Why on earth would you write…?
…when the world will give you almost no reward for the enormous effort?
An attempt at an answer from the poet Dana Gioia (brother of the brilliant music critic Ted). This is the latest part in his new series of short videos. Worth checking out, if only for his incredibly soothing voice.
Dana Gioia’s new memoir, Studying with Miss Bishop, is also a moving record of his own journey in the world of words. Here’s the opening paragraph:
“Every reader has two lives—one public, the other secret. The public life is the one visible to teachers, friends, and families, though none of them ever sees it fully. It consists of homes and houses, schools and schoolmates, friends and enemies, lovers, colleagues, and competitors. This is the realm of experience universally known as real life. But every true reader has a secret life, which is equally intense, complex, and important. […] Some books guide us. Others lead us astray. A few rescue or redeem us. All of them confide something of the wonder, joy, terror, and mystery of being alive.“
…when the world will give you almost no reward for the enormous effort?
An attempt at an answer from the poet Dana Gioia (brother of the brilliant music critic Ted). This is the latest part in his new series of short videos. Worth checking out, if only for his incredibly soothing voice.
Dana Gioia’s new memoir, Studying with Miss Bishop, is also a moving record of his own journey in the world of words. Here’s the opening paragraph:
“Every reader has two lives—one public, the other secret. The public life is the one visible to teachers, friends, and families, though none of them ever sees it fully. It consists of homes and houses, schools and schoolmates, friends and enemies, lovers, colleagues, and competitors. This is the realm of experience universally known as real life. But every true reader has a secret life, which is equally intense, complex, and important. […] Some books guide us. Others lead us astray. A few rescue or redeem us. All of them confide something of the wonder, joy, terror, and mystery of being alive.“
Friday cocktail: The Liberal
Sip: on a Liberal
Weekend browsing:
Faster, please: a nasal vaccine for Alzheimer’s enters clinical trials
Listen: Taylor Swift, Begin Again (Taylor’s Version)
“But you start to talk about the movies
That your family watches every single Christmas
And I want to talk about that
And for the first time, what's past is past”
Have a great weekend.
Sip: on a Liberal
Weekend browsing:
Faster, please: a nasal vaccine for Alzheimer’s enters clinical trials
Listen: Taylor Swift, Begin Again (Taylor’s Version)
“But you start to talk about the movies
That your family watches every single Christmas
And I want to talk about that
And for the first time, what's past is past”
Have a great weekend.
How to turn barbed wire into gold
I went to a remarkable event last night. A lecture on the Soviet system of prisons, commonly known as the Gulag, by historian Giles Udy, followed by an interview with Ivanna, a 96-year-old survivor of the forced labour camps. A rare opportunity that may not come again.
Ivanna was held in the infamous Kolyma system of camps. An important aspect of the Gulag system was to provide slave labour to exploit the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union’s far north: resources like timber, uranium, and gold. At its height Kolyma’s dark alchemy produced some 33 tons of gold in a year. The same year, it shipped in 30 tons of barbed wire.
Ivanna spoke of the tortures she and her fellow-prisoners endured, the endless hunger and cold, and the small moments of kindness like light breaking through. A guard handing over an apple. A shared piece of bread. A loving correspondence with a male prisoner she never met (sexes were housed separately), that lasted 13 years.
Here’s a video (not from the event) of Ivanna, discussing her experiences.
I went to a remarkable event last night. A lecture on the Soviet system of prisons, commonly known as the Gulag, by historian Giles Udy, followed by an interview with Ivanna, a 96-year-old survivor of the forced labour camps. A rare opportunity that may not come again.
Ivanna was held in the infamous Kolyma system of camps. An important aspect of the Gulag system was to provide slave labour to exploit the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union’s far north: resources like timber, uranium, and gold. At its height Kolyma’s dark alchemy produced some 33 tons of gold in a year. The same year, it shipped in 30 tons of barbed wire.
Ivanna spoke of the tortures she and her fellow-prisoners endured, the endless hunger and cold, and the small moments of kindness like light breaking through. A guard handing over an apple. A shared piece of bread. A loving correspondence with a male prisoner she never met (sexes were housed separately), that lasted 13 years.
Here’s a video (not from the event) of Ivanna, discussing her experiences.
