[...]In 1940 Kilgallen married Richard Kollmar. Over the next couple of years the couple had three children (Jill, Richard and Kerry). In April 1945 the couple began a daily morning radio show, Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick. The programme went out live: Monday to Saturday (8.15 to 8.55 a.m.) and Sunday (11.30 to 12.00). Over the years the programme was gradually commercialized. Companies paid to have their products mentioned over breakfast and theatre producers arranged to have their plays and musicals discussed over breakfast. Films and books were also promoted by the hosts.

By 1941 the column was appearing in 24 other newspapers. Kilgallen was now one of the most important gossip columnist in America. In 1950 it was estimated that she had twenty million readers. Kilgallen achieved this position by developing a very good strategy for gaining secret information about famous people. Kilgallen was swamped with requests by press agents to plug the activities of their clients. Kilgallen always refused these requests. Instead she offered a deal. “Bring me three detrimental stories concerning other stars and I will include a good piece about your client.” As these stars were usual rivals of their clients, they were only too willing to do so. [...]

IN FULL AT LINK]

Dorothy Kilgallen: Biography.

What It Takes to Operate the World’s Biggest Cruise Ship .

The publication of any book by J.G. Ballard at this moment–let alone so colossal and career-spanning a volume as The Complete Stories, running to nearly 1,200 pages–is an occurrence that can only be about more than itself. All writers are writers of their time, of course, but Ballard, who after a fight with cancer died in April 2009, feels somehow uniquely, precisely so. This book marks the fact that we are all post-Ballard now: it's not that we've gotten beyond him but rather that we remain ineluctably defined by him.

IN full at link]

In Disobedient Rooms: On J.G. Ballard.

[nice article about the life and career of this actor, director]

IN FULL HERE

Canadian army Cpl. Melissa Gagnon pulls security in the village of Rajan Qala in the Arghandab River Valley section of the Kandahar province of Afghanistan Jan. 10, 2009, during Operation Fazilat. The operation is a coalition forces effort to clear the area of improvised explosive devices and establish a presence in the community. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Christine Jones/Released) Date Posted: 1/15/2010

U.S. Army Capt. Charles Day, a surgeon with 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, assists Spc. Frank Romanowski and Spc. Timothy Currie as they lift a patient before placing him on a backboard during their Emergency Medical Technician recertification training at Forward Operating Base Airborne, Afghanistan, Aug. 8, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Rob Frazier/Released) Date Posted: 1/13/2010
via

IGA Gallery: scroll

In Publishing: The Revolutionary Future, Jason Epstein posits “The resistance today by publishers to the onrushing digital future does not arise from fear of disruptive literacy, but from the understandable fear of their own obsolescence and the complexity of the digital transformation that awaits them… The unprecedented ability of this technology to offer a vast new multilingual marketplace a practically limitless choice of titles will displace the Gutenberg system with or without the cooperation of its current executives”

<in full here

A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir

American Jewish writers fascinated by Marilyn Monroe included Norman Rosten, Alvah Bessie, and most notoriously Norman Mailer, who published Marilyn: A Novel Biography in 1973. A couple of years later, Mailer met Barbara Davis Norris, a woman half his age who had been raised as a Free Will Baptist in Arkansas and had previously dated another womanizer by the name of William Jefferson Clinton who was destined for national celebrity. In 1980, she married Mailer in his Brooklyn Heights home, taking on the name Norris Church Mailer and becoming his sixth wife. She describes their tumultuous lives .

A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer – Hardcover – Random House.

A candid (long) conversation with the high priest of popcult and metaphysician of media.

March 1969

The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan « NextNature.net.

norma jean (MM) and sister bernice miracle

Vintage Photographs.

Chilling Aerial Photos of 9/11 Attack Released – .

8 Unconventional Ways to be Buried .

Waterboarding for dummies .

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE CIVIL WAR: MEMORIAL.

various links for those interested

Black Soldiers in the Civil War – Academic Info.

“Truck Driving Honky Tonk” in American Roots

Via. ]]> http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/?feed=rss2&p=79101 0 http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/?p=79098 http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/?p=79098#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:01:52 +0000 postroad http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/?p=79098 with an assist from Anthony

ANTIQUE INDIAN BASKETS MUSEUM California Native American Basketry.

