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The Beeb has an animated "front line" Western Front feature. Its only weakness is that it is antiseptic, which that war was definitely not.
Wilfred Owen had it right,
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells…
I sat, quietly, in the dirty seat, empty bottles of beer and peanut shells at my feet. My throat was sore from shouting chants and pleas, my hands bruised from fruitless rooting. How could this have happened? As the stadium emptied out, leaving behind only rows of orange and blue paint, an painful truth sank in: This is how it ends.
Perhaps it was the Coldplay song that did it. How could they use this song?
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start
…
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…
Or up—a timeline portraying various "future history" events depicted in SF novels and films.
Hat tip to Grow A Brain.
Or we'll force you to listen to Mick Jagger solo albums.
My favorite sentence (perhaps ever): "But then again, as Elton John once put it, no."
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 21st-century woman."
"I'd only dipped a polished toenail into a woman's life. I experienced none of the real pressures and tribulations that a woman faces every day. Tammy Wynette was quite wrong when she sang 'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman.' It's not. It's always hard to be a woman. Especially if you're a man."
It's a good thing I did my listening before the Mets' tragic loss because, afterwards, everything sounded horrible. I started with the brilliant Arsenio Rodriguez composition, "A Bailar Mi Bomba," off of Roberto Roena's outstanding Lucky 7. 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.
It sounds good, too. Engineered by Jon Fausty at…
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?"
I was first intrigued by this question when I read Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history The Years of Rice and Salt, which posited a world in which the Bubonic Plague wiped out 90% of Europe's population in the 13th Century, leaving the…
I've been spending the last few days exploring Riley Rock Index, billed as music's megaportal—justifiably, I believe.
The Riley in question is Tim Riley, author of Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary and Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary, and a regular critic on NPR's Here and Now. The RRI is one huge time sink—um, I mean, is filled with fascinating links, articles, and destinations that will delight any music lover.