People of Note Who Died in 2010

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Everett Bleiler (1920 – 2010)  Editor, Bibliographer, worked at Dover

Knox Burger (1922– 2010).  Literary agent. Published Kurt Vonnegut‘s first short story.  Clients included Donald Westlake, Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, John Steinbeck and Louis L’Amour.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) Historian. Peoples History of the United States (1980)

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010), Mathematician.  Made a study of fractals (and coined the term).

Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek (1925 – 2010)  Baseball athlete.  Her career inspired the movie, A League of their Own.

Joan Sutherland (1926-2010) Coloratura soprano.  Known as La Stupenda. Best known for her role of  Lucia.  She was a vital part of the 20th century bel canto revival.

Jaime Escalante (1930-2010) High school math teacher.  The movie Stand and Deliver (1987) is based on his inspirational work with students.  There is also an entertaining book, Escalante: The Best Teacher in America by Jay Mathews about his work.

Obituaries

Everett. F. Bleiler – Locus Magazine

Knox Burger – New York Times

Howard Zinn – The Guardian

Benoît Mandelbrot – New Scientist

Dottie Kamenshek - Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Joan Sutherland – New York Times

Jaime Escalante – Washington Post

Merry Christmas 2010!

Guy Books/Girl Books

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More sharing from my bookmarks:

Researchers polled men and women were polled on their favorite or “watershed” books.  They were apparently surprised that men read books written by men and women read books written by men and by women.  I thought this was sort of a truism.

Here is an article with the men’s list at the bottom.  The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and To Kill a Mockingbird are favorites of mine but the rest of them not so much.

This is the companion article on women’s reading.  Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre were important to me and are still favorites.

More articles about the study .

I wonder if they avoided selecting an homogenized group of subjects.  Did their subjects come from different age groups, different cultural groups, and varying levels of education?  That might make quite a difference in the titles people chose.

Also,  it seems odd to me that more popular and more modern works were not listed.  I wonder if somehow the researchers impressed upon their subjects that the results should be both literary and well known.  ‘Cause I know that all kinds of shoddy and obscure books affected me as a child and teen.

Someone needs to do another study.

Related Articles

• Nancy Butler on Jane Austen mash-ups (timeoutny.com)
• Jane Eyre: New video and link to trailer (wilderside.wordpress.com)
• Book Review: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (blogcritics.org)
• What’s Wrong With To Kill A Mockingbird? [Literature] (jezebel.com)
• When We Last Visited Windfell Hall (shereese.wordpress.com)

videos – smell like them

shared and deleted:

naked mail carrier

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Heard this story on the radio.  Seems a mail carrier in Wisconsin delivered the mail in the nude to cheer up a “stressed” woman.

Radio commenter said (in a tone of sudden comprehension), “That’s why they call it junk mail!”

 

Links: coloring pages

Coloring pages to print and color.  Very relaxing.

Find a bunch more here at Ivy’s coloring page search engine.

Fantasy

Mermaid

Dragon

Fairy PDF

Alien PDF

Landscapes

Surf’s Up

Castle

Landscape

Animals

Frog

Peacock

Design

Abstract -  PDF

Geometric PDF

More Geometric PDF

Holidays

Santa Claus PDF

Christmas Tree

Minority Report (2002)

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Quotation: Everybody Runs

Elizabeth I is quoted as saying that she did “‘not [like] to make windows into men’s souls and secret thoughts.”    In practice, that sentiment is not especially popular in governance.  In Minority Report, the authorities open window to everyone’s secret thoughts and the results are convoluted to say the least.

Philip K. Dick, the darling of sci-fi movie makers, provides a short story as the framework for Steven Spielberg.

Futuristic oracles, 3 genetically altered pre-cogs, predict when someone is about to commit murder.  The murderer’s name is inscribed on a ball which is a nice visual but makes no sense.  Then the cops of the future like John Anderton (Tom Cruise) work backwards and figure out who is the most likely suspect and arrest him or her before the crime is committed.

All is well in Anderton’s life until he is tagged as a potential murderer.  Thereupon, he has to elude the cops and figure out his own motive and stop himself before it’s too late.  The key to the puzzle is the minority report.

I’m surprised that this system is not shown to be unacknowledged but widely abused.  Wouldn’t politicians rid themselves of undesirables right and left?  Would there be any marriages or families intact?

It’s a Hitchcockian thriller in that an innocent man (for now) is being hounded by authorities and he must extricate himself.   As reviewers point out, there is a lot of film noir lighting in this film.  Anderton is cynical, drug addicted, and morose.  He is also the purest man in a very corrupt world.

It was entertaining and had an interesting premise.  I didn’t even mind Cruise, though usually I have little use for his acting.

links: legos

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Here are some links for Legos -

A Lego A Day – link (photographs)

10 Coolest Horror Reenactments – link (haven’t watched all of these)

Nomenclature for legos – link

White and Nerdy in Legos (funny)

ETA:  A reader suggested this truly amazing tribute to 8 Bit gaming.

Related Articles

• A Lego Antikythera Mechanism (neatorama.com)
• Blog – A Lego Reconstruction of the World’s Earliest Computer (technologyreview.com)

links: Lie to Me

When I starting watching Lie to Me, I looked up the Paul Ekman guy who researched the facial expressions.  It’s pretty interesting stuff.

The show was not satisfying enough to me to keep watching. The characterizations were inconsistent and the story lines had plot holes I refused to ignore.  It’s a pity because the camera adores Tim Roth.

Related Articles

• DVD Review: Lie To Me: Season Two (blogcritics.org)
• Fox Declines to Order More Lie to Me (omg.yahoo.com)
• Spot the fake smile (boingboing.net)  – fun
• Can You Read Facial Expressions? (tokidokikanpai.wordpress.com)  – fun
• Lie to Me Season 2 on DVD (media.gunaxin.com)

Links and Vids: Kevin Smith

Still going through my bookmarks and found random Kevin Smith links.

For the uninitiated, Kevin Smith has a foul vocabulary and a dirty mind but a mostly pure heart.

Here he is protesting his movie Dogma:

and again protesting Dogma: 

Here he is talking about Twilight:

Some news on Kevin Smith from the beginning of November.