Big Generation Gaps in Work Attitudes Revealed .

I thought you died alone, a long, long time ago. | MetaFilter.

The Apocalypse Playlist… Songs to Die To .

Abandoned Mental Asylum Hellingly, RIP, 33 Creepy Photo Tribute .

Finnegans Wake, Chop Suey
On this day in 1923, James Joyce wrote to his patron, Harriet Weaver, that he had just begun “Work in Progress,” the book which would become Finnegans Wake sixteen years later: “Yesterday I wrote two pages — the first I have written since the final “Yes” of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. . . .” Though increasingly plagued by eye problems — ten operations, and counting — Joyce’s lifestyle had improved from the Ulysses years, thanks to Weaver’s continued support, and money given by Sylvia Beach against future royalties. He and his wife, Nora, were able to get new clothes, a new flat, even new teeth: “The dentist is to make me a new set for nothing,” wrote Joyce to Miss Weaver, “as with this one I can neither sing, laugh, shave nor (what is more important to my style of writing) yawn. . . .”

Nora was not fond of her husband’s style of writing, and not usually content with a yawn. When she discovered that he was “on another book again,” just a year after the misery of Ulysses, she asked her husband if, instead of “that chop suey you’re writing,” he might not try “sensible books that people can understand.” Although she did not tighten her purse, Weaver was also unimpressed by those sections of “Work in Progress” which Joyce sent her, and by his explanation that he was attempting to go beyond “wideawake language, cutanddry grammar, and goahead plot”:

I do not care much for the output from your Wholesale Safety Pun Factory nor for the darknesses and unintelligibilities of your deliberately-entangled language systems. It seems to me you are wasting your genius.

Ezra Pound agreed with her — “nothing short of a divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization” — but Samuel Beckett did not:

You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read…. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.

In the only recording he ever made, Joyce reads part of the Anna Livia Plurabelle section from Finnegans Wake (as well as an excerpt from Ulysses). The entire section was published in a limited edition book in 1928, the 800 copies signed by the author now a collector’s item; a brief excerpt:

Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughter-sons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!

http://www.todayinliterature.com

via continued.

Vale, Oregon. Photo by Russell Lee, Farm Security Administration.

via VIA

Dan Truett McWhorter
January 8, 1920 – March 10, 2010

Today I received the phone call that I have dreaded all my life, it is the call we all dread. I learned that my father had passed away. As I was growing up, my father never called me by my name. He always called me his “Little Buddy”. I can remember to this day how good that made me feel. From my very earliest childhood memory, to this very day, he always was my closest and best friend. Throughout my life, I always knew that there was nothing that could happen that he could not take care of. I was able to spend most of the last week by his side, and holding his hand. The first several days, he was speaking, and we were able to just sit and talk about old times. As the week went on, and his strength faded, we just held his hand and told him we were there. While I always knew this day would come, it is still such a hard thing to deal with. As I come to grips with this new reality, I would like to share a true story from my childhood. There is no doubt that many will be offended by it, yet it would give me comfort to tell it, and I hope that some would find comfort in reading it.

My Snake Story.

This is a true story of my childhood. It is a story of fear, faith, and hope. It is a story of overcoming your fears. I hope you find this story encouraging.

Whenever I face fear, stress, or crisis, I am taken back to the days of my childhood to a hot Saturday afternoon in West Texas. I grew up on a ranch outside a little town in West Texas in the 1960’s. Houses had porches and front yards, and in the evening people visited with each other, read, or perhaps took walks or worked in the garden.

Summers were special in West Texas. School was out, and you felt as if you would never have to go back, and things would never change. It felt like your entire life could be spent in that summer, full of exploration and freedom.

A special part of West Texas Summers were Barbeques. Typically, ranchers would butcher a calf, a lamb and a goat, and then slow cook them over oak coals. By late afternoon they would have a batch of meat like you have never tasted in your life.

Barbeques typically did not have an official start time, but usually got started about mid-afternoon. Some people would typically show up early, usually to help in the preparations, and some would show up later, perhaps because they had work to do. In any event, people would usually start showing up about 2:00 PM, and the crowd would slowly grow from there.

