Man’s Earliest Architecture Plans
Prehistoric rock carvings ‘were humanity’s earliest architectural plans’
Researchers say 14,000-year-old carvings by ‘Paleolithic Picasso’ depict a campsite built by early hunter-gatherers
by Cahal Milmo | Chief Reporter | @cahalmilmo
A reconstruction of the Moli del Salt campsite built by hunter-gatherers
On a Spanish river bank 14,000 years ago, someone carved seven semi-circular shapes on a rock. Whether the artist realised the significance of the work is unknown – but, according to archaeologists, the resulting doodle could well be humanity’s first architectural drawing.
Researchers have put forward evidence that the granite slab discovered on a prehistoric site near Barcelona carries a depiction of a campsite built by early hunter-gatherers as they roamed the Iberian peninsula in search of prey.
If the picture is of semi-circular huts, it is likely to have been the work of a Paleolithic rule-breaker who shook up the artistic orthodoxy of the day in much the same way as that other, much later Spanish iconoclast, Pablo Picasso.
Lexi & The Sig Alph’s
Frat Brothers Brighten Hospital Room For Brave Little Girl
Twelve-year-old Lexi Brown has cancer, and she recently spent some time at the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA in California. Her hospital room faced one of the massive frat houses on UCLA’s fraternity row. To pass the time and have a little fun, Lexi and her mom put a sign in the window asking for a pizza delivery, not thinking it would lead to something so incredible.
The members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house heard about the sign, so they walked across the street. Not only did they bring pizza, but they also brought a bouquet of roses, and a guitar. Here was a bunch of 20-something frat guys, taking time out of their day to play music for a sick little girl. Lexi’s mom, Lisa, was touched to tears.
The surprises didn’t end there. Lexi struck up a friendship with the SAE fraternity. The guys arranged for all sorts of exciting visits for Lexi, from the UCLA football team to women’s tennis players. But Lexi’s newfound popularity didn’t stop the frat brothers from continuing to show up at her hospital bed — to play cards, to bring her a stuffed animal, or to simply sit and talk.
But one night came the clincher. Lexi and her parents peeked out the hospital window and made a stunning discovery.
Wait until you see what the SAE brothers did to their fraternity house directly across the street…
Dorothy Must Die NYT #3 Woo-hoo!
Rodgers & Rodgers Hail Mary
To the Moon, Alexi!
Russia Is Planning To Build A Permanent Manned Base On The Moon
by Rob Waugh
Getty
Russia’s space agency is planning to build a manned moon base – launching modules into space on six separate rockets.
Russia plans to launch a lunar probe in 2024 which will scout possible locations – before landing a man on the moon in 2030.
Construction of the Luna 25 lander has already begun, the official state news agency Tass has reported.
Once the components are in place, assembly of the moon base will continue over ten years.
Moscow has previously said that it envisages the base being permanent.
Last year, deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin said: ‘We are coming to the moon forever.’
Trujillo On Jaco
Robert Trujillo on Punk-Jazz Bassist Jaco Pastorius
It was six years ago that Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo began the long journey that has finally come to fruition with the recent release of JACO, his acclaimed documentary on the life and times of the hugely influential electric bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius, who redefined his instrument in the 1970s with the premier fusion band Weather Report. Along the way Trujillo, who has been a member of Metallica since 2003, navigated countless roadblocks while investing his own money into this project which was clearly a labor of love for him. “Jaco was my hero growing up,” he explained. “Hearing him for the first time was like hearing Eddie Van Halen doing ‘Eruption’ for the first time: You thought, ‘What instrument is that?’ I loved jazz fusion and branched out from there. But Jaco had an edge that far exceeded his jazz persona. He was funk, he was rock, he was soul. And his whole attitude was punk.”