A jab to ‘dance’ spines back to life
This is great news. Researchers at Northwestern University successfully reversed paralysis in mice by injecting a self-assembling gel into their spines. The gel contained “dancing molecules” that repaired severed nerves and scar tissue while helping new myelin sheaths and blood vessels to grow. The mice could walk again in less than a month, with no side effects.
“Dancing molecules” sounds silly, but it’s kind of right. The gel contains monomer protein units that spontaneously form into long chains or “fibrils”. The researchers designed the monomers to include a mutant peptide that promoted “intense supramolecular motion within the fibrils“, and the jiggling of the fibrils somehow improves recovery.
“We are going straight to the FDA to start the process of getting this new therapy approved for use in human patients, who currently have very few treatment options,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who led the study.
The FDA doesn’t have a good record on promoting lifesaving innovation. Its slow response to Covid killed a lot of Americans and woke others up to the “invisible graveyard” filled with the victims of regulatory delay. Let’s hope they pay attention to this one.
This is great news. Researchers at Northwestern University successfully reversed paralysis in mice by injecting a self-assembling gel into their spines. The gel contained “dancing molecules” that repaired severed nerves and scar tissue while helping new myelin sheaths and blood vessels to grow. The mice could walk again in less than a month, with no side effects.
“Dancing molecules” sounds silly, but it’s kind of right. The gel contains monomer protein units that spontaneously form into long chains or “fibrils”. The researchers designed the monomers to include a mutant peptide that promoted “intense supramolecular motion within the fibrils“, and the jiggling of the fibrils somehow improves recovery.
“We are going straight to the FDA to start the process of getting this new therapy approved for use in human patients, who currently have very few treatment options,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who led the study.
The FDA doesn’t have a good record on promoting lifesaving innovation. Its slow response to Covid killed a lot of Americans and woke others up to the “invisible graveyard” filled with the victims of regulatory delay. Let’s hope they pay attention to this one.
Time for a new World’s Fair?
These guys are building one (and they’re hiring!)
While most have heard of the World's Fairs, few know how important they were in shaping our culture. Drawing more than 60 million guests in the 1960s alone, these 6-month long mega-events gave us a place to celebrate our achievements and experience the future up close and in person. They promoted a collective vision for a better world — reminding us how connected we were and how far we could go if only we went together.
The Fair's concept was invented by Great Britain in 1851, when "The Great Exhibition" of London unified Britons around the idea that technology was the key to unlocking a better future for their country. In 1889, Paris hosted the Fair, building the Eiffel Tower and showing 32 million guests the latest wonders of science and technology. Intent on one-upping Paris, Chicago hosted the Fair in 1893, drawing 27.5 million guests — nearly 40% of the U.S. population before there were cars, planes, or highways. Guests saw a city illuminated by electricity for the first time, marveled at the architecture that would inspire the City Beautiful movement, and rode the world's first Ferris Wheel.
In the decades that followed, World's Fairs continued to amaze guests from around the world. They debuted the steam engine, the telephone, the Model T and its assembly line, broadcast television, and touchscreens. They are responsible for symbols of progress that stand to this day, like the Eiffel Tower, San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, and Seattle's Space Needle. They spread the ideas of some of history's most influential people like Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Booker T. Washington, and Albert Einstein. They inspired millions of children, including Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, to marvel at our universe and the cosmos.
Unfortunately, this all started to change after the U.S. put a man on the moon. While this was certainly a "giant leap for mankind," we lacked an understanding of what our next step would be. Without a new North Star to guide us, we stopped moving forward and our vision for the future began to fade. This all came to a head when the U.S. hosted its last Fair in 1984. Tired and dated, it ended in bankruptcy — symbolically extinguishing our hope for a collective vision of the future.
These guys are building one (and they’re hiring!)
While most have heard of the World's Fairs, few know how important they were in shaping our culture. Drawing more than 60 million guests in the 1960s alone, these 6-month long mega-events gave us a place to celebrate our achievements and experience the future up close and in person. They promoted a collective vision for a better world — reminding us how connected we were and how far we could go if only we went together.
The Fair's concept was invented by Great Britain in 1851, when "The Great Exhibition" of London unified Britons around the idea that technology was the key to unlocking a better future for their country. In 1889, Paris hosted the Fair, building the Eiffel Tower and showing 32 million guests the latest wonders of science and technology. Intent on one-upping Paris, Chicago hosted the Fair in 1893, drawing 27.5 million guests — nearly 40% of the U.S. population before there were cars, planes, or highways. Guests saw a city illuminated by electricity for the first time, marveled at the architecture that would inspire the City Beautiful movement, and rode the world's first Ferris Wheel.