Of all the people that put on great barbeques, none could compare to those of Jim Cawley. He was renowned for his barbeques, and an invitation to one was an honor to be most treasured. I can remember one particular Summer that we were invited to one of Jim Cawley’s barbeques. He lived about 20 miles outside of town, so it was a little bit of a drive to get to his house over dry caliches roads. My dad had a little light green Volkswagen beetle, with no air conditioning. He would always make the trips in the country fun though, because when we got to the top of a hill, he would always turn the engine off, put the car in neutral, and then coast as far as he could. As the car would finally get to the point that it was about to stop, he would put it back in gear, pop the clutch, and get the motor going again. The object was to go as far as you could with the motor off, and never have to use the starter to get it going again. The Volkswagens had running boards outside right beneath the doors, and my dad would sometimes let me ride outside the car, standing on the running board, and holding onto the window post.

Anyway, after a typical fun drive, my Dad and I got out to the Cawleys at about 3:00 in the afternoon. The crowd was already starting to gather. Now at a Barbeque, the host provides the meat, and everyone else brings a side dish or beverages. We took our side dish into the house, and then joined the men who were outside standing in the shade of the oak trees. Women gathered in one area, and the men in another. Barbeques were definitely a family affair, and the yard would be full of children running every which way. At this time in our nation’s history children would run with sticks, would play with knives, would make improvised explosive devices out of black cat firecrackers, and could amuse themselves for hours on end with nothing but a gallon of gasoline and a few matches. Anyway, against this backdrop, my Dad and I made our way over to the group of Men. On this day, I decided to stand with the men, rather than run around the yard with the children.

Conversations at such affairs were always interesting. The number one topic was always rain. There was always a need for more rain. The ranchers depended on rain for the grass that would fatten the cattle that would then be sold. Without rain, there would be no grass, and the ranchers would have to “feed”, which would eliminate any hope of any meaningful profit, or income. So, there was always a need for more rain. In addition to Ranchers, there were also Farmers around, who were keenly interested in rain as well. Unlike Ranchers, who simply always wanted more rain, the Farmers wanted rain, but needed it at the right time and in the right amount. Rain after planting was a good thing, but if it rained too much right before a harvest, the mud would keep the tractors out of the fields, and all would be lost. So sometimes everyone wanted rain, and sometimes disputes would break out between those who wanted rain this week, and those who needed it to stay dry for a few more weeks. I guess the bottom line is that you never had everyone happy at the same time. Suffice it to say that on this particular hot July day, everyone was in agreement. We needed rain.

I will never forget this particular day, this particular barbeque, and specifically this particular moment. The discussion on rain, and the calmness of the afternoon, was broken by a woman’s hysterical shriek: . . . . “RATTLESNAKE”. A woman who was walking into the front yard with her children spotted an enormous six foot rattlesnake at her feet coiled at the gate post.

At this instant mass hysteria broke out. Terrified women ran through the yard, trying to find their children. Men turned about in confusion, trying to determine where the snake was. Children ran to the front yard, trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. To sum it up, it was mass pandemonium. Women were crying, men were confused, and children were moving in to try and get a better look.

In the midst of the chaos and terror, the front screen door of the Cawley house suddenly burst open, and out stepped Big Jim Cawley, and Big Jim was packing a double barrel 12 gauge, with an extra box of shells. The sudden appearance of Mr. Cawley, and his associated firepower, had a calming effect on the crowd. Immediately, the crowd was silenced, and they began to separate, clearing a path for Jim. It was understood he would be shooting the snake, so everyone scooted back to give him a clear line of fire and unencumbered view of the monster. Women were clutching their children to ensure no one ran into the line of fire. All was quiet. Jim came in view of the snake. He slowly drew a bead on the terrible creature, and right at the time you were expecting to hear the report of the shotgun, you heard instead a voice in the crowd say firmly, “Wait”. Then the voice said, “Wait, that is no way to kill a snake”.

The voice was the voice of my Dad. My Dad shocked the crowd by interrupting what was expected to be a simple and clean kill to suggest that there was a better way to kill the snake. While today killing a snake might be considered politically incorrect, at this time, there was simply no other consideration. Snakes were dangerous and if you found one you killed it, and you killed it in the quickest most efficient manner possible. Rattlesnakes were terrible creatures, feared by women and despised by men.

