Year: 2013

Obviously, today is a big one for us. But we’re just as obviously not the only ones dealing with the core issue of how new art, writing, film, poetry etc can pay for itself in this new era. We’re not the only ones who have become frustrated with advertizing. And we’re not the only ones who grew a little exhausted after a while asking bigger media institutions for assistance or permission to get something done. Take, for example, this interview with Lena Dunham, the genius behind Girls:

This embed is invalid

I just wanted to write that headline today. It’s from this must-read piece:

For people who need to eliminate gluten from their diet, baking becomes a challenge.

They lost me at “baking.” They may not lose some of you.

Randall Monroe points to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon:

Its atmosphere is thick but its gravity is light, giving it a surface pressure only 50% higher than Earth’s with air four times as dense. Its gravity—lower than that of the Moon—means that flying is easy. Our Cessna could get into the air under pedal power. In fact, humans on Titan could fly by muscle power. A human in a hang glider could comfortably take off and cruise around powered by oversized swim-flipper boots—or even take off by flapping artificial wings. The power requirements are minimal—it would probably take no more effort than walking.

But the elements could pose a problem:

 It’s 72 kelvin on Titan, which is about the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

Yes, Mussolini was that batshit:

The war in Ethiopia kindled in the regime a new optimism that Italians could be remoulded into aggressive, well-disciplined and fanatical members of a new master race. Among other things, this meant getting rid of ‘bourgeois’ customs such as the handshake (declared to be ‘soft’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and to be replaced with the Fascist salute) and the formal mode of address, Lei (branded as a ‘foreign import’ with connotations of ‘servility’). Coffee-drinking was condemned as decadent (even more of a lost cause than the other proposed reforms). Mussolini announced his intention of making Italians ‘less nice’ and more ‘odious, tough and implacable: in other words, masters’.

While reviewing David Schiff’s The Ellington Century, Kevin Stevens defends the artistic seriousness of jazz – and Duke Ellington’s particularly remarkable contributions to the genre:

Ellington is a natural case study for the argument that jazz is as subtle, complex, and emotionally expressive as classical music. His musical vision was broad and deep, and he spent a lifetime perfecting its means of expression: his orchestra. “Ellington plays the piano,” his long-time collaborator Billy Strayhorn said, “but his real instrument is his band.” Ellington did not compose for an orchestra but with it. No composer, jazz or classical, was more adept at writing for specific individuals, using their strengths (the tone of Johnny Hodges’s alto sax, the bite and brilliance of Cootie Williams’s trumpet) as the foundation for compositions. “You can’t write music right,” Ellington once said, “unless you know how the man that’ll play it plays poker.”

This weekend on the Dish, we transitioned to our new home. Andrew explained it all here. The Dish also promoted one of its interns, Chas Danner, to the job of Special Teams, primarily for his role in orchestrating the site’s migration.

In Super Bowl coverage, Michael Serazio compared sports to religion, College Humor covered yesterday’s “main event,” Dan Charles eyed the big game’s snack table, Nate Cohn imagined the NFL getting the Moneyball treatment, and Brent Cox crunched the numbers on why Super Bowl ads cost so much. (This morning you may also find yourself wishing you could have gotten hammered without the hangover.)

We also provided our usual mix of books, religious, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Dan Duray detailed the arduous fact-checking process for Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, Claire Cameron celebrated Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, and Noah Millman joined the debate on the fate of the religious novel. Ariel Sabar reported that Jesus’ native tongue was dying out, Stefan Kanfer noted Elie Wiesel’s grappling with the problem of evil, Peter Gajdics recounted his horrific experiences with the reparative therapy. Huw Price pondered the fate of our technological society, Sacha Scoblic dissected why addiction treatment often fails, and Oliver Sacks caught a silver lining in our tendency to misremember events.

In literary and arts coverage, Will McDavid ruminated on Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River,” Joshua Rothman found Robert Frost’s dark side, and Wes Enzinna visited a library for the unpublished. Brain Pickings turned to Virginia Woolf’s thoughts on keeping a diary, Franz Kafka meditated on the books we need, and Brooks Sterrit picked the Shakespeare lines that seem at home in contemporary hip-hop. Will Wilkinson critiqued Hitch’s writing advice, Steven Soderbergh thought Congress could learn from Hollywood, and France and Russia engaged in lingustic xenophobia. Read Saturday’s poem here and Sunday’s here.

In assorted news and views, Rob Beschizza flagged a compilation of vanity plates banned in various states, David Roberts panned the “sophisticated” objection to emissions reductions, and Kate Shaw asked if the end of syphilis spurred the Sexual Revolution. The Economist surveyed plastic surgery around the globe, Andrea Denhoed recounted the sad tale of a friend who faked a wedding on Facebook, and Regine reviewed Scott Hockings’ Bad Graffiti. Ruth Krause and Helen Whittle lamented that German was littered with leftover racism, it turned out sex doesn’t burn many calories, and Luke Kelly-Clyne praised the new web series High Maintenance. View a brilliant photo from this weekend’s nudity protest in San Francisco here. MHBs here and here, FOTDs here and here, VFYWs here and here, and the latest windown contest here.

– M.S. 

Mark Dery profiles “the Kraken of tall tales and sea shanties—Architeuthis, the giant squid.” Why we are seeing more of them in the media:

Typically, Architeuthis can be found in the neighborhood of 400 to 900 meters, from the mesopelagic to the upper bathypelagic zones, he says; Mesonychoteuthis lives further down the water column, “probably 800 to a thousand meters.” According to Roper, “a lot of the deep-sea fishing nets, now, are going down to a thousand to 1200 meters.”

Not only are we reaching deeper into the ocean, he says, but we’re extending our geographic reach as well. Fisheries now extend “way down in the southern ocean, down around Antarctica. Until recently, there was no fishery down there, but with the traditional fish populations pretty well decimated, fishermen have to go farther afield, [and] they have to go deeper and deeper.” This, he explains, is why big squid are turning up in what is known as “by-catch”—the accidental capture of species other than the ones you’re fishing for (the vast majority of which are dumped overboard, dead).

The secretary of state would have had us knee-deep in Syria right now, backed by David Petraeus. Obama nixed it. I have a feeling Hagel may help with some of that if he is confirmed.