Ordinary Sunday Brunch: Culture Quick Links
Ordinary Sunday Brunch
Music Links
[Mu1] Circuit bending: Hacking a Furby in the name of music.
[Mu2] Contrarian opinion: “Why you should consider buying music on vinyl, CD and music files”.
[Mu3] When rock was the hip new thing: “Observer archive – Rock Around the Clock, 16 September 1956“.
[Mu4] Concert pianist facing burnout, has a radical change of pace: Hauling a piano up a mountain in Thailand to play Beethoven for blind elephants.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCJB9mIlFBs&w=560&h=315]
Art Links
[Ar1] “As a curator at the Denver Art Museum treated American Indian artworks as aesthetic creations, not artifacts, and championed the artists who made them.” Nancy Blomberg, dead at 72, with a legacy worth reading up on.
[Ar2] Not artistic license: Art School in France caught changing race of students in advertising photos.
[Ar3] String art, done by robot.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXvOTCRcY24&w=560&h=315]
History Links
[Hi1] Not the Disney Licensed variety, either: “The surprising history of American pirates”.
[Hi2] “Over the last week, some South Carolinians were talking about a different, folkloric warning sign, a ghost known as the Gray Man, believed to appear in the small town of Pawleys Island as a harbinger of hurricanes.”
[Hi3] The New York Times brings up the seemingly forgotten Wendell Willkie.
[Hi4] The history of dissent, from ancient Egypt to today, as told by the British Museum.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7_cNJilGiQ&w=560&h=315]
Food Links
[Fo1] 10 years on, a retrospective-and a check up-on the originators of the food truck trend in LA.
[Fo2] In honor of our friend @burtlikko move to PDX, which he writes about here, “The Beer Drinker’s Ultimate Guide to Portland”.
[Fo3] “Food waste” has been a hot topic among foodies for a while now, and this SF based chef is turning it into a restaurant concept.
[Fo4] The very strange, but increasingly violent, story of “fake food:” “The issue has been caught up in xenophobic violence, with shop owners targeted by South Africans . There is very little hard data about what’s referred to as “fake food” in both the formal and informal sectors. This means the issue is politically charged and dominated by opinions, not evidence.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFq6eZBS1iM&w=560&h=315]
Religion Links
[Re1] Lots of religious news out of China lately, and it is all bad, for all faiths.
[Re2] One way to look at it: “All ancient religions were once new religions. And all ancient innovators of those once-new religions borrowed ideas from even older religions, blending old ideas with new ideas to create a new religion.”
[Re3] “The case of a Michigan couple charged in the death of their 10-month-old daughter is bringing to light a debate about withholding medical care because of religious beliefs.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-_qS_3KXBA&w=560&h=315]
Architecture Links
[AT1] What happens when you turn a trained architect loose on Minecraft? Magic.
[AT2] Fascinating read: “Architecture is rooted in precedent and allusion. An exciting prospect of destabilizing intellectual property is the ability to return to these precedents and allusions for inspiration, dissection, and questioning. Buildings often considered too precious to do anything with, other than analyze the parti, can be challenged, reconfigured, and maybe even perverted”.
[AT3] And they are all worth your time: “7 Short Films About Architecture That You Won’t Find on Netflix”.
[AT4] The Palace of Mexican Music uses steel ribbing to create the effect of “strings” among other features of note.
Ar2 – France : cheese eaters ::
Wisconsin : cheese headsReport
You have a point…Report
Fo1: Kind of boring. They basically expanded their food truck business, opened a brick and motor restaurant, or work in the food industry in another way. Very few seemed to have dropped out entirely.
Re1: The Chinese government is the gift that keeps on giving for immigration lawyers. On a more serious note, the Chinese state has a long history of hostility towards religion that dates back before communism. Many of the civil disturbances in Chinese history were based on what can be called off-brand religious movements like the Yellow Turban Rebellion or the Taiping Uprising.Report
Be interesting to watch what effect this latest crackdown will have. Report
Mu2: apparently in some countries iTunes is randomly removing “in the cloud” movies (and perhaps other things) that people bought, not offering refunds, offering two rentals (which have a lower value) and not really explaining (I am guessing it’s a copyright thing, but still). (Reference: Forbes article)
I take this – Luddite that I am- to mean that if you “own” something that is merely “in the cloud,” you don’t actually own it.
*shrugs* I like CDs and dvds. If I am fond enough of something to watch it more than once, I want a physical copy of it. I know that goes against the Marie Kondo trend of not actually owning anything that can clutter your house, but….if the various “content providers” decide they can claw back their content and offer you a poor substitute, nope.Report
[Hi1] One of the complications with discussing piracy is disaggregating terminology. Pirates are bad guys; privateers are good guys (or at least have a slip of paper); and corsairs are Islamic raiders, mostly seeking to capture non-Muslims for the Ottoman slave markets.
So, I think the piece seems to overlook the importance of pirating as a normal activity in that period, and I would interpret the basic point about colonial attitudes was that they didn’t find piracy disagreeable out of hand, nor assume the absence of a slip of paper as decisive. But as the piece discusses attitudes towards piracy against Islamic ships, it seems to be unaware of the extensive raiding by corsairs of Europe and North America for slaves from the 16th to 18th centuries. The Maghreb in partiuclar is a slave society needing constant replenishment of slaves. Seems very dismissive to try to couch this as “fear of Islam” or “fear of the other” when there was actually something to fear.Report
Privateers are played by dashing actors like Errol Flynn and Lawrence Olivier. Pirates are played by B-actors with a penchant for villain roles.Report