So, there was no small confusion when my Dad interrupted Jim’s kill. People were whispering and muttering, “what does he mean?”, “what better way could there be to kill a snake?”, “has he gone crazy?” Anyway, as people stood there in confusion and amazement, my father stepped out of the crowd and approached the serpent.

The crowd gasped as he made his approach. Carefully he walked closer to the snake than any sane man would ever even consider. The crowd was in complete amazement. Everyone held their breath. They did not know whether to think him brave or crazy. Why would he risk his life with such a foolish stunt? As he made his final approach to the snake, my Dad slowly crouched down, and then when he was about 1 foot from the snake he made one quick cat-like pounce, and snatched the snake up by the tail. He then swung the snake around and around in a circular motion by the tail. The theory being if you kept the snake swinging around fast enough, the head would not be able to come around and bite you. Once he had the snake going around in this fashion, he calmly walked over to a large rock, and slammed the snake down on it. He then dusted off his hands and said, to the amazement of the crowd, “that, my friends, is how you kill a snake.”

The people at the barbeque that day knew that they were in the presence of a great man. A man of courage, and a man of bravery. The rest of the evening was somewhat subdued. It was much quieter than a normal barbeque, and the evening ended much earlier than usual. I think it was because people were somewhat in awe of my Dad’s brave actions, and somewhat humbled by their own fear and panic in the face of the snake.

Over the course of time, my life has changed significantly from that hot West Texas afternoon. I left the ranch and saw the world. I became a successful researcher, executive, and entrepreneur. On this journey I faced many trials and challenges. Challenges, problems, and crisis that would terrify you, that would make you give up all hope, and that would rob you of your joy. Invariably when faced with such challenges, with such great fears, I would always go back to the day of that Barbeque, and remember that snake.

What I remember about that day more than anything else is the complete look of panic on the people’s faces. The terror in their eyes, and the fear in their voices. In my mind, the image is indelibly burned. It was the picture of utter and complete, undiluted fear. But in the crowd that day there were two people that were not afraid. There were two people who had no fear. The two people were me, and my Dad.

The reason that my Dad and I had no fear was that we had a secret. A secret that no one else knew. The secret was NOT that my dad had special snake expertise. The secret was NOT that my Dad was extra quick, or had ever done anything like that before. The secret that my Dad and I had was that we knew something no one else knew . . . we knew that the snake was already dead.

You see, in telling you the story of driving out to the Barbeque that day, I left out one critical fact, and that fact changes everything. Understanding that day, and understanding how I overcome fear requires you to know the fact. The fact is that about a quarter of a mile from the Cawley house we saw a huge six foot rattlesnake going across the road. My Dad ran over the snake right behind its head. It broke the snake’s neck, but did not break the skin. The snake was dead all right, but looked normal. My dad tossed the snake on the back bumper, and when we arrived at the barbeque, he discretely coiled the dead snake up by the gate post of the Cawley front yard.

Now one thing about a dead snake is that for several hours it will continue to twitch and move and rattle. The snake is dead, but reflexes and nerve endings remain active for several hours.
So, at the point the snake was “found” by the guests, it was big and ugly and twitching and moving and rattling and threatening, but it was harmless. The snake was already dead, the snake was harmless, it had been crushed . . . but the people were terrified.

So, my question for you is, what are you afraid of? What is it in your life that is robbing you of your joy. What is robbing you of peace? What is it that is keeping you from becoming the person God created you to be?

Maybe you are tormented by the cruel and hurtful actions of someone close to you. Maybe it is peer pressure, trouble at work, damaged relationships, or mistakes you have made. Perhaps you are facing a serious medical condition, or maybe facing the ultimate fear . . . maybe you are staring death right in the face.

There are many things that cause fear, depression and anxiety, but whatever the specific cause of our fear, understand that it all gets back to the snake. No, not the snake at the barbeque, but another snake, much craftier and much more sinister. The snake I am speaking of is that old serpent the Devil himself. The Bible says that the devil comes to Steal, Kill, and Destroy, and he is very busy in the world today. He comes to us to rob us of our joy, to rob us of our peace, and to keep us from being the people God created us to be. These problems leave us with a sense of hopelessness and no way out.