In the decades that followed, World's Fairs continued to amaze guests from around the world. They debuted the steam engine, the telephone, the Model T and its assembly line, broadcast television, and touchscreens. They are responsible for symbols of progress that stand to this day, like the Eiffel Tower, San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, and Seattle's Space Needle. They spread the ideas of some of history's most influential people like Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Booker T. Washington, and Albert Einstein. They inspired millions of children, including Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, to marvel at our universe and the cosmos.
Unfortunately, this all started to change after the U.S. put a man on the moon. While this was certainly a "giant leap for mankind," we lacked an understanding of what our next step would be. Without a new North Star to guide us, we stopped moving forward and our vision for the future began to fade. This all came to a head when the U.S. hosted its last Fair in 1984. Tired and dated, it ended in bankruptcy — symbolically extinguishing our hope for a collective vision of the future.
Why innovation matters
The always-thoughtful Adam Thierer launches a new monthly column in defence of innovation. Self-recommending.
Perhaps the most astonishing criticism of innovation today is that it has given us too much: too much leisure, affluence, materialism, entertainment. While critics regularly sneer at the supposed “cult of convenience” and lament the supposed “paradox of choice”—as in too much choice—we should appreciate that these are very good problems to have! Imagine traveling back in time and complaining to our ancestors—who’d be toiling in forests, fields or factories—that the future will offer us too much convenience or choice. They’d likely smack us for being so spoiled.
It’s published by the online magazine Discourse, which has lots of other writers worth reading.
The always-thoughtful Adam Thierer launches a new monthly column in defence of innovation. Self-recommending.
Perhaps the most astonishing criticism of innovation today is that it has given us too much: too much leisure, affluence, materialism, entertainment. While critics regularly sneer at the supposed “cult of convenience” and lament the supposed “paradox of choice”—as in too much choice—we should appreciate that these are very good problems to have! Imagine traveling back in time and complaining to our ancestors—who’d be toiling in forests, fields or factories—that the future will offer us too much convenience or choice. They’d likely smack us for being so spoiled.
It’s published by the online magazine Discourse, which has lots of other writers worth reading.
When news goes bad
Andrew Sullivan confronts the politicised mess that is the US media:
“We all get things wrong. What makes this more worrying is simply that all these false narratives just happen to favor the interests of the left and the Democratic party. And corrections, when they occur, take up a fraction of the space of the original falsehoods. These are not randos tweeting false rumors. They are the established press.
“And at some point, you wonder: what narrative are they pushing now that is also bullshit?…
“I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted through wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology.”
Read the whole thing. As someone who worked in newspapers for years, this is depressing to see. But perhaps it’s still too rosy a view. Are we becoming more aware of a problem that is particularly acute now, but is in fact also older, deeper and very longstanding? It’s not like the New York Times has a golden past. Just watch the movie Mr Jones.
Perhaps the answer is for intellectuals to be less credulous. C.S. Lewis certainly thought so back in 1945, when he wrote his novel That Hideous Strength, in which one character says the following:
‘Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.’
How to be less naive? Maybe Michael Crichton’s concept of Gell Mann Amnesia is something to bear in mind.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Andrew Sullivan confronts the politicised mess that is the US media:
“We all get things wrong. What makes this more worrying is simply that all these false narratives just happen to favor the interests of the left and the Democratic party. And corrections, when they occur, take up a fraction of the space of the original falsehoods. These are not randos tweeting false rumors. They are the established press.
“And at some point, you wonder: what narrative are they pushing now that is also bullshit?…
“I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted through wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology.”
Read the whole thing. As someone who worked in newspapers for years, this is depressing to see. But perhaps it’s still too rosy a view. Are we becoming more aware of a problem that is particularly acute now, but is in fact also older, deeper and very longstanding? It’s not like the New York Times has a golden past. Just watch the movie Mr Jones.
Perhaps the answer is for intellectuals to be less credulous. C.S. Lewis certainly thought so back in 1945, when he wrote his novel That Hideous Strength, in which one character says the following:
‘Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.’
