The video below is Kurt Vonnegut speaking to interviewer Charlie Rose about the letter grades he assigns to a few of his works.
In a literary self evaluation published in Palm Sunday, he assigns one of my faves, Cat’s Cradle a high mark as he’s only grading against himself.
The hovalin is a functional acoustic violin that can be produced using most standard consumer 3d printers. The total cost of raw materials for the violin is currently about $70. The hovalin was designed with Autodesk Fusion 360. Its shape and dimensions are inspired by the Stradivarius violin model. For that price, could we be seeing entire schools having their own 3D printed instruments, at a fraction of the original cost?
I’m available to play the 3D Drums, just in case anyone’s reading.
Linzey Rae is the real deal, and in this fun video, she shows how to make Shepard Pie to create a winning formula for the ears, and stomach.
The internet celebrating Back To The Future’s anniversary last year was likely the catalyst for this little girl practicing the theme song. She can give any orchestra a run for their money!
In a clip from the forthcoming American Idol season, Kanye West successfully auditions for the show. It helped that he rapped his hit “Gold Digger,” which name-drops judge Jennifer Lopez. The new season — the show’s last — begins on Wednesday night, and expect a lot of media this time around.
https://youtu.be/mulvnLin22g
A young man’s love of rock and roll told through secretly recorded conversations with his parents, and animates it 30 years later. Mike Cohen turns a weighty sense of history, and surely a frustrating time into one that’s incredible, after all these years.
The Brother Mike Tapes: 1985 from rodd perry on Vimeo.
Photo by Eva Murray
Mantinicus Island is a community off the coast of Maine, population 51. It sounds like the start of a Steven King novel, but it’s an actual town – they don’t have a high school or a doctor, or a mall, or lights or expedited delivery or drive-through eateries. But they do have a public library. It’s housed inside an 8 by 20 foot utility shed. Eva Murray, a resident of the island, writes about this awesome little library in the Penobscot Bay Pilot.
We have no dignified stone building and we will be doing without a pair of lion statues out front, an antique map room upstairs, or the classic stern and tweedy librarian shushing children from behind a marble desk. In the usual style of journalism about Matinicus, there is the list of what we don’t have: we don’t have the Dewey decimal system or library cards or late fees or any chance at a hushed and reverent silence. There will surely be no need for that. We hope to have our nascent library recognized by the Maine School and Library Network, and to eventually have our Internet through them. This was in fact the initial impetus for the whole library project. Last year Matinicus had no school-aged children on the island. In June of 2015, despite firm assertion on the part of our Superintendent of Schools that there would be enrolled students the following year (and indeed, there now are,) MSLN disconnected service to our school. Reconnection was, for some reason, an exceedingly drawn-out and laborious process. The connection provided by MSLN is much more than household subscriber Internet; it supports the school’s Tandberg videoconferencing unit, useful for meetings such as fisheries and energy-related informational workshops organized by the Island Institute, University of Maine courses for professional development and adult continuing education, special services or counseling that may be required by community members including students, and routine inter-connectivity among all of Maine’s one-room island schools. This level of service would not be affordable without MSLN.
-via Jessamyn West
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Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
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