I hope you will learn the lesson of the snake. My Father faced down the snake, not because of his courage, his bravery, or his power. He faced the snake because he knew that no matter how terrible the snake looked, the snake was already dead. The same is true of that serpent the devil. You see the real battle occurred several thousand years ago, and the victory has already been won for you. God sent his one and only Son in the person of Jesus Christ into the world to save mankind from sin, and to save man from Satan’s sinister plans.

Satan, of course, wanted to foil Gods plan. Christ could not pay for the sins of mankind, if he sinned himself. So, Satan’s first plan of attack was to tempt, trick, and torment Jesus into sin. Jesus stood firm, and did not sin. With time growing short, Satan realized that his only option left was to kill the Son of God, and by killing him, having victory over Christ, and God’s plan for mankind.

Satan succeeded in his plan . . . he pulled the strings of the hearts of men to crucify Jesus. Jesus died, and was buried, and Satan thought he had won the victory. However, three days later, Christ rose from the dead. Christ overcame death, and overcame the grave. Christ won the ultimate victory over death, the grave, and Satan himself. Satan, and his plans, were defeated, once and for all, and for all times. Satan brought all he had, and it was not enough. Christ was victorious.

My prayer is that each of you has that same hope that I have today as I cope with the tragic news I have received. If you have never had a point in your life where you have put your trust in Christ, it is very simple, and can be done with a simple prayer like this:

“Dear God, I know that I am a sinner and can never earn my way to your acceptance. I accept your free gift of eternal life, and put my trust in Jesus Christ. I ask Jesus to come into my life and into my heart, and to be my Savior and Lord. Thank you God for this wonderful gift.”

By praying that prayer, and meaning it, God promises us the free gift of eternal life. It requires nothing else, just trusting in Christ and his sacrifice. Accept Christ’s promise of eternal life in heaven with him, and the promise of a life of peace and hope while here on the earth.

I will sorely miss my Father and my Best Friend. I find hope, courage, and peace in knowing that there will be a day that I will once again be able to sit with him, and never be separated again.

Today the storm came. The winds blew hard, yet the anchor held.

Revelation 21:1-7

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

Until that day I am comforted by a lifetime of memories of a loving earthly father.

via

It was a media war that the United States lost in Somalia, ironic since its involvement was forced by the pictures of famine-stricken people there. In one of the clearest and earliest examples of the CNN effect, the war was repeatedly dogged by the dozens of press photographers. It is an anticipating media, not snipers or enemy combatants, that greeted the U.S landing forces in Mogadishu in December 9th 1992.

For a war that began with memorable images, it is both fitting and ironic that it ended because of another set of dramatic images. The photos taken by Canadian photographer Paul Watson, of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu spelled the beginning of the end for U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force. Domestic opinion turned hostile as horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including this Pulitzer-prize winning footage of Somali warlord Mohammed Aideed’s supporters dragging the body of U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering. President Clinton immediately abandoned the pursuit of Aideed, the mission that cost Cleveland his life and gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit.

When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. The battle deaths, and the harrowing images prompted lingering U.S. reluctance to get involved in Africa’s crises, including the following year’s genocide in Rwanda. In 1996, Osama bin Laden cited the incident as proof that the U.S. was unable to stomach casualties: when “one American was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.” Never before or since had a photo altered a nation’s political destinies so much so.

[In the topmost photo, the soldier&apos;s genitals are exposed. When Time magazine decided to print it, they decided to cover them up in a controversial decision. Right after Watson took that photo, the crowd turned more violent, and they forced him to enter into a leaving car. He bolted from it and took the middle picture. The people in that photo looked a lot meaner and their eyes were focused on Watson, who defied the order to leave. It was this middle picture that AP ran (AP had tough policies against nudity). Supreme irony was that, as Watson noted, "decision was made to censor something sexually offensive, while the outrageous violence of desecrating a corpse is deemed safe for the general public&apos;s consumption."

Time magazine&apos;s Stephen Mayes replied: "[It] exposes the sensitivities of a nation that is militarily strong enough to confront one dead soldier but morally too insecure to risk the exposure of a single genital, even in such a non-sexual context?”]

via Iconic Photos.

via Powell’s Books – Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields.

FORA.tv – Videos on the People, Issues, and Ideas Changing the Planet.

film noir posters

The pictures listed in this leaflet portray Native Americans, their homes and activities. They have been selected from pictorial records deposited in the National Archives by 15 Government agencies, principally the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of American Ethnology, and the United States Army.

