June 2011
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WatchMusical obsession of the day: Prepping for the July Utne Reader Digital Music Sampler with the beachy, uber-chill-Daft-Punkiness of Clive Tanaka y su Orquestra’s “Lonely for the Highscrapers.” If you haven’t checked out June’s sampler, today is the last day, so go download some free independent music.
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“He turns around and says, ‘Gee, I have nothing to do with the current deficit.’...”
– Former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson is none too happy with fellow Republican Tim Pawlenty’s fuzzy budgeting. (via motherjones)
Mother Jones has been diligently following — and fact checking — the Minnesota candidates. See also Doug Grow’s story from April: Former Gov. Arne Carlson blames Tim...
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A Peek Inside the Meat-Processing Plant →
Unless you are a very conscientious consumer or a vegetarian, you’re implicit in the industrialized slaughter of animals. Many of us are (myself included). It’s easy to forget that the Sunday morning bacon was once on the hoof, and easy to imagine that the animals are treated humanely until their deaths. Recent journalism, like Robert Kenner’s documentary Food, Inc., and the ongoing activism...
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"There probably isn't anything here anyway" says... →
British chemist and science writer Peter Atkins thinks there’s less to behold than we’ve thought. (via Boston Globe)
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WatchMusical obsession of the day: Minneapolis hip-hopper MaLLY as recorded by Utne’s hometown friends at Radio K.
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E-Readers: The Next Frontier of Spam →
“Kindle self-publishing, in other words, is metamorphosing into a new kind of lucrative spam. The pollution of a potentially interesting and valuable space in this way is depressing enough. But why is Amazon allowing it to go on? Could the fact that it takes a 30% slice of every transaction have anything to do with it?” (via The Guardian)
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The impending New Thirty Years' War: Humanity vs.... →
Let’s see: today, it’s a story about rising sea levels. Now, close your eyes, take a few seconds, and try to imagine what word or words could possibly go with such a story.
Time’s up, and if “faster,” “far faster,” “fastest,” or “unprecedented” didn’t come to mind, then the odds are that you’re not actually living on planet Earth in the year 2011. Yes, a new study came out in the...
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Tripping on Krokodil, the heroin substitute that... →
Necessary ingredients: lighter fluid, painkillers, industrial cleaning oil, and iodine. Equipment: syringes, vials, and cooking implements. Boil, distill, mix, boil, distill, mix. Next take the hypodermic needle and plunge up some of the amber-colored liquid. Inject it into a prominent vein, if you have any left. You’re now tripping on krokodil, a heroin substitute popular in Russia that is as...
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Philip Roth Doesn't Read Fiction Anymore →
Does it matter? (via Slate)
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Hammocks Can Re-Wire Your Brain →
It’s summertime, and hammock season is here. Time to lay back, sway under a shade tree, let the breeze kiss the soles of your bare feet, and drift off. Certainly a hammock can help you relax, but new research suggests it can also alter brain activity to improve sleep.
In a study published in the June 2011 issue of Current Biology, neuroscientists at the University of Geneva claim that gentle...
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“I could kiss you in the mouth.”
– Presented without context, Glenn Beck to Rick Santorum. (link)
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The Crockpot: A Weekly Link-Digest from Utne
Animators bring poetry to life at the Billy Collins Action Poetry project.
Bikes are the hot prop in retail displays.
Say what you want about Sarah Palin’s vocabulary, but your assumptions about her use of language are about to be refudiated: Mama Grizzly’s recently released e-mail correspondence proves she’s a remarkably lucid prose writer.
Summer is here, and so are daring girls on...
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Hands Off My Gender: The Trials of the Intersexed →
Where does the story begin? Perhaps in the delivery room, when the doctor hands the newborn baby, still slick with blood and mucus, to the ecstatic parents but isn’t able to say definitively, “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl.” Or it could start earlier, in the womb, when the cells are dividing like mad to create the many complicated and wondrous parts of a new human being. Perhaps the story...
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Lawmaker tries to call all 300,000 constituents →
producermatthew:
Congressman Tim Johnson, who represents the communities of and outside Decatur, Illinois, has made a point of calling each and every constituent he represents for the past eleven years.
While his colleagues break for the evening at 7:00 pm, Johnson takes to the phone and dials from a long list of voters. He doesn’t have an agenda — he just calls to say hello and keep in touch...
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Silence less golden in movies with talking and... →
via Denver Post:
“It seems like such a quaint notion: Folks would go to the movie theater, buy their tickets at the box office, then sit down, shut up and pay attention for two hours to what was on the screen.
“Now, the piercing glow of cell phones lights up the darkness like so many pesky fireflies, and people talk to each other in a packed auditorium as if they were sitting...