Fittingly, Pastorius titled one of his ‘70s opuses “Punk Jazz” (from Weather Report’s 1978 album, Mr. Gone). But it was more than just the mind-blowing sound of Jaco’s ground-breaking approach to the bass that appealed to a young Trujillo and his crew of self-described ‘skateboard rats’ who caught Weather Report in concert at the Santa Monica Civic Center in 1979. As he explains, “Here was Jaco on stage with his shirt off, long hair, a headband. So in many ways he was just like me and my wild surfing and skateboarding friends from Venice Beach. He was punk! And to see this guy performing live, sliding around with the baby powder sprinkled on stage, sliding into his bass on stage like he was sliding into home plate in a baseball game, leaping off his Acoustic 360 amp. I had just never seen that kind of energy and passion before, and that stuck with me.”
Bloody Gutsy Oscar
‘The Revenant’ and ‘The Hateful Eight’: How Much Blood and Guts Will Oscar Voters Endure?
by Stephen Galloway
Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox
Leonardo DiCaprio’s epic (featuring a brutal, gory assault by a bear) and Quentin Tarantino’s latest are set to test audience’s appetites for filmmaking as violent as it is visionary.
A frontiersman is impaled through the head by an arrow. A bear rips the flesh off Leonardo DiCaprio’s back. And then DiCaprio dives off a cliff on a horse, eviscerates the dead beast and scoops out the guts so that he can take shelter in its carcass.
Think these scenes from Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant (about a 19th century frontiersman who endures appalling conditions as he tracks down the fellow who has betrayed him) might be a bit much for the faint of heart? The Fox and Regency film isn’t alone in stretching voters’ appetite for gore. In Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a bullet blasts a man’s head to pieces, while a woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) gets slapped around so much that it isn’t quite clear if all her teeth remain.
These two major movies will attempt to out-do each other in the brutality stakes this awards season — and just how willing Oscar voters are to tolerate their extremes may go a long way toward determining whether they emerge as frontrunners in this year’s extraordinarily heated competition.
“Decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns”
Mysterious Ancient Board Game Discovered in 2,300-Year-Old Tomb in China
A group of archaeologists in China have unearthed pieces from a mysterious ancient board game that was last played around 1,500 years ago.
A 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them, and a broken tile from a board game were found in a 2,300-year-old tomb in Qingzhou City, according to Live Science.
Other recent archaeological discoveries include a cave full of game pieces that has been dubbed North America’s first casino, and an ancient tablet that has been compared to an iPad.
When reconstructed, the tile turned out to be “decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns,” a report published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics claimed. The die comprises the numbers 1 through 6, each appearing twice on 12 of the faces in a form of ancient Chinese writing known as “seal script.” Two of the faces were left blank.
Five extra-galactic unidentified radio signals…
Did scientists just pick up the first intelligent radio waves from a distant ALIEN planet?
By JON AUSTIN
CSIRO / The Parkes Observatory in Australia picked up the signals
The “fast radio bursts” included one “double signal” never heard before and have left astronomers buzzing with excitement over the possibility of it being a message with alien origins.
Only 11 of the unidentified transient radio pulses have been recorded before around the world.
And it is the curious new double blast – which was accompanied by four “singles” – which has baffled astronomers analysing data from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia.
Emily Petroff from Swinburne University, in Melbourne, one of the team who discovered the signals, believes the origin could be more remarkable than anything recorded before.
She tweeted: “We have no idea what’s going on, but we know it’s definitely something cool.”
All-female Fight Club in Berlin
Inside the all-FEMALE fight club: The secret Berlin group where women go topless to take part in no-holds-barred bouts that leave them bruised and bleeding
The women often fight topless, like male fighters would usually, with one combatant showing off bruises and marks from being raked by her opponents’ fingers
There are no rules in the all-female fight club, just grit and determination as women of all sizes and shapes pit themselves against each other in the ring.
Photographer Katarzyna Mazur has captured the East Berlin-based club in a series of no-holds barred portraits of the women, often battered and bruised, taking each other on in fighting gear or topless.
The private club has no official guidelines and does not have one particular fighting style and shows women – who are practising their sport unpaid, for the sheer challenge of combat – throwing off the preconceived notions about their gender to compete as equals.
