Wednesday 9 March 2016

Ten trivial items (mostly from a long time ago)

Dolly Parton talks flush toilets and growing up with 11 siblings
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
“Blank On Blank” animates rarely-heard interviews with famous figures. Their latest video features Dolly Parton, discussing growing up in poverty with 11 siblings in Tennessee—she didn’t use a flush toilet until she was around eight years old).
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Water Park: 1907
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Water Park: 1907
Toledo, Ohio, circa 1907
“Walbridge Park Annex – Casino, boardwalk and roller coaster on Maumee River“
Panorama of two 8x10 glass negatives
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Iconic trumpet players who defined jazz history
via OUP Blog by Miki Onwudinjo
SONY DSC
Since emerging at the beginning of the 20th century, jazz music has been a staple in American culture. Historians are not clear on when exactly jazz was born or who first started playing it, but it can be agreed upon that New Orleans, Louisiana is the First City of Jazz. Amidst the inventive be-bop beats filling up NOLA bars are the iconic trumpet players who still continue to inspire musicians and new music every day.
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Biggest instrumental hits of the last 50 years
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Cuepoint plays through disco, funk, jazz, classical, TV themes, movie soundtracks, and, er, Kenny G to list “every instrumental, as classified by Billboard, that has made it to the Top 10 over the past 50 years”.
Check out the link above. There’s some surprising omissions.

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Wilfred Owen Insensibility
A reluctant soldier responds to mass tragedy.
via 3 Quarks Daily: Austin Allen at Poetry Foundation
From an early age, Wilfred Owen seems to have demanded a lot out of the people around him. His younger brother Harold, as Philip Larkin recounted in a review of Jon Stallworthy’s Owen biography (1975), claimed that: “[Wilfred] as an adolescent veered from ‘too high spirits’ to depression and attacks of bad temper in which he was inclined to lecture the whole family furiously for their failure to attain proper standards.” Harold also recalled that Wilfred seemed to enjoy pointing out Harold’s errors in his schoolwork and reveling in “the pleasures of his destructive criticism.” If these recollections are accurate, Wilfred would hardly be the first poet to turn the flaws of his character into the strengths of his art.
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Perhaps the greatest of the poems to come out of WW1

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How to Outsmart a Lie Detector Test
via Big Think by Robert Montenegro
Lie_detector
A polygraph machine is not a magical device. It can’t read your mind; it has no concept of truth. The polygraph test is ostensibly designed to identify liars from truth-tellers, but its weaknesses make it like any other test in that it can be beaten, given the right kind of studying. To outsmart a lie detector you must first understand its psychological facets and then turn them in your favour.
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How We Age
via 3 Quarks Daily: from The Scientist
ScreenHunter_1116 Apr. 01 12.09
Growing old is a fact of life. And there’s no mistaking it, given the increased fatigue, weakened bones, and ill health that generally accompany aging. Indeed, age is the number one risk factor for myriad diseases, including Alzheimer’s, cancer, cataracts, and macular degeneration. And while researchers are making progress in understanding and treating each of these ailments, huge gaps remain in our understanding of the aging process itself.
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Watch How A Rubber Band Can Help You With A Stripped Screw
via Lifehack by Matt Duczeminski
Rubber bands
A stripped screw can be a source of frustration, and at worst can lead to a voided warranty or lost security deposit if you don’t know how to handle it. You might be tempted to try your own fix, or even shell out extra cash to have a professional fix it so you don’t mess anything else up. But before you break out the socket wrench or ball peen hammer, reach in your junk drawer for a plain old rubber band.
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The Fight: 1913
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
The Fight: 1913
New York, 1913
“Quality Shop and Hudson Theatre”
Where the audience for Bayard Veiller’s drama The Fight included a grand jury probing charges that the play was “indecent and a public nuisance“
8x10 glass negative
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How Digital Light Processing works
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Ben Krasnow is the modern Way Things Work. In this video, he shows how Digital Light Processing projectors work. He even built a macro-size chip so you can see the mirrors in action.
Watch it yourself here
Fascinating.

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