All of the pictures described in the list are either photographs or copies of artworks. Any item not identified as an artwork is a photograph. Whenever available, the name of the photographer or artist and the date of the item have been given. This information is followed by the identification number.

more here

gallery here

Here are twelve cuts from Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the week of March 6, 2010. The Hot 100 lists the most popular songs in the United States, across all genres, based on radio play, sales, and online streaming.

via “Hot 100: Week of 03/06/2010″ in Mainstream Pop .

Red Cloud – a life.

chief red cloud..battles and treaties

THE BONE WARS

When most people think of the Wild West, they picture Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, and caravans of settlers in covered wagons. But for paleontologists, the American west in the late 19th century conjures up one image above all: the enduring rivalry between two of this country&apos;s greatest fossil hunters, Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. The “Bone Wars” as their feud became known, stretched from the 1870&apos;s well into the 1890&apos;s, and resulted in hundreds of new dinosaur finds (not to mention reams of bribery, trickery, and outright theft, as we’ll get to later).

via The Bone Wars – The Lifelong Feud Between Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.

CHIEF RED CLOUD BEFRIENDS OTHNIEL C. MARSH

Rare Photograph of Red Cloud and Othniel C Marsh.

Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2009-10

via Chart: Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2009-10 – Faculty Data .

How cool is that? Not long ago, I would have had to actually remember that Elvis recorded the song as part of his monumental Sun Records sessions that year. Then I would have had to flip through a set of histories of blues and country that sit on the shelf behind me. It might have taken five minutes to do what I did in five seconds. I almost don’t need my own memory any more.

That strikes many of us as a good thing: the costs low, the benefits high. We can be much more efficient and comprehensive now that a teeming collection of documents sits just a few keystrokes away.

But as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues convincingly in his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (Princeton University Press, 2009), the costs of such powerful collective memory are often higher than we assume.

more

Our Digitally Undying Memories

AP News: 12 centuries-old shipwrecks found in Baltic Sea.

The 10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments .

A book that defends plagiarism, champions faked memoirs and declares fiction dead has the literary world up in arms

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RIP: The novel – Writers and Writing – Salon.com.

via discussed here

My short discussion of Dancing in the Dark recently appeared at the website of the National Book Critics Circle. This was written as part of my duties as a member of the NBCC board, but doing so was no burden; this is a book to inspire enthusiasm. So without further ado, here follows the transcript of an e-mail interview with its author. The winners of the NBCC awards will be announced during a ceremony at the New School University in New York City on Thursday night.

MORE

video here

5 Biggest Wars of the History

AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for married people (yes, you heard right), surveyed all of their new members last year. Of the 1.9 million folks who signed up to cheat, er, date in 2009, these were the top professions:

via go here for the study

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Anyone who lives in Europe, has ever been there, or even dreamed of visiting knows the incredible variety, striking characteristics and history driven culture that exists on this continent. We bring you collection of 44 best photos from all over the Europe. Enjoy. (Click photo to enlarge)

via Breathtaking Photos of Europe | Golberz.Com.

a review by Jacob A. Bennett

The first stanza in the first poem of Joan Houlihan&apos;s poem sequence, The Us, tells us, the readers, that we are listening to a voice from outside of time:

Us nest fine a weather long

between the heat of kin

the least of us in huts built round with stones.

A sky-hole takes the cook-smoke through

via continued

gallery here

Scott and Zelda

On this day in 1948, F. Scott Fitzgerald&apos;s wife, Zelda, and eight other patients were killed in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Zelda’s first breakdown in 1930 resulted in a sixteen-month stay in a Swiss clinic, and she spent six and a half of the next eight years in American institutions. Though discharged to her mother&apos;s care in the Spring of 1940 — Fitzgerald was in Hollywood, and just months away from a fatal heart attack — she would periodically readmit herself to Highland. It was during one of these stays that she and the others died, unable to flee the rooms into which they had been locked for the evening.