The club was started in 2010 by female fighters Anna Konda and Red Devil, from Russia, as a place for women to come and fight.
Anna was very slim when she was younger, but is now much ‘bigger’ she told Vice UK but she said she could not keep her trim figure forever.
She said about her wrestling: ‘I don’t enjoy the pain of others. I enjoy my own power and having control.
‘I guess sometimes this can amount to the same thing for my prey.
Tripcoding Goes Mainstream
Silicon Valley professionals are taking LSD at work to increase productivity
An increasing number of twenty-somethings are reportedly ‘micro-dosing’ on psychedelic drugs – and they say it’s making them better workers
By Adam Boult
LSD has been described as ‘a healthy alternative to Adderall’ Photo: Alamy
It seems unlikely, but that’s apparently what some Silicon Valley professionals have been doing – and reporting great results.
According to Rolling Stone, a growing number of people are experimenting with “microdoses” of psychedelics to help them work.
A microdose of LSD is around 10-15 micrograms, approximately a tenth of a “normal” dose.
At that dosage, Rolling Stone describes the drug’s effects as “subperceptual”: ” ‘Enough, says Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, ‘to feel a little bit of energy lift, a little bit of insight, but not so much that you are tripping.’”
Anon Takes Point
Anonymous Hackers Fight ISIS but Reactions Are Mixed
By
Reuters
People from various hacking collectives have tried for several months to block social media accounts that spread propaganda and attempt to recruit fighters for the Islamic State, but those campaigns gained a new energy on Twitter after the Paris attacks.
Hashtags like #OpParis and #OpISIS have allowed the public to see the inner workings of those efforts, which seem to get results. The best-known group involved, the shadowy collective Anonymous, has claimed to have helped take down as many as 20,000 Twitter accounts since the attacks.
On Twitter and on the website Pastebin, Anonymous has issued a rallying cry.
The group also has an extensive how-to list for anyone interested in taking ISIS offline. Those tactics include posting the names of thousands of questionable accounts and deploying a tool that searches certain keywords on social media and uses a bot to report inappropriate behavior to Twitter.
Pussy Riot @ Banksy’s Dismaland
Paris aime toujours Hemingway
Sales of Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’ surge after Paris attacks
© Patrick Kovarik, AFP
In the wake of the November 13 Paris attacks, Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” has become a symbol of life in the French capital, climbing to the top of bestseller lists as it flies off the shelves of bookstores across France.
Published posthumously in 1964, “A Moveable Feast” is a memoir of Hemingway’s experiences living in Paris during the 1920s.
In the shocked aftermath of the November 13 attacks, which killed 130 people, copies of the book have been placed among the flowers and candles at makeshift memorials across the city.
The book’s sudden revival has been partly attributed to a woman known as “Grandma” Danielle, who evoked the tome during an interview with France’s BFM TV at a memorial outside of the Bataclan concert hall days after the attacks.
“It’s very important to bring flowers to our dead, it’s very important to read Hemingway’s book ‘A Moveable Feast’ over and over again,” said the woman who was only identified by her first name. “We are an ancient civilisation and we will uphold our values. We will fraternise with the 5 million Muslims who practise their religion freely and peacefully and we will fight against the 10,000 barbarians who kill, in the so-called name of Allah.”
Since then, “A Moveable Feast” (translated to “Paris est une fête”) has surged to the top of French retailer FNAC and Amazon France’s bestseller lists.
Final Chapter of Pepsi Challenge: World-record 121 cars dancing in UAE desert for ‘Black Knight Decoded’
121 cars dancing in UAE desert: ‘Black Knight Decoded’ for world record
Final chapter of Pepsi Challenge brings UAE into picture
In the newest chapter of the Pepsi Challenge, Pepsi has released Black Knight Decoded, an epic short film by Pepsi in collaboration with Levity Entertainment Group (LEG) and UrtheCast, the ultra High-Definition video system located aboard the International Space Station, incorporating the world’s largest synchronised car dance, shot in the UAE desert from space.
