Wes Phillips

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.

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."

Read Matt Taibbi's obituary of Boris Yeltsin.

"The">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto">… Interpreter" in The New Yorker, 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 universal">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar">universal grammar theory, fired backhttp://www.physorg.com/news96558379.html">back;. 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.

Threat, or menace? The BBC examines the question.

Detailed photos of really deep dwelling aquatic organisms.

I was saddened to learn of Andrew Hill's death this weekend. Ever since I discovered his intensely original music, his recordings have been touchstones for me, including the brilliant Passing Ships, a record that was actually held back by Blue Note for 35 years as "unreleasable."