How to be less naive? Maybe Michael Crichton’s concept of Gell Mann Amnesia is something to bear in mind.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Friday Cocktail: Remember The Maine
Sip: on a Remember The Maine
Weekend reading:
Listen: Elizabeth King, I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired
“I don't feel no ways tired
I come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me that the road would be easy
I don't believe He brought me this far
to leave me”
Sip: on a Remember The Maine
Weekend reading:
Listen: Elizabeth King, I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired
“I don't feel no ways tired
I come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me that the road would be easy
I don't believe He brought me this far
to leave me”
In Flanders Fields…
Donate to this year’s poppy appeal here
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
Donate to this year’s poppy appeal here
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
The next age of exploration has begun
History On The Net is producing Age of Discovery 2.0, a fantastic six-part podcast series about the new race into space. The latest episode – Space Colonization Will Reinvigorate Humanity More Than the New World Discovery 500 Years Ago – interviews astronautical engineer Robert Zurbrin.
Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars.
Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this—to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn’t enough for all.
History On The Net is producing Age of Discovery 2.0, a fantastic six-part podcast series about the new race into space. The latest episode – Space Colonization Will Reinvigorate Humanity More Than the New World Discovery 500 Years Ago – interviews astronautical engineer Robert Zurbrin.
Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars.
Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this—to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn’t enough for all.
A new university?
A raft of interesting people have decided to fight the corrosion of intellectual openness on American college campuses by starting a brand-new institution.
Our project began with a small gathering of those concerned about the state of higher education—Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, and I—and we have since been joined by many others, including the brave professors mentioned above, Kathleen Stock, Dorian Abbot and Peter Boghossian.
We count among our numbers university presidents: Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, and Gordon Gee, and leading academics, such as Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt, Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen.
We are also joined by journalists, artists, philanthropists, researchers, and public intellectuals, including Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.
We are a dedicated crew that grows by the day. Our backgrounds and experiences are diverse; our political views differ. What unites us is a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a recognition that we can no longer wait for the cavalry. And so we must be the cavalry.
A raft of interesting people have decided to fight the corrosion of intellectual openness on American college campuses by starting a brand-new institution.
Our project began with a small gathering of those concerned about the state of higher education—Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, and I—and we have since been joined by many others, including the brave professors mentioned above, Kathleen Stock, Dorian Abbot and Peter Boghossian.
We count among our numbers university presidents: Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, and Gordon Gee, and leading academics, such as Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt, Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen.
We are also joined by journalists, artists, philanthropists, researchers, and public intellectuals, including Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.
We are a dedicated crew that grows by the day. Our backgrounds and experiences are diverse; our political views differ. What unites us is a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a recognition that we can no longer wait for the cavalry. And so we must be the cavalry.
The first Viking-Americans
Proof that the Vikings had a settlement in the Americas by 1021 AD. When Europeans returned to the Grand Banks and Newfoundland some five centuries later, it was the fishermen who led the way.
Proof that the Vikings had a settlement in the Americas by 1021 AD. When Europeans returned to the Grand Banks and Newfoundland some five centuries later, it was the fishermen who led the way.
Friday cocktail: Alaska
Sip: on an Alaska. Strong, simple and perfect for a chilly autumn evening
Weekend reading:
China’s cultural and Covid crackdowns – and the consequences for capitalism
Listen: Eva Cassidy, How Can I Keep From Singing?
“My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
How can I keep from singing?”
Sip: on an Alaska. Strong, simple and perfect for a chilly autumn evening
Weekend reading:
China’s cultural and Covid crackdowns – and the consequences for capitalism
Listen: Eva Cassidy, How Can I Keep From Singing?
“My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
How can I keep from singing?”
New words, amirite?
America’s Merriam-Webster dictionary has just added 20 new words, from “air fryer” to “super-spreader”.
One of them is “oobleck”, a non-Newtonian fluid that flips between behaving like a liquid and a solid. It’s named after a Dr Seuss story, and you can make it easily from cornflour and water. Somehow my science teachers never showed me this. Pretty cool.
America’s Merriam-Webster dictionary has just added 20 new words, from “air fryer” to “super-spreader”.
One of them is “oobleck”, a non-Newtonian fluid that flips between behaving like a liquid and a solid. It’s named after a Dr Seuss story, and you can make it easily from cornflour and water. Somehow my science teachers never showed me this. Pretty cool.