The short film, which fuses scenes shot from space from 11 countries around the world, includes footage of 121 cars dancing in the UAE’s desert before forming a peace sign, which measures over 80 meters in diameter. The activation, which broke the Guinness World Record for the largest synchronized car dance in the world, was overseen by the renowned UK-based graffiti artist, INSA.
Set to an original track, ‘Miracles’, from Usher, the action-packed adventure film has a star-studded cast and a host of creative talent including Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo, SAG Award winner Freida Pinto, Emmy Award winning director Jabbar Raisani, bestselling author James Frey.
Black Knight Decoded tells a powerful story about a father (Oyelowo), his daughter (Layla Crawford) and co-conspirator (Pinto) on their quest to decode radio signals transmitted from the Black Knight satellite where they rely on support from communities around the world to come together to communicate universal messages of hope, unity and peace.
Pepsi Empire
How Pepsi Got Its Very Own Empire Story Arc
An exclusive look at the brand’s latest product placement.
Photographer: Andrew Hetherington for Bloomberg Businessweek
The biggest guest star to appear on the second season of Fox’s hit hip-hop drama, Empire, isn’t an actor, a musician, or even a politician doing a cameo. It’s a cola.
Nov. 18 marked the beginning of a three-episode storyline for Pepsi, the brand and the beverage. In the first episode, Jamal Lyon, middle son of fictional entertainment mogul Lucious Lyon, is trying to shore up his status as a full-blown pop star and takes a meeting with Pepsi executives to discuss becoming the face of the brand; he generates a fresh new track (created in real life by producer Swizz Beatz) to impress the team; Pepsi loves it. In the second episode, Jamal films his Pepsi commercial, which is directed by Lee Daniels, the Oscar-nominee behind Precious, The Butler, and—oh, yeah—Empire.
The narrative culminates with the debut of Jamal’s Pepsi commercial on Dec. 2, right before Empire goes on a three-month hiatus. On the show, the spot will air at a press conference; when the ad is shown to the assembled characters, Fox will go to commercial—and show the same ad in reality. “You have a real brand anointing a fictional artist in a commercial directed by the creator of the series appearing as himself,” says Steven Melnick, a senior vice president for 20th Century Fox Television, the studio that makes Empire. “It’s very meta.”
Awesome.
David Oyelowo, Freida Pinto, Jabbar Raisani, James Frey, Usher: BLACK KNIGHT DECODED
Oyelowo, Pinto, Raisani, Frey And Usher Come Together For New Short Film
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/. Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo, SAG Award winner Freida Pinto, Emmy Award winning director Jabbar Raisani, bestselling author James Frey, Grammy Award winning entertainer Usher and a host of creative talent have come together to create Black Knight Decoded, an action-packed, first-of-its-kind short film produced by Levity Entertainment Group (LEG) and Pepsi. The film features footage shot from space utilizing UrtheCast‘s ultra High-Definition video system located aboard the International Space Station. Black Knight Decoded will be available November 17, 2015 on YouTube.com/Pepsi.
Black Knight Decoded imagines a rich fictional narrative around what some people believe is a very real entity, the Black Knight satellite. The film, which features an original track, “Miracles,” from Usher, tells a powerful story of a father (Oyelowo), his daughter (Layla Crawford) and co-conspirator (Pinto) on their quest to decode radio signals transmitted from the Black Knight satellite. As they struggle to respond before the government shuts down their mission, the group rely on support from communities around the world to come together to communicate universal messages of hope, unity and peace. Those communities across Australia, China, the Czech Republic, India, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, United Arab Emirates, the United States and Vietnam were filmed from cameras on the ground as well as UrtheCast’s cameras aboard the International Space Station.
“Black Knight Decoded is an ambitious project that marries an all-star cast, innovative use of the UrtheCast technology and unprecedented consumer participation,” said Kristin Patrick, senior vice president of Global Brand Development, PepsiCo Global Beverage Group. “The result is an inspiring, one-of-a-kind film that was truly co-created with top notch creative film talent and consumers from around the world.”