While the popular press had elevated them to the legendary glitter-couple, and then reduced them to a Jazz Age parable, the Fitzgeralds themselves spent their last decade struggling towards a clearer understanding of what had happened to the people they had once been. In one letter to Zelda after her first breakdown in 1930, Fitzgerald&apos;s attempts to find cause and blame arrive at this: "You were going crazy and calling it genius — I was going to ruin and calling it anything that came to hand." One letter from Zelda five years later — after countless pleas to her husband that he "Please, please let me out now," or that he "come to me and tell me how I was" — seems to finally accept defeat:

Dearest and always Dearest Scott:

I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell…. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that all of my life there should not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end…. It is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams…. I love you anyway — even if there isn&apos;t any me or any love or even any life.

Fitzgerald kept writing to her until the end, and writing whatever else he could manage in order to support her. Two last letters, both written on the same day a week before his death, are to the taxman and to daughter Scottie. The first asks for more time, the second says that "the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read." Zelda&apos;s autobiographical novel, "Save Me The Waltz," tries to get some perspective on what happened; over her last years she struggled with a novel about Jacob and Janno, another two who were beautiful and self-damned. In one fragment Janno talks of her husband&apos;s death, though "He had been gone all summer and all winter for about a hundred years":

She remembered the ragged edges of his cuffs, and the neatness of his worn possessions, and the pleasure he always had from his pile of sheer linen handkerchiefs. When she had been away, or sick or something, Jacob never forgot the flowers, or big expensive books full of compensatory ideas about life. He never forgot to make life seem useful and promising, or forgot the grace of good friendship, or the use of making an effort. . . .

Nobody has ever measured, even the poets, how much a heart can hold. . . . When one really can&apos;t stand anymore, the limits are transgressed, and one thing has become another; poetry registers itself on the hospital charts, and heart-break has to be taken care of. . . . But heartbreak perishes in public institutions.

http://www.todayinliterature.com

via F. Scott Fitzgerald – Scott & Zelda – Original Story.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

LIFE photo archive .

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Press Release:

In 1968 a young aspiring Broadway actor, Bob Barry, aka Bob Horowitz, and his wife went to the Museum of Modern Art to attend the exhibit of a much talked about and controversial photographer, Diane Arbus.

The power of Arbus’s; images so profoundly affected them that Bob wrote her a letter of appreciation that so impressed Arbus that she personally called Bob and thanked him for his kind thoughts.

It also generated an invitation to come and visit her in her studio in Greenwich Village. It was an offer Bob immediately took advantage of which, in turn, led to a friendship which produced "hours of wonderful conversations on a whole range of subjects." Arbus also visited Bob and his wife at their apartment on the Upper West Side where she took many photos of them and their friends.

During this period of their acquaintance Arbus was offered the opportunity to participate in a major ad campaign for the German lens maker Zeiss-Icon. "The Ad as I recall was In Popular Photography and other magazines as well. The ad went something along the line of " 5 Of the worlds Greatest Photographers" on the new Zeiss Icon Cameras."

Arbus was conflicted about her reputation as a serious artist representing the commercial/corporate side of the art world and told Bob that she would only do it if he agreed to model for the ad. Of course, Bob was more than happy to help out his friend, and off they went on their adventure where Arbus photographed Bob in various familiar and unknown locales in New York City.

Arbus submitted her roll of sixteen 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 slide film to the directors for their review, and shortly after she was informed about their selection, compensated and the fifteen rejected original slides were returned to her. The ad campaign had a huge launch in New York City, "I recall being told that there was a huge blowup of Diane&apos;s photo, maybe 15 0r 20 ft high, at the old coliseum on 59th St during the photography convention in late 69 or early 70." As a sign of her gratitude, she made a gift of the fifteen original slides to Bob.

In July of 2007 Flazh!Alley Art Studio had the distinction of being the first gallery in the world to present this iconic series of never before seen Arbus portraits to a new generation of art aficionados and patrons.

Flazh!Alley Art Studio is excited to announce the return of the historic, "Horowitz By Arbus: The Lost Diane Arbus Portraits," for a limited six-week run.

The only public receptions will be on San Pedro&apos;s 1st Thursdays Art Walk Nights, April 1 & May 6, 2010 from 7-11 PM ADULTS ONLY (18 and over) "Horowitz By Arbus" can also be seen by appointment. Please call, 310.833.3633 or flazhalley@aol.com

Flazh!Alley Art Studio is located at 1113 S. Pacific Ave., Suite B, San Pedro, CA. Park in the large city parking lot behind the Ramona Bakery at Pacific & 11th Street. Enter Flazh!Alley from the alley, of course.

www.flazhalleystudio.com

via Found: The Lost Diane Arbus Portraits (Dr. X’s Free Associations).

