"The Apartment" Postcard

Moses

It's been too long since I posted a picture of Moses. I took this photo last week, after Moses and I went on a walk around one of my favorite places in DC, the Franciscan Monastery and Gardens.

Ouch!

From a 1957 article summarizing a 1887 debate that was pivotal in establishing Franz Boas as a central figure in anthropology:

"The opinions [Boas] expresses may justifiably be characterized as anti-scientific ... We belabor this point for we have so often heard of the rigor Boas brought to ethnology from his sojourn in physics. We are unable to see wherein he exhibits this rigor."

Marginalia

In the margin of my 1957 printing of Peter Geach's Mental Acts someone has written "It has been suggested that 'rouge', 'rot, and 'red' are not co-extensive."

There was a time when you could say that kind of stuff and get away with it.

Classic Beats and Riddims

How awesome is it that the following songs have been so influential in hip hop and reggae?

In hip hop, The Shadow's 1960 recording of "Apache" (which was inspired by the 1954 Burt Lancaster movie of the same name), was covered by by a studio band put together in 1972 by Michael Viner (as the result of the unexpected success of his score for the B movie "The Thing with Two Heads"), which was then adopted as a semi-official B Boy anthem by hip hop DJs in the Bronx (such as Grandmaster Flash) in the late 1970's, before being sampled countless times since then, by everyone from Nas to The Roots.

In reggae, Bert Kaempfert & His Orchestra's equally mellow "An African Beat" has had a similarly wonderful influence on reggae, as more than one well-researched YouTube videos demonstrate.

Google Search

Here's what happens when you search for "Eskimos". I hope this means that people will get it if I make a joke about the number of Eskimo words for blue in the title of a talk I'm planning to give.

Michael Mann Mug

Last time I checked out Etsy, I came across some paintings based on Michael Mann's films. This time I came across this mug, based on Mann's "Thief".