View Black Knight Decoded and learn more at YouTube.com/Pepsi and follow along on social media using #BlackKnightDecoded.
Otto Rocks
“Vive la musique, vive la liberté, vive la France, and vive EODM”
Eagles of Death Metal Share Statement Following Paris Terror Attacks
“Vive la musique, vive la liberté, vive la France, and vive EODM”
by James Grebey
Four days after armed terrorists opened fire in a crowded concert venue during their Paris concert, Eagles of Death Metal have shared a statement about the tragic events of last Friday night.
“While the band is now home safe, we are horrified and still trying to come to terms with what happened in France,” they wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “Our thoughts are first and foremost with our brother, Nick Alexander, our record company comrades Thomas Ayad, Marie Mosser, and Manu Perez, and all the friends and fan’s whose lives were taken in Paris, as well as their friends, families, and loved ones.”
This Dude Cooked and Ate the Genitals of the Man Who Raped His Deflowered Bride
Groom discovers bride isn’t a virgin, eats genitals of her rapist
By Associated Press
Murder suspects Rudi Efendi (left) and his wife, Nuriah Photo: Getty Images
LAMPUNG, Indonesia — Two Indonesian newlyweds have been arrested on accusations they plotted to kill a man the woman said had raped her a week before her marriage, and police said Tuesday the couple ate the victim’s genitals after the man was killed.
Sulistyaningsih, who uses one name, said police found the victim’s body in a burnt minivan Oct. 4.
The couple had married in September and the husband found on the wedding night that his wife was no longer a virgin. She then said she had been raped one week before the marriage.
Police said Effendi, 30, asked his 20-year-old wife to arrange a meeting with the man she accused of raping her. Effendi stabbed the man to death and cut off his genitals before setting ablaze the car.
Effendi said he fried the severed genitals and ate them to cure his heartache over the rape.
Floyd Mayweather Defends (read, “Has secret crush on…”) Ronda Rousey Against The Trolls
Floyd Mayweather Defends Ronda Rousey From Backlash After Surprising UFC Loss: “Everything Happens for a Reason”
Rex/REX USA; Getty Images
From one former champion to another, Floyd Mayweather has a few supportive words for Ronda Rousey
After suffering the first loss of her career during an Ultimate Fighting Championship match against Holly Holm on Nov. 15, the 28-year-old Olympic medalist faced immediate backlash from all angles and became the focus of Internet shame because of the shocking upset.
When rapper 50 Cent posted an unflattering photoshopped Instagram picture of Rousey knocked out in the arms of iconic boxing character Rocky Balboa, he generated speculation that Mayweather also wanted to poke fun at Rousey’s loss by claiming the athlete asked him to post it.
“LMAO FLOYD TOLD ME TO POST THIS, he want me to do the dirty work,” the rapper wrote of the photograph.
However, Mayweather, who also faced off in a similar “fight of the century” this year, put an end to the gossip when he spoke out publicly Monday.
“That’s not true at all. I haven’t really spoke to anyone about the Ronda Rousey situation, just to set the record straight,” he told Fight Hype. “I don’t have anything against MMA fighters. It’s just like boxing; you win some, you lose some. A true champion can take a loss and bounce back.”
Apocalypse Wagner
How I Tried to Transplant the Musical Heart of Apocalypse Now
Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch describes the surprising idiosyncrasies of film scoring.
BY WALTER MURCH
In 1979, sometime during the barely controlled chaos of the last months of finishing Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, someone in legal affairs had the presence of mind to ask if we had secured the rights to use the 1965 Georg Solti recording of the “Ride of the Valkyries,” the music which accompanied Colonel Kilgore’s attack on the Vietnamese village of Vin Drin Dop, otherwise known as Charlie’s Point.
The idea of blasting music from Wagner’s opera Die Walküre as a form of PsyWarOp (Psychological Warfare Operations) to terrify the Vietnamese had originated deep in the neuronal labyrinth of John Milius’s mind in 1969, when he was writing the original screenplay for Apocalypse Now.
