Interesting roundtable with Nate Silver (of fivethirtyeight) about what paths there might be to a Sanders nomination.

[My current attempt to play in this playground hasn’t made me any less cynical about it. -egg]

Who knows what innovations will crawl from between the interlocked toes of the technology corporations, venture capitalists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and biologists now incubating in the nation’s creative class redoubts. Collaboration is the buzzword that sits tremulously like a fig leaf over the privatizing clusters in which America’s future is restarted.

A mix of big corporations and investor-backed startup enterprises gathers around the shared strategic value of innovation, operating in an environment rich with public resources. The triumphant arc is chronicled in the rapid development of some new product and said to be personified by a Zuckerberg or a Gates, a captain of coding brimming with cowboy grit, pressing onward into the computerized frontier and all. The hero is the one who creates something from nothing, thus resolving the eternal pundit riddles of American life like Can we keep our edge? and Are we still number one?

The Baffler

[Might be interesting… -egg]

Over time hippie-inspired Rainbow Gatherings in the forest have become magnets for a new counterculture: homeless teens and young adults. Alice Stein’s new film Dirty Kids explores the culture clash and commonality of the two free-spirited groups.

Many of these young people are running from bad home situations, warrants, or other parts of their lives they want to escape. Rainbow Gatherings appeal to both groups, because both young and old attendees reject consumerism, corporate capitalism and mainstream culture and values. Where they differ gets explored in depth in the film, largely from the younger point of view.

Video trailer and more info

The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 4.5 seconds, for $8.00 an hour, or NY state minimum wage (2014). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine’s mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box. The MWM can be reprogrammed as minimum wage changes, or for different wages in different locations.

Blake Fall-Conroy

Here’s a Stravinsky piece I had never heard until today, and I think it’s now my favorite of his, after a couple of listens. More info at The Guardian and Wikipedia.

“The setting of Psalm 150 in the finale is the most original movement in the symphony. It’s a contrast between two kinds of time, and two wildly differentiated sorts of music: the slow, circling sighs and breathtaking evocation of static, infinite timelessness that you hear at the start of the movement, and fast, violent shock of the music that comes next. There’s an animal ferocity in this faster music: Stravinsky’s vision of praising God takes in desperation and even savagery.”

YouTube video

http://wondermark.com/c1152/

This evening I’ve been trying to understand better the position & movement of things in the sky (which I find pretty much baffling and insanely complex), and ran across this really lovely time-lapse video of the night sky, shot from a pristine location in Chile:

The blog was a bit outdated technically (having not been updated for a year). I’ve updated versions, and commenting will now be turned on for new posts.

Rattt Kinggg promo photo, 1985. Via LiarTownUSA

“…while we know that reading to a young child is associated with good outcomes, there is only limited understanding of what the mechanism might be. Two new studies examine the unexpectedly complex interactions that happen when you put a small child on your lap and open a picture book.”

New York Times