Today’s picture shows the Photography setup and field darkroom of Sam A. Cooley. Cooley followed the Union Army, and took pictures of the battles around Savannah, and of Sherman&apos;s March to the Sea. The field darkroom was used to create each negative prior to taking a picture, and then to develop it afterwards. It was a very tedious process to take a single picture.

via via

via

The great Mathew Brady studied photography under Samuel Morse, and opened his own photography studio in New York in 1844. Starting next year, he started taking photos of famous Americans, and produced The Gallery of Illustrious Americans in 1850. For Brady, neither his itinerant photoadventures nor the album was lucrative, but it brought increased attention to Brady’s work. The most famous images in the album was an elderly Andrew Jackson, the former president of the United States, whose photo he took at the president’s plantation, the Hermitage in 1845.

He would be the first U.S. president to have his picture taken. At the age of 78, just months before his death, the sickly president sat for Mathew Brady, whom he denounced for making him “look like a monkey.” Jackson was sickly throughout his term too, prompting concerns that he might die prematurely. Despite suffering from chronic headaches, abdominal pains, and a severe hacking cough, caused by a musket ball in his lung from a duel (his coughs would often brought up blood and sometimes even made his whole body shake), he served two full terms, and retired far more popular than he was when he entered. A formidable politician, ‘Old Hickory’ was by then an elder statesman–politicians sought his approval for their bills, an imprimatur that guaranteed widespread support. Cantankerously he supported two successful presidential campaigns, and worked tirelessly on the annexation of Texas, encouraging his friend Sam Houston to endorse annexation.

via Iconic Photos.

The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

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Neil Power: 1913

April 1913. Rome, Georgia. Neil Power, 10 years old. Said “turns stockings in Rome Hosiery Mil”; A shy, pathetic figure. “Hain’t been to school much” Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Shorpy

The Great War, Sir Mike, and Me | mikegerber.com.

…and he supplies this link to somne videos (BBc), a documentary (black and white) abuot WWI, for which
CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEOS

Photographer Jason Hawkes, a frequent contributor to the Big Picture blog, returns today, sharing with us some of his latest images of American cities seen from above at night – New York City and Las Vegas, both cities that undergo significant transformations after the sun goes down.

From Hawkes: The images of New York were shot on Nikons latest camera, the D3S, using three gyro stabilizing mounts and flown using twin star helicopters. (Eurocopter AS355). We flew from heights of just over 500 ft up to 2,500-ft with no doors on, it was very very cold. The images of Las Vegas were shot for a separate project, using a range of helicopters from a Robinson 44 to Eurocopter AS355". Be sure to see Hawkes&apos; earlier entries here (1, 2, 3), and check out his newly-released book "London at Night". A book of his New York at night photos is due for publication in the Autumn. Captions provided by the photographer. (20 photos total)

VERY RARE PHOTO OF ALBINO SEA HORSES

via NYC and Las Vegas from above, at night – The Big Picture – Boston.com.

Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, “Wooly Bully” .

The war on baby girls

Gendercide

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising

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The war on baby girls: Gendercide | .

music to look forward to

Spring Music Preview 2010 : Rolling Stone.

Scouts founder held talks with Nazis: UK secret files.

Powell’s Books – Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America by Richard Benjamin.

The King of Pot is shorter than you&apos;d imagine. When you meet a famous drug dealer, one expects scars and a distrustful sneer and some flashy clothes. But Bruce Perlowin, found waiting for an elevator at the Los Angeles Convention Center dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, is more Patch Adams than Tony Montana. Standing about 5 feet 6 inches tall, he has Robin Williams&apos; twinkling eyes as well as his manic energy.

What he lacks in stature, though, he more than makes up for in reputation among pot smokers and those who bust them. Perlowin is the biggest West Coast dope smuggler in U.S. history, a fact he offers like a verbal handshake to every new person he meets.

in fulol

Why should you be sitting there listening to me? To paraphrase Dan Gillmor, you know more than I do. Will Richardson should be up here instead of me. And to paraphrase Jay Rosen, you should be the people formerly known as the audience.

But right now, you’re the audience and I’m lecturing.

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