““I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” Francis said. “It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.””
Author Archives: shaun
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So, for instance, when Kanye sampled Otis Redding on Watch the Throne, music critic Chris Richards probably got it right when he said, “although West’s creation sounded cool, the overriding message was, ‘This cost me a lot of money.’”
Thanks to a corporate and legal system that rappers don’t control, that’s one of the underlying messages of just about any sample today. This is a significant break from the early days of hip hop. As Shocklee explains it, “The reason why we sampled in the beginning was that we couldn’t afford to have a guitar player come in and play on our record. We couldn’t afford to have that horn section…or the string sections. We were like scavengers, going through the garbage bin and finding whatever we could from our old dusty records.” In a complete paradigm shift, today it’s probably less expensive to hire those string sections than to sample them.
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– http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/did-the-decline-of-sampling-cause-the-decline-of-political-hip-hop/279791/
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"[IP] rights aren’t free: They’re imposed at the expense of future creators and of the public at large." -Judge Kozinski #TalkLikeAPirateDay
— Ali Sternburg (@alisternburg) September 19, 2013
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When it comes to sadness and disgust, Rui and co found very little correlation between users. Sadness and disgust do not easily spread through the network in this way. They found a higher correlation among users who tweeted joyful messages.
But the highest correlation by far was among angry users. Rui and co say anger strongly influences the neighbourhood in which it appears, spreading on average by about 3 hops or degrees. “Anger has a surprisingly higher correlation than other emotions,” they say.
That has significant implications. Not least of these is that anger is more likely to spread quickly and broadly across a network.
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– http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519306/most-influential-emotions-on-social-networks-revealed/
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“What’s always amused me about this scene is how absolutely little sense Rocky’s route makes: South Philly becomes North Philly becomes the Italian Market becomes North Philly again, and so on. Obviously, the montage isn’t meant to be taken seriously as an actual workout; it’s just a few scenes strung together so “Gonna Fly Now” can play and Rocky can finish at the top of the Art Museum steps.
But, I wondered, what if this roadwork were treated as one actual run? How far would Rocky go? Well, I decided to find out. I pieced together the routes Rocky could have traveled from scene to scene in this training montage and calculated distance. All distances were mapped out by using the USA Track and Field distance-measuring tool recommended to me by my friend and Philadelphia magazine Managing Editor Annie Monjar. She’s a better runner than I am, so I trust her. However, I’m not sure she could take Rocky in a footrace, at least Rocky II-era Rocky. Let’s see how far he went.”
– http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/09/18/rocky-training-run-rocky-ii/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Philly+Post%3A+Philadelphia&utm_content=Philly+Post+9%2F18+am
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In 2010, the Department of Commerce published a study about what it would take for different types of families to achieve the aspirations of the middle class — which it defined as a house, a car or two in the garage, a vacation now and then, decent health care and enough savings to retire and contribute to the children’s college education.
It concluded that the middle class has become a much more exclusive club. Even two-earner families making almost $81,000 in 2008 — substantially more than the family median of about $60,000 reported by the Census — would have a much tougher time acquiring the attributes of the middle class than in 1990.
The incomes of these types of families actually rose by a fifth between 1990 and 2008, according to the report. They were more educated and worked more hours, on average, and had children at a later age. Still, that was no match for the 56 percent jump in the cost of housing, the 155 percent leap in out-of-pocket spending on health care and the double-digit increase in the cost of college.
So either we define the middle class down a couple of notches or we acknowledge that the middle class isn’t in the middle anymore.
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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/business/americas-sinking-middle-class.html?ref=todayspaper
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In fact, industrialized chicken is in many respects hard to beat. Chicken flesh is healthier for humans than beef, and it lends itself to a wide array of culinary applications. It takes only about 2 pounds of feed to generate a pound of meat—this is what’s known as its feed conversion ratio—compared with the 6 pounds of feed required for a single pound of beef. What’s more, unlike pigs and cows, chickens don’t produce significant amounts of methane. Handle chickens right and you can repurpose their waste in a bunch of creative ways, including feeding it to cows and sheep. Sounds good, right?
The problem is, Americans eat 96 pounds of chicken per person per year. At that scale, it’s hard to be environmentally responsible. Chicken requires more water and power to process than any other meat (about 4,000 gallons per ton), and once that water is used it turns into toxic sludge. Also, in the middle of that lovely ball of meat is a set of internal organs full of pathogenic bacteria.
Then there’s man’s inhumanity to poultry. Factory chickens are raised under conditions that make the box Alec Guinness enjoyed in The Bridge on the River Kwai look like a suite at the Ritz. Their beaks sometimes have to be trimmed so they don’t peck each other to death in the cramped quarters, and they’re on a constant feed of antibiotics to try to stay ahead of the diseases that spread so quickly in hot, badly ventilated chicken houses. The best news for a feed chicken is that it’s probably not going to live more than 13 weeks.
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In 1917, a freshman paper was on average only 162 words long and the majority were simple “personal narratives.” By 1986, the length of papers more than doubled, averaging 422 words. By 2006, they were more than six times longer, clocking in at 1,038 words – and they were substantially more complex, with the majority consisting of a “researched argument or report,” with the student taking a point of view and marshalling evidence to support it.
“Student writers today are tackling the kinds of issues that require inquiry and investigation as well as reflection,” Prof. Lunsford concluded.
Why this astonishing uptick in quality and sophistication? It undoubtedly reflects rising educational standards, and the better availability of information in a digital age. But there has also been an explosion in composition.
It used to be that students did comparatively little writing out of school; even if you were in university, there was little call for it, and few vehicles to showcase your writing. But now, as Prof. Lunsford’s research has found, 40 per cent of all writing is done outside the classroom – it’s “life writing,” stuff students do socially, or just for fun. And it includes everything from penning TV recaps to long e-mail conversations to arguments on discussion boards.
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– http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/how-new-digital-tools-are-making-kids-smarter/article14321886/?page=all
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“The more important question is whether you want a vegan wine, too. Many people are not aware that wines may be clarified, or fined, with products derived from animals. This process may use ingredients like egg whites or isinglass (derived from fish bladders) to remove minute particles from the wine. These fining agents are then removed, but trace elements may remain, ruling out the wines for vegans. How can you tell if a wine is vegan? Some wines may not be fined, or may be fined with a clay-based ingredient like bentonite. But it is difficult to know for sure unless a wine is labeled “unfined,” or includes an ingredients list. Few wines list ingredients, but producers like Ridge, Bonny Doon Vineyard and Shinn Estate are leading the way. And their wines are very good.”
– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/dining/wine-pairings-for-a-vegan-meal.html?ref=todayspaper
shaun james bockert 