“That Valkyrie scene came from a vision I had of the exhilaration of war—right alongside the terror and the horror and the fear of being snuffed out. The glory of it!” John told Lawrence Weschler in a 2005 Harper’s article. “Nowadays—unlike during the Victorian era when the glory was all that got discussed—nowadays it’s the horror that always gets talked about. And either one by itself, of course, is a ridiculous half-statement.”
The “Ride of the Valkyries” was so deeply associated with the attack on Charlie’s Point, and had been for so long—from birth, so to speak—that we who were working on the film, editing the picture and mixing the sound, could barely conceive of separating the two. How that particular Solti recording came to be chosen, I never found out—the decision predated my joining the film—but there is a general consensus in musical circles that Solti’s interpretation, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, has never been surpassed.
So it came as an existential shock when Decca, the record company in question, said firmly: No.
There was so little time left that we were constrained to move forward along three fronts, hoping that at least one would pay off: 1) to continue to petition Decca; 2) to make arrangements to record the “Valkyries” with the San Francisco Symphony, trying to duplicate Solti’s dynamics and meter; and 3) to comb through all the existing recordings with the hope of finding one that was close to Solti’s interpretation and available to use in the film.
The last of these approaches fell to me, since I was responsible for the sound design of the film as a whole, as well as being, at that time, the picture editor for this section of the film.
Seattle Wheel Attacked By Drone
Seattle’s Ferris wheel hit by drone
Getty Images
Seattle police are investigating after a drone collided with the city’s giant Ferris wheel on Wednesday afternoon.
There were no injuries in the incident in which the drone hit the wheel and then a table as it fell to the ground.
The incident has added weight to calls to introduce national registers for the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
The US has started up a register while the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has just announced similar plans for UAVs weighing over 1kg.
The area on Seattle’s Pier 57 is understood to be a no-fly zone.
Kid Wins $250k Explaining Einstein
This high school student just won $250,000 for his film explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity
By Emma Brown
Ohio high school senior Ryan Chester became the inaugural winner of a new college scholarship on Sunday night, winning $250,000 for his 7-minute film that uses simple props and hand-drawn graphics to explain Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
Besides winning that money for himself, Chester also won $100,000 for a new science lab at his school in the Cleveland suburbs, North Royalton High, and $50,000 for his physics teacher, Richard Nestoff.
“This is awesome,” Chester, 18, said in an interview Monday, the day after he accepted the award.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT Exhibited Properly – Thanks, QT
Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ Resurrects Nearly Obsolete Technology
By BEN KENIGSBERG
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kurt Russell in “The Hateful Eight,” scheduled to be released on 100 screens in 70-millimeter projection. PHOTO: Andrew Cooper/SMPSP/The Weinstein Company
LOS ANGELES — When Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is released in a special roadshow version (with overture, intermission and additional footage) on Dec. 25, it will represent a feat worthy of the heist in the director’s “Jackie Brown.”
The film is scheduled to open on 96 screens in the United States and four in Canada, all in 70-millimeter projection, a premium format associated with extravaganzas of the 1950s and 1960s.
Yet from a theatrical standpoint, the technology is nearly obsolete. Last year, “Interstellar” opened in 70 millimeter at only 11 comparable locations. There were only 16 in 2012 for “The Master,” which renewed interested in the format. No film has opened with 100 70-millimeter prints since 1992. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, 97 percent of the 40,000 screens in the United States now use digital projection.
Over a period of a year and a half, the Weinstein Company, which will distribute the film, arranged for old projectors to be procured, purchased and refurbished and new lenses to be made for theaters.
Shaq Debuts LITTLE SHAQ
Big Shaq
by Jonathan Blitzer
ILLUSTRATION BY TOM BACHTELL
There are fifty-two million items in the New York Public Library, if you count the artifacts, like pieces of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s skull and the walking stick that Virginia Woolf carried to the river’s edge. The other day, Thomas Lannon, a curator, was riffling through the collection, trying to find some objects that might interest Shaquille O’Neal, who was coming to the library that night as part of the N.Y.P.L.’s conversation series to talk about his new children’s book, “Little Shaq.”
