My pal Mark Evanier has a terrific piece about Ed Sullivan. With all the attention given on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, Mark thought it worth given some background and praise about the show and fellow, and how it got to such a place of prominence in American culture. You can find it by clicking here.
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Today is Dick Van Dyke is 88 years old. And my friend Mark Evanier -- who's gotten to know the good fellow in recent years -- has an affectionate tribute to him and memories about how attending a taping of The Dick Van Dyke Show changed his life. You can read it here.
Grantland is an online magazine named after famed sportswriter Grantland Rice. Its founding father is sports journalist and ESPN commentator Bill Simmons who has a sharp, smart, often-edgy or alternative look at things. Sometimes he even writes about movies -- and while his articles in that field are generally given a lot of intelligent thought, it's not really a field he knows and so I generally find his conclusions far off-base. Mark Harris -- a contributor to Grantland -- is another matter. Among other things, he's the author of a book on movies. And though I haven't read much by him, his latest article which Patrick Goldstein passed along to me is really smart and well done. The topic is Oscar pundits who jump in incredibly early to make all sorts of pronouncements. At the heart of the piece are the rave predictions coming out of the Toronto Film Festival proclaiming 12 Years a Slave THE Oscar-winning Best Picture. What I like about Mr. Harris's article is not that says the movie will or won't, but that he addresses evenhandedly the problems such Pronouncements make. For instance, he writes -- This might be a good time to mention a few things: (1) It's September, for God's sake. (2) I haven't seen 12 Years a Slave. (3) You haven't seen 12 Years a Slave. (4) Oscar observers are not the same as critics, the paying public, or Academy members, all of whose verdicts will be more important to the fate of the movie than the thoughts of anybody who's talking about it today, and as of this writing, most of the people who will matter the most cannot spell Chiwetel Ejiofor without Google. (5) This whole discussion has not really been about the content or quality of 12 Years a Slave at all (when it opens, we can have a real conversation). All of which is to say that one should take shouty pronunciamentos delivered in a sweaty swivet after an emotional screening with a big grain of salt. (I made one once, about Antwone Fisher. I'm still living it down.) It's a long road to the Oscars, and even if 12 Years a Slave ends up crossing the finish line first, no movie makes it from September to February without hitting some speed bumps — other movies, backlash, op-ed page harrumphing, hype fatigue. If you want to read the full article, which is quite good, just click here.
There is an article yesterday here by Amanda Terkel about how the sequestration has caused problems with cut backs on flu vaccines for those in the Air Force. But another article makes a far deeper, more problematic point about vaccinations.
On Think Progress, they have an article about how measles was thought to have been eradicated, but because of all the efforts made by faux-science fears against vaccinating, the disease is actually making a comeback. The highest number of measles cases in 17 years have been reported by the Center for Disease Control, who lay the blame on the push by some against vaccines. "Altogether, the CDC’s report found that 80 percent of this year’s measles cases occurred among people who had never received a vaccination for measles — and a full 79 percent of those people cited “philosophical differences” that led them to avoid the inoculation for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR)." The problem with making a "personal choice" in something as communicable as disease is that it doesn't necessarily remain personal for very long. "Health experts aren’t mincing words about the potential impact of a measles comeback, " the articles notes. “'This is very bad. This is horrible,' Dr. Buddy Creech, a a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, said on a telephone briefing with the CDC this week. 'The complications of measles are not to be toyed with, and they’re not altogether rare.'” You can read the whole article here. Given that this whole influx of postings today are due to the IFA tech trade show, I figured that a wonderfully funny column by Bruce Cameron about Life with Technology was a perfect fit. (Depending on what order you read this website, that last sentence might make zero sense -- but it will when you come to the "From the Management" posting below." Feel free to skip to that now. We'll hold your place until you get back...) A few years ago, my brother sent me a newspaper clipping from a column that he thought I'd like, as somebody who occasionally writes about tech and therefore he knew is often asked to give assistance. (To be clear, no tech whiz am I. I understand some things, but mainly I know enough to ask the right questions and can explain the answers reasonably well.) The column was hilarious. Some local guy who had a regular column in the local Wisconsin paper, describing the convoluted adventure of trying to explain how to use a DVR to his parents. I've sent the column to a lot of people over time, and thought it would be fun to post a link to it here. Unfortunately, I only have a PDF file of it, that I send around, so I searched online to try and track the column down. All I had to go on was the guy's name, Bruce Cameron, and the text. Well, I not only found it, but also discovered that Bruce Cameron is no local guy, but appears to have a syndicated column. And more than that, one of his columns he turned into a book -- Eight Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. Which became the TV series. He's subsequently written other books and sold some screenplays. Once I got past the embarrassment of, "Oh, okay, that's who Bruce Cameron is, and why he's so," I placated myself on having fine taste. Here's the opening of the article, and then I'll link to the rest. Tech Support for Mom
by Bruce Cameron When my mother calls and says, "Do you have just a second?" I know I'd better find a comfortable chair because this is going to take awhile. "Your dad and I want to watch a DVD, and I can't remember how to make it work," she says. "OK," I say. "Is the DVD player on?" "Should I turn it on?" "Yes, that would probably help." "OK. Do I use the DVD remote or the TV remote?" "The DVD remote." "Or, what's this? This is the cable remote." "The DVD remote." "Is this ... there's another one here, what's this one?" "Use the DVD remote." "OK. The DVD remote. What button do I push?" "The one that says power." "OK, I pushed it." "What happened?" "The lights went out on the DVD player." "Oh, OK, that means it was already on. Push the button again." "I don't remember turning it on." "Push the button again." * * * Trust me, there's more. A lot more. This is only the preamble. You can find the rest of the column here. Joe Satran has a remarkable article here on the Huffington Post about, of all things, a significant crisis in the orange-growing industry. To clear, I am not a Big Science Expert who by nature gloms onto such articles. I simply saw it, like orange juice and thought I’d like to see what this is about.
It's detailed, substantive, scientific, historic and yet (mostly) accessible. Wonderfully written, on a subject that is difficult to write about. The article concerns a devastating disease called huanglongbing or HLB or -- in human English -- "Citrus Greening" that has been crippling orange groves around the world, and has been making its way through Florida for the past five years (and has started to touch California. But the article isn't all about science. It's also about history -- of the orange industry and also scientific research. And most interestingly about one man, Maury Boyd, an orange grower whose life has been impacted. But rather than accept the non-curable disease (at the moment -- scientists are very hard at work on a cure), he delved into some of his own science-training from college and has developed a potential way of dealing with the problem. He's been very controversial -- to the point of being called "Typhoid Maury" by some -- questioning whether his proposals are having the impact they appear, or if they're simply delaying something worse. By the way, scientists do feel confident that they are making progress and will find a cure. The problem is that it's probably 15-20 years, which could be too devastating for the industry. Which is where Maury Boyd might come in. Make no mistake, the article is a tad long -- "tad" being along the lines of Homer's The Odyssey, crammed (albeit only in parts) with arcane science. I skimmed many parts, though I suspect that for people involved in the subject, the full science was important to include. For the general public, less so. But over all, most especially if you come with your skimming eye well-honed, this is quite a seriously impressive exploration. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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