19 6 / 2013
First homemade ice cream of the summer: honeyed almond butter and dark chocolate flecks with tart raspberry sauce.
19 6 / 2013
"This Paula Deen stuff is upsetting. It upsets me because she’s always seemed like a member of my family. And now it upsets me because she seems like a member of my family."
19 6 / 2013
X-Rays Reveal Censored Ending of Cherubini Opera
After more than 200 years in obscurity, the last unreadable pages of an opera by Italian composer Luigi Cherubini have been deciphered with the help of one of the most advanced X-ray machines on the planet.
19 6 / 2013
I’ll just leave this here.
This is a Kids in the Hall sketch, right?
This would have been so relevant for the entire Romney campaign and I missed the opportunity. I SHOULD HAVE REMEMBERED THIS SOONER.
19 6 / 2013
A different kind of post
Inspired by this blog, I have started some research for a field work project for a class on material culture. I am going to different retail stores and counting the Avengers toys, keeping track of how much each Avenger is represented in toys. I gave myself a couple of ground rules:
- I only counted toys. No school supplies, clothes, or anything else that might be official Avengers merchandise.
- I only counted toys that had the Avengers logo on them. I didn’t count anything licensed under Iron Man II, non-Avengers related Superhero Squad, or any other Marvel based property.
I’ve visited two Targets, a Wal-Mart, a Toys R Us, and a Disney Store so far. While I am not done visiting stores just yet, here is a visual representation of what I have found so far:
The top graph represents how much screen time each Avenger received in the movie. I found this here. Black Widow is featured the third most of all the Avengers at 33:35. The Avenger just below her, Hulk, didn’t touch 30 minutes.
The bottom graph represents how many toys I found that featured each Avenger. The Avenger with the most toy representation is Iron man at 413 toys. Black Widow is the least represented at 24 toys. It’s not pictured, but Black Widow just beat characters who were not featured in the movie, such as Super Skrull, which equaled 21 toys.
A couple of interesting notes:
- I kept track of “action figure/doll” toys vs “prop” toys such as Hulk Hands. There were no instances of Black Widow “prop” toys.
- Any time Black Widow is present, she is packaged with other characters. A vast majority of her toys were the LEGO Quinjet, which at around $70 is not the most accessible toy for low income families. She was also present in a “Special Value pack” that included 4 inch figures for every Avenger, Loki, and Nick Fury. These are the only two toys that featured Black Widow.
Starting this fieldwork I expected a deficit of Black Widow. But I didn’t expect something this drastic.
Look at this interesting blog I found several months late!
This is even more distressing if you take into account licensed products, like notebooks, mugs, posters, t-shirts and other things. Black Widow is almost never on them, and it’s bullshit.
19 6 / 2013
HI SORRY I already shared this album earlier but THIS TRACK. It’s one of the most electric vocal performances I have heard in a long time.
It starts off slow, strolling through and touching on various harmonies and rhythms before this underlying quick tempo emerges from underneath, like it’s throwing off a blanket and hopping out of bed. It charges ahead like that for two minutes, in a satisfying, heartpounding half-improvisational bebop, before finally coming up for air.
It stays loose then, until the last minute of the song, which is…pyrotechnic. So, so cool.
(Source: Spotify)
19 6 / 2013
David Berreby — The obesity era
As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us
This is such an interesting read: explores some interesting territory, connects disparate ideas, and challenges the widespread notion that obesity results from a lack of personal responsibility.
