Bill Murray's Blog, page 64
March 17, 2018
Quotes:
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“Shampooing can I do and water-waving can I do, and marcelling can I do, and oil massage can I do, and hair-dyeing can I do, but keep from mixing up Göring’s and Goebbel’s birthday, that I can not do.”
• A hairdresser in distress over losing her hairdressing license in Hitler’s Germany in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
March 15, 2018
Weekend Reading
Spring hovers in the wings. In our part of the world, in southern Appalachia, it’s the yearly fight between eager-to-bud trees and determined-to-refreeze cold fronts. If the rain holds off, we’ll head to the creek with an iPad loaded with some of these reading suggestions. Pick and choose what you might like among these fine reads and please enjoy your weekend.
The Sinn Fein question: could the party stop a hard Brexit? by Martin Fletcher at the New Statesman
Operation Gunnerside: The Norwegian attack on heavy water that deprived the Nazis of the atomic bomb by Timothy J Jorgensen at The Conversation (also entertainingly told in Lynne Olsen’s Last Hope Island)
Fat Leonard’s Crimes on the High Seas – The rise and fall of the defense contractor who bought off Navy brass with meals, liquor, women and bribes by Jesse Hyde in Rolling Stone
Disarming the Weapons of Mass Distraction by Madeleine Bunting at the NYRB blog. More on how to reclaim your attention span.
How a Fake Mountain Range Slowed Down Arctic Exploration – The 19th-century naval officer John Ross’s unfortunate imagination by Cara Giaimo at Atlas Obscura.
Headline hyperbole here, but on a longer term horizon, Parag Khanna is onto something: There’s a new secretary of state. Who cares? Sorry, Washington. The world doesn’t need you anymore at Politico.eu.
The Asset, How A Player In The Trump-Russia Scandal Led A Double Life As An American Spy by Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold at Buzzfeed. Everything about this is remarkable.
And finally, How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened) by David Graeber and David Wengrow at Eurozine. This compliments a flurry of books and articles lately on the distant history of humans, including the articles Tools and voyages suggest that Homo erectus invented language by Daniel Everett at Aeon, Tracing the tangled tracks of humankind’s evolutionary journey by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian and How Hunter-Gatherers May Hold the Key to our Economic Future by James Suzman at evonomics, which compliments his new book Affluence Without Abundance.
Another newish book, that sets out to upend most conventional hunter-gatherer history, is Against the Grain, A Deep History of the Earliest States, by James C. Scott. Scott, a contrarian, has gotten approving press, but after all, he is merely the new Colin Tudge. Tudge covered much of Scott’s territory twenty years ago in a tiny little book, Neanderthals, Bandits & Farmers: How Agriculture Really Began.
No doubt more than you were asking about early humans.
Wet but warming up in southern Appalachia this weekend. What about where you are?
Cheers!
Even Hyenas Are Cute When They’re Babies
Hard to believe, but true. Consider:
[image error]The littlest guy pokes his head up from the nest. Staying close to mom.
[image error]This guy’s brave enough to stand up all by himself.
[image error]And the whole clan.
From the Mara North Conservancy, Kenya, just at dusk one afternoon. Click ’em to make ’em bigger. And there are lots more wildlife photos at Earthphotos.com.
Rapa Nui Multimedia
The New York Times has a nice multimedia piece up this afternoon about the danger faced by the moais, those enigmatic statues on Easter Island, known locally as Rapa Nui.
Check it out and then explore more photos from the island at EarthPhotos.com. Here are a few:
Island Transport
Only Known Authentic Moai Eye, in the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum near Hanga Roa
Anakena Beach and Ahu Nau Nau
Sunset
And here are twenty entries, photos and stories from our visit to Rapa Nui.
Selfie-Free Island
Bali is asking telecoms providers to restrict cellular service for a 24-hour internet blackout from 6 a.m. on Saturday. “Residents of the Hindu-dominated island stop regular daily activities for a day of meditation, fasting and introspection,” part of an annual New Year “Day of Silence.”
March 14, 2018
Quotes: On Quality of Life
“In the Nordic countries, Bernie Sanders is not viewed as progressive – he is just common sense.”
– Meik Wiking of the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark in an article about Finland being found the happiest country on earth in the 2018 World Happiness Report.
Here are 241 photos from Finland, from EarthPhotos.com.
March 11, 2018
March 9, 2018
Weekend Reading
The village of Tjørnuvik, Streymoy, Faroe Islands (above) has no connection that I can think of to the articles listed here. But it sure is pretty, isn’t it? This weekend, you could set a slideshow of Tjørnuvik and the 580 other photos from all over the world in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Otherwise, here are a few articles worth your attention on your day off this weekend:
How Netflix works: the (hugely simplified) complex stuff that happens every time you hit Play by Mayukh Nair at Medium.com.
The Infinity of the Small by Alan P. Lightman at Harper’s Magazine. Harper’s allows a free article a month. If this is your first this month, you’re good.
The Exhilirating Art of Landing Planes in Crazy Crosswinds by Alex Davis at Wired.com.
When a Reporter Crossed the Kremlin’s Borderline by Shaun Walker at codastory.com.
We Are Living in Parallel Societies by Nick Ottens at Quillette.com
and some entertaining photography at TheAtlantic.com. Alan Taylor takes virtual tours with Google Earth, then shares what he finds. Here are what he calls Human Landscapes of Germany, Mexico, Canada and the American Southwest.
Cheers, everybody.
March 8, 2018
Fun with Translations
To help me learn a little Finnish, I read the Twitter feeds of the big Finnish newspapers and broadcasters. See this screen shot. It’s easy with the very useful translations into English.
Just remember, never try to flinp a coffee package in Finland.
Quotes: The sound MPs make during prime minister’s questions
“It’s not a natural human noise – too joyless for a laugh and yet too lacklustre for a jeer. If a Foley artist had to recreate it for a film’s soundtrack, they’d fill an old accordion with gin and throw it down a flight of stairs – it’s the only way to get that thudding braying noise, wheezing out malicious approval like a drunk uncle watching Benny Hill reruns.”
from a Jack Bernhardt opinion piece in The Guardian.
