LATEST ADDITIONS

I really like this animated short. I don't know who produced it, but he or she tells a nice story in just over two minutes.

In an article titled, "This Boot Was Made for Jazzin'," found in our April 2007 issue, Thomas Conrad tells us that today's most important European jazz musicians are coming from Italy. It was in that article that I was introduced to the young wonders, saxophonist Francesco Cafiso (18), and pianists, Giovanni Guidi (22) and Alessandro Lanzoni (15). These young men live within a musical landscape nurtured by guys like Gianni Basso (75) and Renato Sellani (81), who, according to Conrad, are "sounding better than ever." I'm not quite sure why, but it thrills me to know that such language, art, and life are being shared between people separated by so many years. Perhaps I see it as some evidence that time is only time. And what does that mean to me? Again, I don't know.

Jerome Harris sends along this <I>Uncyclopedia</I> definition of "conductor."

Turns out that it's because it's too noisy during the daytime for mating calls to be heard. Modern life has us all staying up later. Except for those of a certain <A HREF="http://www.history-magazine.com/dinner2.html">class</A&gt;, of course.

<A HREF="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto">… Interpreter"</A> in <I>The New Yorker</I>, about Dan Everett's work on the Pirah, has generated a lot of discussion on the Interwebs. The MIT linguists, who subscribe to the Chomskyan <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar">universal grammar theory</A>, fired <A HREF="http://www.physorg.com/news96558379.html">back</A&gt;. Now, Vera da Silva Sinha and Chris Sinha, two anthropologists who have done fieldwork with another Amazonian community and who have visited the Pirah, chime in.

Read Matt Taibbi's obituary of Boris Yeltsin.

My admiration for Roger Ebert, which was already immense, just increased. Ebert, who has been battling cancer of the salivary gland, was advised not to attend his own film festival because paparazzi might take "unflattering" photographs of him. His response? "Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out."