Roger Casement a British consul official to the Congo used the following terms to criticize his superiors in 1903.
I’m very curious about what exactly would make a noodle incompetent.
Source: Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (1999).
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Story provides insights on how the top albums are now calculated and those performers and industry leaders who aren’t happy about it.
Source: The End Of Album Privilege – BuzzFeed News
by The A.V. Club examines a song that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music and why The Rembrandts’ hated it.
Source: The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You” was a golden albatross · We’re No. 1 · The A.V. Club
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This is the story of the secretary of the Manhattan Project who was born in Kansas City and graduated from Smith College. She was living in Santa Fe when approached to become a secretary for ‘Project Y’.
Source: Dorothy McKibbin: The Manhattan Project’s Secret Weapon | Atlas Obscura
by I have never been a big fan of House Music but you can’t doubt its influence of popular music. Below is the track that seemingly started it all.
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You can see the final footage of the Amelia Earhart before she went missing during her attempt to fly around the world.
Source: Watch footage of Amelia Earhart from 1937 – Boing Boing
by Interesting story and documentary about what it was like working for Columbia House in the 1990s. One of the most interesting points is how the music industry helped create the digital ‘sharing’ of music through their marked-up CD sales.
Source: Four Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
by A Dartmouth faculty member has produced an APP that monitors student behavior – study time, partying, sleeping, exercise, etc. – to determine what a student’s GPA will be at the end of the semester. As far as I can tell, the APP has not been released to the public, but some of the take away points is that high performing students tend to limit conversations at the end of the semester and spend more time studying than partying.
Source: StudentLife Study
by Interesting story about how the idea of authenticity in modern country music makes it difficult for women to be successful in the genre. Compares current stars to some of country’s past artists.
Source: The Marginalization of Women in Mainstream Country Music | The New Republic
by In 1991 Hammer (neé MC Hammer) released a 15-minute video for his 5 minute and 36 second-long “2 Legit To Quit.” By all standards, it is beyond insane.
Source: 15 Minutes Of Shame: MC Hammer’s ‘2 Legit 2 Quit’
by Interesting story on how the educational accountability movement began in the progressive era and why teachers have not been able to resist or stand up to it. The author, however, suggests that higher education has been able to resist the accountability movement, but anyone involved in reaccreditation at a college or university knows that isn’t true anymore.
by Interesting analysis of the cost of U.S. wars accounting for inflation. I was a little surprised the war that came out on top, mostly because it wasn’t one of the longest in U.S. history.
Source: The Most Expensive Wars in U.S. History
by Spotify is going to begin hosting streaming videos and podcasts alongside music. I’m not sure I like this change in focus. Hopefully it doesn’t mess up how they provide music.
Source: Spotify Will Stream Videos And Podcasts – BuzzFeed News
by This is story in The Atlantic about the importance of the Indie Rock movement that began in the 1980s and how it influence a generation of geeky white kids.
Source: How Indie Rock Changed the World
by Interesting story from Inside Higher Education about a way of teaching research skills in the Humanities. The inquiry approach is something I could see using in Historiography, not sure about team-based research though.
Source: Trying Team-Based Inquiry to Teach Research Skills in the Humanities | GradHacker | InsideHigherEd
by Great Chronicle of Higher Education piece about how technology can not address inequalities in education, because it does not have the power to inspire the motivation that students require to succeed. Moreover, technology without a trained and dedicated instructor also fails to achieve highest of outcomes.
Source: Why Technology Will Never Fix Education – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education
by Very interesting story about the grade level of the lyrics in popular music. Country comes out looking pretty good and so does Nickelback (?!?!). It’s hard to argue with the data – although I would really like to.
Source: Lyric Intelligence In Popular Music: A Ten Year Analysis
by “Blues Legend B.B. King dies at 89,” is Variety’s tribute to the passing of B.B. King. It provides a much more historical view of King’s career than the piece in Rolling Stone.
by The Atlantic has an interesting article, “Could a Robot Write the Perfect Pop Song?” It includes a section that examines the Japanese pop artist avatar, Miku.
by B. B. King, one of the best R&B guitarists of all time passed away today. Here is the tribute the Rolling Stones posted on him: Derek Trucks on B. B. King: We’re All His Kids.
You can hear one of my favorite B.B. King songs below.
by “Takeoff: The Oral History of Nirvana’s Crossover Moment,” is an interesting group of quotes from underground bands of the 1990s about Nirvana and the Nevermind Album.
by “How Hip-Hop Conquered Streaming,” is a buzzfeed news article that speculates on why hip-hop music does so well on streaming services like Spotify.
by This interesting story, “How We Discovered Three Revolutions of American Pop,” marks 1964, 1983, and 1991 as the most important turning points in rock music.
by Here is another story about how streaming music is changing the basic economics of the music business. Kelsey McKinney’s “If you want to use music, you’ve got to pay for it: Music’s crisis, and how to fix it,” provides some new insight in the music and technology.
by Article, “How Much Is Music Really Worth?” that shows the economics behind music, especially the impact of technology on the artist revenue.
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