It's time for a new round of "Shakespeare debunking," arguing that the son of an illiterate laborer could never have written works so full of science, history, legal shenanigans, and aristocratic mores—that it must have been a cabal, one that included at least a few nobles.
Richard Sherman strolls down memory lane, telling us what it was like to work on the last Walt Disney animated feature, <I>The Jungle Book</I>. Well, there were more cartoons from Disney, but <I>TJB</I> was Walt's last.
I wasted—er, enjoyably spent—the weekend reading Phil and Kaja Foglio's <I>Girl Genius</I> online. Now I've ordered the printed books, and I recommend you do the same. Here's a taste of the Oz meeets steampunk comic. Order all six volumes—or spend the next three days online. At which point, you'll order all six volumes anyway, so save a step.
I've been spending the last few days exploring <I>Riley Rock Index</I>, billed as music's megaportal—justifiably, I believe.
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy gives us a fascinating overview of Islam's long and variable engagement with science. "The question I want to pose—perhaps as much to myself as to anyone else—is this: With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge?"
It's a good thing I did my listening before the Mets' tragic loss because, afterwards, <i>everything</i> sounded horrible. I started with the brilliant Arsenio Rodriguez composition, "A Bailar Mi Bomba," off of Roberto Roena's outstanding <i>Lucky 7</i>. When I listen to this song, my head bobs about like mad and my shoulders shake like maracas, I come up with desperate ideas about trading in my guitar amplifier for a conga set and a cowbell, I consider saying goodbye to everything and moving away to Puerto Rico. It's that kind of song.
Tom Mitchelson spent a week, guided by a small bunch of female friends, attempting to experience "the thoughts, anxieties and simple daily tasks of a 21<SUP>st</SUP>-century woman."
Or we'll force you to listen to Mick Jagger solo albums.
Or up—a timeline portraying various "future history" events depicted in SF novels and films.
In some of the standard histories, jazz went to hell in the 1970s—first losing its structure to the avant-garde, then losing its harmony and rhythm to rock-funk fusion—before recovering its senses and sensibility in the ‘80s, thanks mainly to Wynton Marsalis. As with most myths, there’s a little bit of truth to this chronicle; things did take a bumpy turn in the ‘70s (though some of the avant-garde and the fusion was a lot more interesting than the broad-brush detractors would have you believe). But the revival of melody, structure, beauty and wit was hardly the doings of Mr. Marsalis. A movement was well afoot—the critic Gary Giddins called it “neo-classicism”—a few years before the young trumpeter moved from New Orleans to New York. Many other, somewhat older musicians had already been making their ways to “the jazz tradition” through the path of the avant-garde. It was on that anti-traditional road that they found their voices; so when they shifted course, they had something distinctive to say. They breathed life into the music of old and so, ironically, embodied the creative impulses at the heart of jazz with far greater fidelity than those who solemnly recited the phrasebooks of Pops, Bird, and Miles.