University of Warwick. Chater is also on the advisory board of the British Government’s Behavioral Insights Team (or “Nudge Unit”), which you heard about in the Freakonomics podcast “The Tax Man Nudgeth.” Human Zoo episodes are accompanied by online experiments.

A scene from “Titanic,” winner of Best Picture in 1997.

Six of this year’s nine nominees for Best Picture at the Oscars are films based in history. That may seem like a lot, but for the past 40 years, the majority of Best Picture winners have had an historical bent. On this episode we ask what makes history such a popular subject for American filmmakers.

From the early days of film — when people thought movies would replace textbooks in the classroom — to the Cold War — when the government and Hollywood thought they could control behavior through film — the History Guys look at the impact of history on celluloid culture, and at how movies have made and remade history. They also debate the merits of current Oscar nominees (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained) and consider the ways those movies reflect contemporary thinking about history.

Guests Include:

• Robert Jackson, University of Tulsa
• Todd Bennett, East Carolina University
• Mark Peterson, UC Berkeley

Show Segments:

Listen to individual segments from the show.

Further Exploration:

Resources galore! Peruse a list of outside sources used in the making of this episode, including the video of the Dixon Experimental Sound Film and Mark Peterson’s look at a third ‘terrible’ Revolutionary flick.

Staff Picks:

See some of our staff’s favorite films about history.

Music from the Episode:

A full listing of the tracks, and links to buy them yourselves.

Even Further:

The listener discussion that helped shape the show.

Abraham Lincoln and His Emancipation Proclamation, The Strobridge Lith. Co, 1888. Source: LOC

On January 1, 1863 – 150 years ago this week – President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared that all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Today, Lincoln is remembered as “The Great Emancipator,” but the story of emancipation is complex and contradictory. And the question of how we choose to commemorate this anniversary can be touchy.

On this episode, we set out to understand the way Americans thought about emancipation in 1862, and reflect on its shifting meanings since then. Along the way, we make stops at the Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C., the Civil War centennial commemorations in the height of the Civil Rights Era, and the former capital of the Confederacy today. And we hear the voices of former slaves themselves, remembering their first experiences of freedom.

Guests Include:

• David Blight, Professor of American History, Yale University

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor, The Atlantic

• Christy Coleman, President, American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar

• Kirk Savage, Professor of the History of Art & Architecture, Univ. of Pittsburgh

• Michael Vorenberg, Associate Professor of History, Brown University

Further Exploration

Resources galore! Enjoy some outside links compiled by the BackStory team to create a more complete picture of the narratives surrounding emancipation, and consult a bibliography of sources used in the making of this episode.

Even Further

Read the listener discussion that helped shape this episode.

See a listing of music used in the making of this episode.

Individual segments from this episode.

Infantryman training in Ft Knox, Kentucky, 1942. US Office of War Information.

In the aftermath of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, Americans of all political stripes are wrestling with one big question: who should, and shouldn’t, have access to guns? So in this hour of BackStory, that’s the question we’ll be pushing back through the centuries.

On this episode, the History Guys look at the changing ways Americans have regulated gun ownership, and at what those weapons have meant to different segments of society. They consider the importance of the militia to the drafting of the Second Amendment, and explore the central role of the state in arming citizens. They also pay a visit to a 21st century version of the armories of the past: a gun show.

Guests Include:

• Kevin Sweeney, Amherst College, on the role of the state in arming early Americans.
• Adam Winkler, University of California, Los Angeles, on gun control in the Wild West and the Black Panthers’ embrace of the Second Amendment.
• Laura Browder, University of Richmond, on why the image of the gun-toting frontier woman continues to resonate.

Show Segments:

Listen to individual segments from the episode.

Further Exploration:

Resources galore! Peruse a list of outside sources compiled by the BackStory team to provide a more complete picture of the history of gun ownership in America, and consult a bibliography of works used in the making of this episode.

Even Further:

Read the listener discussion that helped shape this show.