Blogger's Digest

Need to clean out the to-be-blogged-about items I've got building up in feedly. Prefer the one-post-per-link-or-subject approach, but the backlog is too daunting. So, it's a digest post. Possibly the first of several?

• The Sherlock Holmes class I wish UConn offered when I was a student
• Rolling Stone's Top 100 TV shows list is not terrible. Deadwood too low. Doctor Who too low. 
• Dangerous Minds resurfaces Theory.org Trading Cards
• Maybe police chiefs could focus more on not killing people, less on their stupid religious biases
• Maybe sheriffs could worry more about other police murdering people than where trans kids go to the bathroom
• Super abusive but cute greeting cards. I can think of a Wake County sheriff deserving a card ...
• Round up of free, classic audiobooks
• Know your cognitive biases
• Know your deplorables
• One of this blog's chief laments, as expressed by Samantha Bee
• Giving Justin Trudeau the side eye -- we're on to you, Canada.
• As an atheist, I guess I should see Sausage Party then? Hmm.
• The Pixies!
• Been working on the swimming and running. Once I get a new bike, will start the last training leg before attempting a sprint triathlon. Speeding safely downhill seems like a good thing to bone up on.
• Know your Derrida.
• My go-to means of viewing movies by ... emm ... occult means appears to have been put down by The Man so I've fallen way behind seeing hard-to-find movies that I really want to see, like High Rise.

"Pitch" and the history I didn't know ...

Fox’s "Pitch" Is Not Pure Fiction | New Republic

I'm not going to say the fact that three women played in the Negro Leagues is the most interesting thing to come out of watching, then reading about, Fox's Pitch because the show was better than I thought it'd be. Not without problems, but better than the mess it might've been.

Will give this one a few more episodes to see where it goes. A primetime network drama about baseball is something I want to like, and it doesn't hurt that it's premise gives it a myriad of interesting directions to go in.

Related:
Toni Stone
"Peanut" Johnson
Connie Morgan

New ☆ Tweet from @EssentialTrek

There's a 50th Anniversary #StarTrek marathon on @BBCAmerica. Rock out with your Spock out! http://pic.twitter.com/GxrRdaxteu

— Essential Star Trek (@EssentialTrek) September 9, 2016

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@tomtomorrow Reminds Us On Star Trek's 50th That We're A Long Way From That Future

Happy 50th Star Trek http://pic.twitter.com/lKUUpzR0ks

— Tom Tomorrow (@tomtomorrow) September 8, 2016

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Reading lately ...

I've been slow to check out the Kindle First selections that are starting to back up in my "to read" queue, but it's largely because I've been grabbing some recent Hugo award winning authors I was asleep on. N.K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie have woke me up. The Puppies, and their attempts to game the Hugos in the name of patriarchy and white nationalism for the last few years, have overshadowed, to some degree, how good the winners have been.

On the non-fiction side, Haidt's The Righteous Mind was an intriguing read -- perhaps supplying the science behind what many have argued is the insufferable arrogance of the New Atheism. (Mind, it doesn't make a case for the existence of a deity, nor does it suggest government and religion should be intertwined; rather, it puts the case for religiosity being more than a manifestation of a parasitic, viral meme in terms rationalists will be open to.)

Long time Tryptic Cryptic / c-i-e favorite Kevin Murphy has co-authored a new book, The Past and Future City, which will be released in October. The review call it "an articulate call to action that should be of interest to scholars, community organizers, and policy makers in municipalities across the country." Neither scholar, organizer, nor policy maker myself, I plan to read it because the case for historic preservation is one that ought to made for, and by, the citizenry at large.