The capitalist monster
My review of a new book by Martin Vander Weyer on capitalism for the Telegraph:
“Yet in focusing on the need for capitalists of better character, the author misses our economic system’s true power. Every society depends on virtue. The extraordinary thing about capitalism is how it can, most of the time, put even rogues to productive use. Alternatives such as socialism and communism dream instead of perfecting people, and have so far produced nothing but empty words, hungry mouths and mountains of dissident corpses. This side of utopia, capitalism is the best way we know to tame our own greedy monsters.”
My review of a new book by Martin Vander Weyer on capitalism for the Telegraph:
“Yet in focusing on the need for capitalists of better character, the author misses our economic system’s true power. Every society depends on virtue. The extraordinary thing about capitalism is how it can, most of the time, put even rogues to productive use. Alternatives such as socialism and communism dream instead of perfecting people, and have so far produced nothing but empty words, hungry mouths and mountains of dissident corpses. This side of utopia, capitalism is the best way we know to tame our own greedy monsters.”
The genius (and tragedy) of Eva Cassidy
Ted Gioia is the world’s best music critic. So when he writes about the brilliance of Eva Cassidy, who passed to glory 25 years ago, far too soon, you really should listen.
[H]er most unlikely success was achieved with a song that was more than sixty years old, and performed so often that few would expect it had any new secrets to share. But at Blues Alley that night, Cassidy decided to sing “Over the Rainbow” from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. […]
Like me, Cassidy had heard this song every year as a child, when The Wizard of Oz was broadcast as an annual ritual on network television. She had performed it previously at a high-profile Washington DC music award show and left the audience stunned. […] “When she started to sing, they just… stopped,” Schreibman continues. “[…] Ron Holloway said that he was on the way out the door but when he heard Eva he came back in.”
So at Blues Alley, with the recording equipment that her cashed-out pension had hired capturing this one night of music, she decided to sing it again, accompanying herself on guitar. And this performance, also preserved on film, did more than anything to catapult her to fame.
Read the whole thing, and listen to Eva’s glorious catalogue. How Can I Keep From Singing is one of my favourites.
Ted Gioia is the world’s best music critic. So when he writes about the brilliance of Eva Cassidy, who passed to glory 25 years ago, far too soon, you really should listen.
[H]er most unlikely success was achieved with a song that was more than sixty years old, and performed so often that few would expect it had any new secrets to share. But at Blues Alley that night, Cassidy decided to sing “Over the Rainbow” from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. […]
Like me, Cassidy had heard this song every year as a child, when The Wizard of Oz was broadcast as an annual ritual on network television. She had performed it previously at a high-profile Washington DC music award show and left the audience stunned. […] “When she started to sing, they just… stopped,” Schreibman continues. “[…] Ron Holloway said that he was on the way out the door but when he heard Eva he came back in.”
So at Blues Alley, with the recording equipment that her cashed-out pension had hired capturing this one night of music, she decided to sing it again, accompanying herself on guitar. And this performance, also preserved on film, did more than anything to catapult her to fame.
Read the whole thing, and listen to Eva’s glorious catalogue. How Can I Keep From Singing is one of my favourites.
Endless, clean energy is under our feet
But how can deep geothermal be tapped? This is a deep dive into how one of the hardest engineering problems in the world might be tackled by smart tinkering.
Reaching 300C in most of the world requires drilling some of the deepest wells ever drilled. An iterative approach to drilling means starting as simple as possible and making adjustments to develop drilling technology that drills the wells for as simple as possible at the lowest cost possible. More "Let's try a few simple things" than "Let's design a complex solution to this hypothetical problem."
But how can deep geothermal be tapped? This is a deep dive into how one of the hardest engineering problems in the world might be tackled by smart tinkering.
Reaching 300C in most of the world requires drilling some of the deepest wells ever drilled. An iterative approach to drilling means starting as simple as possible and making adjustments to develop drilling technology that drills the wells for as simple as possible at the lowest cost possible. More "Let's try a few simple things" than "Let's design a complex solution to this hypothetical problem."
