Posts tagged as Time
20 Years After 'Achtung Baby '
I recently attended a wedding, and it was, as weddings are wont to be, an almost transcendentally beautiful occasion. It was held on the grounds of a giant sandstone Federation house (who can honestly call something with guest quarters off-site a house?) sitting on miles of pristine green acreage. Fairy lights in the shape of love-hearts hung from the trees. The air smelled of freshly cut grass. Butlers stood with umbrellas armed for the possibility of rain to escort you the few feet to the bathrooms. The food was unlike any food I’d ever tasted. The country estate on which is was held, several hours outside of Sydney, was secured by its owners when they outbid Kylie Minogue. READ MORE
Nothing Weighs What It Used to Weigh!
Wait, did you see this horrifying thing on the kilogram, a measure of weight (yes, yes it is) that is actually tied to a real object? (Which affects the "pound," as the pound is now basically defined as 0.45359237 kilograms!) READ MORE
"Pretty Colors" Tumblr to Run out of Material in the Year 5012
There are only 16,777,216 colors that can be represented on the web (under our current system). The Tumblr that celebrates them, Pretty Colors, has posted 1077 of those colors since January. That means this Tumblr can only exist (if it continues posting at the same rate) for another 10,433 years before it runs out of colors. If my math is right. Which it may not be. But it'll have run out of "pretty" colors long before then, most likely. How many of the colors that can exist online can also be considered pretty, even with an open mind? I'd give that Tumblr about another 3000 years. I look forward to my avatar-archive enjoying its grand conclusion.
"'Space-Time Cloak' Could Conceal Events"! *Cries*
"New materials with the ability to manipulate the speed of light could enable the creation of a 'space-time cloak' capable of masking events or even creating an illusion of 'Star Trek'-style transportation, according to scientists in London." Scientists: "cloak"?
The Joan Didion Publication Timeline
It's helpful both for the youngs, who are impatient for their lives to start, and for the student of history, to examine things with regard to the pace at which they occurred. As a public service: the Joan Didion Timeline. N.B. Does not include some uncollected pieces such as The Case of Theresa Schiavo (2005).
'Time' Regrets To Inform You That We Will Kill These Women
"We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it." That's Time editor Rick Stengel on his new cover story.... which is coverlined "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan," and has a portrait of a woman brutalized by the Taliban. The story contains this: "As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined.... For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous." So... which is it? That sure sounds like an argument-and, you know, a very moving and affecting one!-for something like a permanent or at least extended occupation. Making things a little more complicated? The new issue also has an article by expert-without-portfolio Joe Klein, which goes: "Afghanistan is really a sideshow here. Pakistan is the primary U.S. national-security concern in the region." So now what am I supposed to think while I'm not going on summer vacation because it makes our children stupider?
Yearly TV-Watching Time Could Have Built Wikipedia 2000 Times
"Currently, Americans watch 200 billion hours of television every year, while the total amount of time the world's Wikipedians have devoted to building the largest, most comprehensive open-source encyclopedia ever known is about 100 million hours." READ MORE
'Time' v. the 'New Yorker, or 'A Brief History of 'Too Insidery'
"At Fortune, [former New Yorker managing editor Ralph] Ingersoll developed what came to be called the 'corporation story,' a profile of a company.' He had the idea of writing about The New Yorker.... published, anonymously, in August, 1934. It was 'The Making of a Magazine' told straight, which made The New Yorker look exactly the way Ross didn't want it to look. It also violated Ross's creed: 'I do not want any member of the staff to be conscious of the advertising or business problems of The New Yorker. If so, they will lose their spontaneity and verve and we will be just like all other magazines.' Ingersoll's story, which ran for seventeen pages, comprised, chiefly, sketches of the staff and their salaries (E. B. White: 'With Thurber, he is wheel horse to The New Yorker's wit. He makes $12,000 a year')..... None of this sat well. Ross was particularly pained by Ingersoll's portrayal of Katharine White. 'You had her ‘eloping' with White in the original draft,' he later wrote Luce. 'Nice for her children.' (What Ingersoll did print was: 'She is a lady who has her own way.') Ross wanted revenge.'It is not true that I get $40,000 a year,' he wrote, in a memo he posted in the office. 'The editor of Fortune Magazine makes thirty dollars a week and carfare,' White wrote in a one-sentence Gossip Note in the next week's Talk of the Town. Ross bided his time." READ MORE
Football: Crippling Concussions, Wacky Mascots
I'm as trouble as most folks by the overwhelming scientific evidence about the damage concussions do to football players and how I can continue to enjoy the sport in light of that fact. And this Time article (and its sidebar) does a good job of explaining the situation. But, REALLY, did no one look at the links appended to various paragraphs? Because they're kind of appalling.