Lannon was stumped. He’d considered original Superman comics, but they’re stored off-site. “Shaquille O’Neal isn’t really a scholar,” Lannon said, as he wheeled two boxes into a makeshift greenroom. “But he does have a doctorate”—in education, and also a master’s in business. One of his many nicknames is the Big Aristotle.
When Paul Holdengräber, the library’s resident interviewer, started the series, the staff created a tradition: before each event, the curators pull objects geared to the speaker’s interests. George Clinton was shown correspondence between Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg about psychedelics and jazz. Werner Herzog looked at a register of executions at San Quentin, and Patti Smith got to hold the Woolf walking stick.
Amazon Picks Up THE KICKS, Woo-hoo!!
Amazon Picks Up ‘Shaun the Sheep’ Special, Greenlights 3 Kids’ Series
Original shows ‘Dino Dana,’ ‘The Kicks’ and ‘Lost in Oz’ coming to Prime in 2016
Todd Spangler / NY Digital Editor
Amazon is tapping more tyke TV: The company has licensed a “Shaun the Sheep” special exclusively for the U.S. and ordered three kids’ series — “Dino Dana,” “The Kicks” and “Lost in Oz.”
Aardman Animations’ half-hour “Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer’s Llamas” will debut for Prime members in the U.S. on Nov. 13. The three other series will bow on Prime next year in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Austria.
In “The Kicks,” Devin Burke (played by newcomer Sixx Orange) was the star player on her soccer team back home until her family moved to California midway through the school year — and she has to rally her new team to victory. Based on the books by Alex Morgan, Olympic soccer gold medalist and current U.S. Women’s National Team soccer player. “The Kicks” is executive produced by Full Fathom Five’s novelist James Frey and Todd Cohen, as well as Andrew Orenstein (“Malcolm in the Middle”).
“We’re excited to offer our Prime members a beautifully reimagined world in our first original kids 6-to-11 animated series (‘Lost in Oz’) and bring to the screen Alex Morgan’s successful book series with an inspirational role model at the core,” said Tara Sorensen, head of kids programming at Amazon Studios. “Aardman and Sinking Ship are award-winning producers and we’re excited to debut ‘Dino Dana’ and ‘Shaun the Sheep’ on Prime Video.”
Terminator Time II – Phantom X
Equalizing Internet Via The Extensions
The Land That the Internet Era Forgot
by W. RALPH EUBANKS
Photo by TABITHA SOREN
FOR A GUY born and raised in Mexico, Roberto Gallardo has an exquisite knack for Southern manners. That’s one of the first things I notice about him when we meet up one recent morning at a deli in Starkville, Mississippi. Mostly it’s the way he punctuates his answers to my questions with a decorous “Yes sir” or “No sir”—a verbal tic I associate with my own Mississippi upbringing in the 1960s.
Gallardo is 36 years old, with a salt-and-pepper beard, oval glasses, and the faint remnant of a Latino accent. He came to Mississippi from Mexico a little more than a decade ago for a doctorate in public policy. Then he never left.
I’m here in Starkville, sitting in this booth, to learn about the work that has kept Gallardo in Mississippi all these years—work that seems increasingly vital to the future of my home state. I’m also here because Gallardo reminds me of my father.
Gallardo is affiliated with something called the Extension Service, an institution that dates back to the days when America was a nation of farmers. Its original purpose was to disseminate the latest agricultural know-how to all the homesteads scattered across the interior. Using land grant universities as bases of operations, each state’s extension service would deploy a network of experts and “county agents” to set up 4-H Clubs or instruct farmers in cultivation science or demonstrate how to can and freeze vegetables without poisoning yourself in your own kitchen.
State extension services still do all this, but Gallardo’s mission is a bit of an update. Rather than teach modern techniques of crop rotation, his job—as an extension professor at Mississippi State University—is to drive around the state in his silver 2013 Nissan Sentra and teach rural Mississippians the value of the Internet.