Friday cocktail: Corpse Reviver
Sip: on a Corpse Reviver No. 2
Weekend watching and reading:
Listen: Kris Kristofferson sings To Beat The Devil
“I was born a lonely singer, and I'm bound to die the same,
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul…“
Sip: on a Corpse Reviver No. 2
Weekend watching and reading:
Listen: Kris Kristofferson sings To Beat The Devil
“I was born a lonely singer, and I'm bound to die the same,
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul…“
Why Jeff Bezos wants a space station
It’s going to be called Orbital Reef: a private space station for businesses and space tourists. And it’s the brainchild of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
It’s no secret that Bezos is a massive space geek, with his Blue Origin rocket company a major player in the new space race alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX. His current look even has more than a hint of Jean-Luc Picard about it. Still, people don’t always realise he’s long been more interested in building new space habitats than in rockets, as this Atlantic piece explains:
Over the years, Bezos has made himself inaccessible to journalists asking questions about Amazon. But he shares his faith in space colonization with a preacher’s zeal: “We have to go to space to save Earth.”
At the heart of this faith is a text Bezos read as a teen. In 1976, a Princeton physicist named Gerard K. O’Neill wrote a populist case for moving into space called The High Frontier, a book beloved by sci-fi geeks, NASA functionaries, and aging hippies. As a Princeton student, Bezos attended O’Neill seminars and ran the campus chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. Through Blue Origin, Bezos is developing detailed plans for realizing O’Neill’s vision.
The professor imagined colonies housed in miles-long cylindrical tubes floating between Earth and the moon. The tubes would sustain a simulacrum of life back on the mother planet, with soil, oxygenated air, free-flying birds, and “beaches lapped by waves.” When Bezos describes these colonies—and presents artists’ renderings of them—he sounds almost rapturous. “This is Maui on its best day, all year long. No rain, no storms, no earthquakes.” Since the colonies would allow the human population to grow without any earthly constraints, the species would flourish like never before: “We can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.”
Also see the 1978 video Libra, which imagines a libertarian utopia in space.
It’s going to be called Orbital Reef: a private space station for businesses and space tourists. And it’s the brainchild of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
It’s no secret that Bezos is a massive space geek, with his Blue Origin rocket company a major player in the new space race alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX. His current look even has more than a hint of Jean-Luc Picard about it. Still, people don’t always realise he’s long been more interested in building new space habitats than in rockets, as this Atlantic piece explains:
Over the years, Bezos has made himself inaccessible to journalists asking questions about Amazon. But he shares his faith in space colonization with a preacher’s zeal: “We have to go to space to save Earth.”
At the heart of this faith is a text Bezos read as a teen. In 1976, a Princeton physicist named Gerard K. O’Neill wrote a populist case for moving into space called The High Frontier, a book beloved by sci-fi geeks, NASA functionaries, and aging hippies. As a Princeton student, Bezos attended O’Neill seminars and ran the campus chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. Through Blue Origin, Bezos is developing detailed plans for realizing O’Neill’s vision.
The professor imagined colonies housed in miles-long cylindrical tubes floating between Earth and the moon. The tubes would sustain a simulacrum of life back on the mother planet, with soil, oxygenated air, free-flying birds, and “beaches lapped by waves.” When Bezos describes these colonies—and presents artists’ renderings of them—he sounds almost rapturous. “This is Maui on its best day, all year long. No rain, no storms, no earthquakes.” Since the colonies would allow the human population to grow without any earthly constraints, the species would flourish like never before: “We can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.”
Also see the 1978 video Libra, which imagines a libertarian utopia in space.
The Emigre: me on the wisdom of classic TV
A new online magazine from some talented friends, The Emigre, has now launched. Early articles include an unexpectedly intimate encounter on the streets of Buenos Aires. There’s also one by me on the classic Twilight Zone episode It’s A Good Life, in which the inhabitants can’t leave their small town – even though they desperately want to.
They tell us we’re living in a golden age of TV, but how many of today’s shows get you rooting for a child’s head to be smashed in with a poker? Back in 1961 “family entertainment” really meant something.
Read the whole thing, and keep smiling, unless you want to go to the cornfield.
A new online magazine from some talented friends, The Emigre, has now launched. Early articles include an unexpectedly intimate encounter on the streets of Buenos Aires. There’s also one by me on the classic Twilight Zone episode It’s A Good Life, in which the inhabitants can’t leave their small town – even though they desperately want to.
They tell us we’re living in a golden age of TV, but how many of today’s shows get you rooting for a child’s head to be smashed in with a poker? Back in 1961 “family entertainment” really meant something.
Read the whole thing, and keep smiling, unless you want to go to the cornfield.