Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

shared content

“

But “The Simpsons” was locked into an unusual — and now vintage — deal. The show was first sold into syndication in 1993. While an enormous hit for Fox, “The Simpsons” always stood out because it was animated. When Fox tried to place live-action comedies adjacent to it, they never really worked.

So the stations paying hefty rights fees insisted on maintaining exclusivity — meaning no sale to a cable network for as long as they were buying new seasons of reruns. “The Simpsons” — with a cast that never visibly aged — kept making new episodes on Fox, and the syndication contracts kept going.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/business/media/simpsons-reruns-sold-to-fxx-in-first-cable-deal.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

Some background: In June, the Supreme Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, under which nine states and portions of others had to get federal approval before changing their election laws.

One of those states, Texas, is again in court, facing a Justice Department suit seeking to get the state under federal oversight again. To do so, the Justice Department must prove intentional racial discrimination.

Texas’ defense? It’s discrimination, all right — but it’s on the basis of party, not race, and therefore it’s O.K.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/voter-suppressions-new-pretext.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“This chart shows the major distilleries operating in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana, grouped horizontally by corporate owner, then subdivided by distillery. Each tree shows the type of whiskey made, and the various expressions of each style of whiskey or mash bill, in the case of bourbons. For instance, Basil Hayden’s is a longer-aged version of Old Grand-Dad, and both are made at the Jim Beam Distillery. Some of this is imprecise. Buffalo Trace has two bourbon mash bills, but it isn’t known which of its many brands are made from each, so this is a rough guess based on online commentary. Willett, formerly only a bottler as Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, has been distilling its own product for about a year; I include the brands that it bottles from other sources for reference. The ages are taken from published age statements if they exist; if they don’t, brands have been plotted in the general area where I would guess they belong.”

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

Cal professor David Romer concluded that teams should not punt when facing fourth-and-4 or less; NFL stats analyst Brian Burke has detailed the need to rethink fourth-down decision-making; Football Outsiders has conflated punts with turnovers. You’ve even read about it on this site. Most fans and analysts who are willing to accept that change is a fundamental part of life have embraced the idea that automatically punting on fourth down doesn’t make sense.

So why do teams at all levels remain so rote? Chris Kluwe may have turned the Internet into his personal pulpit, but he can’t be that persuasive. Romer got it right way back in 2005: Coaches are afraid. No one wants to be the guy who gets fired because he stopped punting. And the same fans and analysts who clamor for innovation are actually fueling that fear.

”

– http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9970245/grantland-channel-coach-never-punts

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

Curators cannot think of another historical garment imbued with more meaning, and also deemed too sensitive to be shown. Among items of apparel with similar resonance are garments worn in concentration camps and the tatters that remained after the atomic blasts in Japan. But these objects, while deeply affecting, are displayed in museums. Other examples mentioned by curators include Napoleon’s death coat, a shoe dropped by Marie Antoinette on the way to the guillotine and the suit and cloak Abraham Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated. Mrs. Lincoln gave these items to a family friend. That man’s family kept them until the 1950s, when the American Trucking Association raised money to buy and donate them to the government. Since the ’60s, they have been on display at Ford’s Theater, though the cloak was put away because of wear.

But when Lincoln was alive, relatively few Americans knew what he looked like. Besides, his image, even if it had been familiar, would hardly have compared to Mrs. Kennedy’s riveting beauty and pop culture celebrity. She was, as Norman Mailer said in a 1962 essay critical of her televised tour of the White House, “an institution being put together before our eyes.”

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/fashion/jacqueline-kennedys-smart-pink-suit-preserved-in-memory-and-kept-out-of-view.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

Even the judge, Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said during a September hearing on the case that his law clerks used Google Books for research.

“It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders,” Judge Chin wrote in his ruling. “Indeed, all society benefits.”

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/media/judge-sides-with-google-on-book-scanning-suit.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“36 Chambers changed rap in countless ways, but among the most important was its explosion of a conventional and increasingly constrictive authenticity. The “gangsta rap” popularized by N.W.A. and its individual members had been an electrifying blend of fantasy and reality. But it had grown embattled since the 1992 LA riots, and a vicious feud between Dre and Eazy-E—which reached its nadir with the latter’s It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa EP in fall of 1993—had devolved into an idiotic referendum on which millionaire could claim to have murdered the most people the loudest. 36 Chambers didn’t insist on its reality but rather obsessively dismantled and reconstructed it: The endless aliases, the elaborate and ever-murky mythologies, the dizzying forays into pop-culture flotsam. “Method Man” opens with a discussion of stabbing tongues with rusty screwdrivers (among other, less printable acts) and then careens through four minutes of references to Dr. Seuss, Looney Tunes, Fat Albert, Hall and Oates, peanut butter brands. 36 Chambers made it safe for hardcore rap to once again be what it had always been first and foremost: a feat of miraculous artistry and imagination.”

– http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2013/11/enter_the_wu_tang_clan_a_quixotic_attempt_to_listen_to_every_track_by_rza.html

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

How responsible are these non-vaccinating parents for my pertussis? Very. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics indicated that outbreaks of these antediluvian diseases clustered where parents filed non-medical exemptions—that is, where parents decided not to vaccinate their kids because of their personal beliefs. The study found that areas with high concentrations of conscientious objectors were 2.5 times more likely to have an outbreak of pertussis. (To clarify: I was vaccinated against pertussis as a child, but the vaccine wears off by adulthood, which, until recently, was rarely a problem because the disease wasn’t running rampant because of people not vaccinating their kids.)

So thanks a lot, anti-vaccine parents. You took an ethical stand against big pharma and the autism your baby was not going to get anyway, and, by doing so, killed some babies and gave me, an otherwise healthy 31-year-old woman, the whooping cough in the year 2013. I understand your wanting to raise your own children as you see fit, science be damned, but you’re selfishly jeopardizing more than your own children.

”

– http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115551/jenny-mccarthy-anti-vaccination-movement-blame-whooping-cough

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

Scientists have long known that in certain spots, evolution runs faster than normal. The Galápagos Islands, for example, are home to some 13 species of Darwin’s finches, which all evolved from a single group of birds that originally colonized them. The archipelago is just a few million years old, however, which means that all their diversity has evolved in a geologically short period of time.

In recent years, scientists have identified other regions where evolution is running fast. To measure its speed, researchers have looked at the DNA of species living in each place. The longer it has been since two species diverged from a common ancestor, the more time each lineage has had to accumulate mutations. Young species have relatively few mutations.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/science/high-above-sea-level-evolutionary-hot-spots.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“Over the last half-century, American workers have achieved productivity gains that can easily support a $15-an-hour minimum wage. In fact, if the minimum wage had kept pace over time with the average growth in productivity, it would be about $17 an hour. The problem is that the benefits of that growth have flowed increasingly to profits, shareholders and executives, not workers. The result has been bigger returns to capital, higher executive pay — and widening income inequality.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/redefining-the-minimum-wage.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard