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Born in poverty on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior, Gustavo Dudamel has become what Simon Rattle calls "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across."
Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems, 1956-1998 is good news for those of us who have long admired his poetry. Or so I thought, until I read David Orr's NYT article about the Alissa Valles translations used in the new book.
It seemed to me that John and Bogdana Carpenter's translation embodied Herbert's voice—although, of course, I don't have the Polish to truly judge. Just because I can, here's a link to the Carpenters' translation of my favorite Herbert poem, "I Would Like to Describe".
I already thought aerogel was amazing, but now it appears that it can clean heavy metals and organic pollutants. I knew I should have bought stock.
Junior (John L. Doughty, Jr.) is a Mississippi Delta cultural anthropologist who documents juke joint culture. That means he gets to hang out in jukes and talk to people (and photograph it all). What a great job.
Hat tip to Grow A Brain.
Cory Doctorow has a new column in The Guardian Unlimited, which in itself is great news. Even better, he hits one out of the park first time out, with a comparison of DRM and ideologically comforting junk science.
It's the compound that makes wine smell peppery. One scientist said, "If you can measure something, you can understand its behaviour and how to control it." Hmmm, that sounds oddly familiar.
Russell Baker's essay in the NYRB is ostensibly a review of two new books bemoaning the current state of journalism. The real pleasure, of course, is reading Russell Baker's take on the subject. Gosh, I miss him.
That's ECM, in case you didn't know. Geoff Dyer tells us how a label changed the way he listened to music.