New David Foster Wallace Story Appears in The New Yorker

in Books, Literature | March 3rd, 2011

A quick heads up: The March 7 edi­tion of The New York­er mag­a­zine fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished sto­ry by David Fos­ter Wal­lace, the cel­e­brat­ed Amer­i­can author who com­mit­ted sui­cide back in 2008. The sto­ry, “Back­bone,” begins:

Every whole per­son has ambi­tions, objec­tives, ini­tia­tives, goals. This one par­tic­u­lar boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.

His arms to the shoul­ders and most of his legs beneath the knee were child’s play. After these areas of his body, how­ev­er, the dif­fi­cul­ty increased with the abrupt­ness of a coastal shelf. The boy came to under­stand that unimag­in­able chal­lenges lay ahead of him. He was six.

The full sto­ry appears on The New York­er web­site. And per­haps it will whet your appetite for a big­ger lit­er­ary event. On April 15th, Wal­lace’s final (and still not quite com­plete) nov­el, ‘The Pale King’, will be pub­lished. You can already reserve your copy on Ama­zon here. Thanks to @sheerly for the tip…

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Jay‑Z: The Evolution of My Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Shawn Carter – the MC, entre­pre­neur, and recent best-sell­ing author who is known to every­one but his moth­er as Jay‑Z  – proved with the 2010 pub­li­ca­tion of his mem­oir Decod­ed that he is not only one of hip-hop’s top artists, but also one of its top inter­preters.

In Decod­ed, Jay‑Z offers lit­tle in the way of new per­son­al details. He’s been telling that sto­ry in his raps for twen­ty years now – from his father­less child­hood in the projects, to his years deal­ing crack cocaine, to his star­dom, and final­ly to his cur­rent suc­cess as a busi­ness­man and cul­tur­al icon. And what­ev­er the 41-year-old has­n’t divulged yet, he may well have been advised by a lawyer to keep to him­self. Instead of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Decod­ed pro­vides some­thing much more valu­able, a thought­ful analy­sis of his own lyrics and the his­to­ry of his cho­sen art form. Jay‑Z  helps us under­stand that he and hip-hop are rough­ly the same age, and that their sto­ries are almost inter­change­able: When young Shawn Carter first fell in love with the sound of rhymes over beats in Brook­lyn in 1978, he was dis­cov­er­ing the new music just as the new music was dis­cov­er­ing itself.

Ran­dom House has just released an iPad appli­ca­tion of Decod­ed, adding about thir­ty min­utes of mul­ti-media con­tent, includ­ing the video above. You might also want to check out Jay-Z’s appear­ance on Char­lie Rose (on Youtube in 5 parts) and his recent inter­view on Fresh Air.

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Visualizing WiFi Signals with Light

in Science, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Have you ever won­dered what the WiFi sig­nal looks like around your office, school, or local café? In this video, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knut­sen, and Einar Sneve Mar­t­i­nussen show you the invis­i­ble. And they pulled this off by build­ing a WiFi mea­sur­ing rod, mea­sur­ing four meters in length, that can visu­al­ize WiFi sig­nals around Oslo, Nor­way with the help of long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see is how the WiFi sig­nals vary across the city. Away from res­i­den­tial build­ings, the drop-off in WiFi strength is steep. On the oth­er hand, the WiFi sig­nal is dense around com­mer­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic build­ings. The amaz­ing visu­al­iza­tion gives us a glimpse into the com­plex rela­tion­ships between WiFi net­works and the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments under­pin­ning them. For a deep­er read about this project, see this blog post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel Promotes World’s Largest Online Guitar Lesson

in Music | March 3rd, 2011

Nigel Tufnel, lead gui­tarist for Spinal Tap (wink, wink) sets the stage for you. This after­noon (March 3), Berklee Music will hold what it hopes will be the largest online gui­tar les­son ever. It all starts at 1:30 EST. Get details and join in here.

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Revolutions in the Middle East: Head of Al Jazeera Speaks at TED

in Current Affairs, TED Talks | March 2nd, 2011

Where will the Mid­dle East go from here? Towards democ­ra­cy, as many hope? Towards a more theo­crat­ic mod­el, as some despair? Or, towards more of the same dis­il­lu­sion­ing autoc­ra­cy?

On the first day of the big TED con­fer­ence, Wadah Khan­far, the head of Al Jazeera, offered a supreme­ly opti­mistic take on the rev­o­lu­tions trans­form­ing Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and per­haps beyond. Through­out the past few weeks, many West­ern­ers have tuned into Al Jazeer­a’s live Eng­lish-lan­guage cov­er­age on the web and found them­selves pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the bal­ance and depth of their report­ing. Now you get 17 upbeat min­utes with the leader of the Qatar-based news orga­ni­za­tion …

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NASA Captures Giant Solar Storm

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 2nd, 2011

Last Thurs­day, the sun deliv­ered the goods, unleash­ing a beau­ti­ful solar flare. The erup­tions last­ed some­where around 90 min­utes, and the plas­ma flares were all cap­tured in high def by NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry, a project ded­i­cat­ed to study­ing the sun and its impact on space weath­er. This footage comes soon after anoth­er ground­break­ing NASA video – the First 360 Degree View of the Sun.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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The Restoration of a Masterpiece, as Narrated by Martin Scorsese

in Film, TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture | March 2nd, 2011

This week, some of the world’s great­est thinkers (and biggest spenders) are gath­ered in Palm Springs and Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia for TED’s annu­al con­fer­ence. In case your invi­ta­tion to TED2011 got lost in the mail along with ours, you can still keep up with the con­fer­ence through TED’s home­page. Some high­lights so far include an open­ing address beamed in from out­er space, physi­cist Jan­na Lev­in’s dis­cus­sion of what she calls the sound­track of the uni­verse, and final­ly, a stun­ning video doc­u­ment­ing the restora­tion of Luchi­no Vis­con­ti’s 1963 clas­sic film, The Leop­ard. Even bet­ter, the video is nar­rat­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese, uber-direc­tor, cin­e­ma his­to­ri­an, and founder of The Film Foun­da­tion, one of the many orga­ni­za­tions involved with the restora­tion.

By the way, Scorcese gave a fas­ci­nat­ing talk about film restora­tion last year at LACMA. You can watch it here. For a com­plete list of films his foun­da­tion has been involved in restor­ing or pre­serv­ing, click here.

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50 Years Ago Today: JFK Authorizes Peace Corps

in History | March 1st, 2011

On March 1, 1961, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy signed Exec­u­tive Order 10924, offi­cial­ly autho­riz­ing the estab­lish­ment of an “agency in the Depart­ment of State which shall be known as the Peace Corps.” Fifty years lat­er, that Agency has sent more than 200,000 vol­un­teers to over 93 coun­tries.

A note:  If you’ve ever won­dered about all those CIA-Peace Corps con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, lis­ten to the Nation­al Archives’ fas­ci­nat­ing audio and tran­script of a con­ver­sa­tion between JFK and his broth­er-in-law R. Sar­gent Shriv­er, the Peace Corps’ first Direc­tor (and Maria Shriver’s grand­fa­ther), dis­cussing “pos­si­ble CIA pen­e­tra­tion” of the Agency.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

JFK Revis­it­ed on YouTube

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