Lester Bangs on how the sixties happened.

Fate of Nations / Notes From Underground - Where Were You When Elvis Died? (How Long Will We Care?) (and Robert Johnson, too): 

I will say this: Elvis Presley was the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America (and thereby to the nation itself, since putting "popular arts" and "America" in the same sentence seems almost redundant). It has been said that he was the first white to sing like a black person, which is untrue in terms of hard facts but totally true in terms of cultural impact. But what's more crucial is that when Elvis started wiggling his hips and Ed Sullivan refused to show it, the entire country went into a paroxysm of sexual frustration leading to abiding discontent which culminated in the explosion of psychedelic-militant folklore which was the sixties.

ᔥ kottke.org

At the intersection of punk rock and philosophy ... via @wfmu & @britney_spheres

Second Best Song About Heidegger You Will hear Today, byt Dutch Punkers "Panic:"youtube.com/watch?v=80Enup… ht @britney_spheres
— WFMU (@WFMU) April 2, 2013

 Is the first best the classic ...




... or, do I need to learn German, too?

It's a good day, @MarkDionne2

Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees - April 1, 2013 | MLB.com BOS Recap: 

Ellsbury via redsox.com

NEW YORK -- They were timely at the plate, aggressive on the bases and clutch on the mound. In other words, the Red Sox looked very much like a new team on Monday while notching a satisfying 8-2 Opening Day victory over the rival Yankees in the Bronx.

Guess who I'm predicting will win the 2013 World Series?

Hint: you shouldn't need a hint.

This is as depressing as it is unsurprising ...

What are they thinking?!

.@cspatter @ncgop Good grief. Because state-promoted religion has always worked so well? #NorthCarolinistan cc: @ffrf
— cdogzilla (@cdogzilla) April 2, 2013

I'm sure (hopeful, at least) calmer heads will prevail and the Christian Taliban wing of the NC GOP will be put back on their meds.

Still, it's chilling what these clowns would do if left unchecked.

Click image to read the bill.

Also, more car chases.

In 300 Years, Kim Stanley Robinson's Science Fiction May Not Be Fiction - Scott Beauchamp - The Atlantic: 

Snipped from Nature

You've mentioned that your most intentionally predictive writing was "Prometheus Unbound, At Last." What was that? 

[KSR] This was a short story I wrote on an invitation from the editors of Nature magazine, when they were doing a series that filled the last page of every issue for a year or two, called "Nature Futures" or something like that. There was a word limit of 800 words or so, which as a novelist I found fairly daunting, and I solved the problem of doing something interesting in that word-length by writing a "reader's report" on a fictional science fiction novel that told the story of the 21st century going well, by way of a particular kind of "scientific revolution." It can still be found online, and I would offer it as a brief bit of sport that is a kind of skeleton key to the futures in many of my stories, one way or another.