Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud | Wired Science | Wired.com
“The team of researchers from Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History ordered tuna from 31 sushi restaurants and then used genetic tests to determine the species of fishes in those dishes. More than half of those eateries misrepresented, or couldn’t clarify the type of fish they were mongering. Several were selling endangered southern bluefin tuna.”
(Via www.wired.com )Top 9 Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt Parodies – Urlesque
Remember the Three Wolf Moon Shirt? With almost 1,600 hilarious customer “reviews” already, you just knew that people would be cashing in with the inevitable parodies of the self-parodying shirt — and Urlesque provides a run-down of some of the better ones.
(Via www.urlesque.com )Whisky on (Antarctic) ice | GlobalPost
Along the coast of Antarctica, two cases of Scotch whisky were left behind 100 years ago by Sir Ernest Shackleton after a failed attempt at the South Pole. Now, a New Zealand team is en route to recover a few bottles for, um, scientific purposes….
(Via www.globalpost.com )Warner Bros. will upgrade your DVDs to Blu-ray (for a fee) | DVD | Newswire | The A.V. Club
Exchange some Warner Bros. DVDs for Blu-Ray Discs (and a little money)
(Via www.avclub.com )Its GDP Is Depressed, but Argentina Leads World in Shrinks Per Capita – WSJ.com
I wonder why the author of this article felt the need to write this piece…. We’ll pick up on that during our next session.
(Via online.wsj.com )Dick Cavett on Fame
“What are some of the bad things about being famous?” Buck asked.
Having become “famed” myself relatively recently, via the (then) small screen, I felt qualified to list a few negatives with sincerity.
“For one thing, you lose an awful lot of freedom.”
This gave Buck pause, and put him into a kind of reverie. We watched the waves roll in on the incoming tide to just short of where we sat as he thought a while.
“Like how?” he asked. “What freedom do you lose?”
“For one, the freedom to not be recognized everywhere,” I offered.
“That’s bad?”
The initial delight of being spotted lasts about a week and four days.
RJ: “Showtime, circus time, see the magician that lights up the girl with the yellow elastic tissue, the Electrode Lady. Yes, the Electrode Lady, at the age of 7, she and her sister were struck by lightning. Her sister died, but she lived to tell the tale. 20,000 volts of electricity for the young girl’s body. The doctors said she lived because she was immune to the shock of electricity.” I could go on.
(Via www.avclub.com )Parents Are Borrowing From Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer – NYTimes.com
Tsst!
(Via www.nytimes.com )
Bolaño: Homicide Detective?, Vonnegut on Coming Home, Ebert on The Sounds of Words, Machado de Assis, Cormac McCarthy on Life, Eco on Lists, and Getting Advice on Writing… from Writers!
Books + Letters Links for Monday, November 23, 2009
Stray Questions for: Roberto Bolaño?!
An excerpt from novelist Roberto Bolaño’s last interview, published in Playboy Mexico the month of his death and now appearing in English in Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations.
(Via papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com )Letters of Note: Slaughterhouse Five
Letters of Note is a site that, according to its own description “gathers and sorts fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated 2-3 times every weekday”.This link to a letter from a young Kurt Vonnegut
, in addition to living up to the “fascinating” label, should also give you an excellent feel for the other items that this site collects. Today’s post reprints a different Kurt: a letter to Beat legend William Burroughs
If you’re like me, you’ll be there clicking away for hours before you realize it.
(Via www.lettersofnote.com )Roger Ebert’s Journal: Perform a concert in words
It would be facile to suggest that Roger Ebert has found a deeper, more powerful voice since losing his ability to speak… but his paean to the beauty of the spoken word takes on additional depth for me because of it.Reading some of his recent posts should be a kick in the ass to any writer who has one.
(Via blogs.suntimes.com )The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas – Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Reviewer M.A. Orthofer thinks that The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Library of Latin America)“simply good, good fun”. Correct — and only the beginning of the superlatives you’ll want to lay at the feet of 19th Century Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
My favorite — Helen Caldwell’s translation of Dom Casmurro
. Critic Dudley Fitts once wrote of Machado: “No satirist, not even Swift, is less merciful in his exposure of the pretentiousness and the hypocrisy that lurk in the average good man and woman. Machado, in his deceptively amiable way, is terrifying.”
Absolutely right.
(Via www.complete-review.com )
In this already widely-linked-to piece, author Cormac McCarthy, 76, talks about love, religion, his 11-year-old son, the end of the world and the movie based on his novel ‘The Road.’ Included here just in case you missed it…
(Via online.wsj.com )SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’
“The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list.”
(Via www.spiegel.de )
Bob Thompson on learning about writing….by asking writers. How…. novel? 😉
(Via www.theamericanscholar.org )
I Got Your Magic Right Here!
Demystifying the Art of Making a Good File
Readers of Veritrope.com generally fall into two distinct camps: Some come here for AppleScripts or Mac-related posts, others for the less tech-oriented features.
Many of my friends are in the latter group. They’ve often told me “I started reading one of your computer posts and got a few paragraphs in… when I realized that I had no goddamn idea what you were talking about!”
And so with this subtle encouragement, it occurs to me that some content that is less “nuts-and-bolts” and more “Why should I care about this nerdy stuff?” is probably in order.
[Read more…]
Music-Related Links for November 3, 2009
The Best Synths of the 80’s — Recreated in Software, The Guitar Style of John Frusciante, Share Your Mix Tapes Online, Elliott Smith, and some New Madvillainy!
In honor of what’s going on in many parts of the United States today, enjoy the Election Day playlist while you peruse some links!
[Read more…]
Arts + Letters Links for Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Anthony Bourdain gets even more animated, The Fall of the Berlin Wall — 20 Years Later, The Legacy of John le Carré, and remembering Claude Levi-Strauss.
Anthony Bourdain creates animated web series
Anthony Bourdain
(Via Gadling.com )Scaling the Berlin Wall
While visiting Berlin a few years ago, I came across an English-language bookstore in Charlottenburg. I asked the man running the store “Are there any books that you think really capture the essence of the fall of both the wall and of the Eastern Bloc itself?” He recommended
Anna Funder’s excellent book Stasiland and Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
by David Remnick — both subsequently purchased and thoroughly enjoyed upon my return home.
And so as November 9th, 2009 approaches, journalists are beginning to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — as well as to debunk the mythology surrounding its demise. The Daily Beast has an interesting excerpt from Michael Meyer’s new book The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall and I saw Nicholas Thomson promoting The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War
last night on the Colbert Report.
While this moment of reflection is still here, be sure to also check out a couple of films about life before and after the Wall: The sleeper Ostalgie comedy Good Bye, Lenin!
, as well as the powerful, critically-acclaimed The Lives of Others
(Via www.thedailybeast.com )John le Carré: A man of great intelligence
Speaking of the bad old days of Cold War intrigue, the Guardian has a profile on John le Carré
(Via www.guardian.co.uk )“Claude Levi-Strauss Dead: French Anthropologist Dies At 100
Claude Levi-Strauss
(Via www.huffingtonpost.com )
