Senses working overtime #131

1 Mmmm

Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash

2 It's Jacinda Time

Personally, I'm thrilled to have Jacinda Ardern as our new PM. Great choice Winston! She's a breath of fresh air and after nine years of no creditable opposition to the National establishment, we have a new leader. Let's do this!! Rock on!

3 Evil - call it!

Evil happens when good people do nothing. Tarantino should have spoken up against the Harvey Weinsteins!

4 Sonder
Seth Godin explains all.

5 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Now that you know about Sonder - read Walt Whitman's great poem - Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.

Overtime: Real life Up In The Air

It's been 43 exhausting weeks since Ben Schlappig slept in a bed that wasn't in a hotel, and he spends an average of six hours daily in the sky. He has a freewheeling itinerary, often planning his next destination upon hitting the airport. Just last week, he rocketed through Dallas, Dubai, Oman, Barcelona and Frankfurt. Yet for all his travel, it would be a mistake to call Schlappig a nomad. The moment that he whiffs the airless ambience of a pressurized cabin, he's home.

Read more about him here!

Senses working overtime #130

1 How to walk out of the Louvre with a masterpiece

Excellent piece from the New York Times.

2 Steven Spielberg

Thoughtful piece backgrounding a PBS film about SS. 

3 Zinger!!

Found this list by Mary Cella on:

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ME, THE FEMALE CHARACTER YOU’RE FALLING IN LOVE WITH IN A ROMANTIC FILM/TV SHOW WRITTEN BY A MAN

via James Whatley's Five Things - hits plenty of bullseyes!!

4 Hit the road Jack
Goodbye to these tired cliches!

5 To do

I'm not a fan of the daily 'to do' list - this is not that! As the song says, it's something else: Da Vinci's 'what I want to learn' list via Austin Kleon's newsletter.

Overtime: Build
This song just keeps on, erm, building. 

The Housemartin original popped up on my YouTube notifications and, of course, that lead me back again to Zuni's stunning (STUNNING) version. I love Zuni!

Senses working overtime #129

1 The First Trailer. The Last Jedi.

Read and watch all about it here.

2 Yeh, Tay Tay

What to do with a problem like Taylor? Am I the only 60 year old male alive who actually appreciates Taylor Swift? I'm not sure how old Ryan Adams is, but he can't be that old, so, I think I might be. 

Hilarious, is it not, that her image is so fascinating for people. Try this analysis for starters.

3 The politics of Plath

I read Ariel as an undergraduate back in the late seventies. Appreciating it was a complex experience; she was a complex woman.

 Nice that Plath is still generating thoughts, words and new dramas into 2017. This Medium article is absorbing and worth your time.

4 The Governator on Trump

Arnie is the man! Here he is at Oktoberfest and talking sense about Trump (and other things)

5 Courtroom sketch artists and why we need 'em

  

Extra Texture
Austin Kleon's blog is pretty darn cool.

Senses working overtime #128

1 Fare thee well

Great send off for Squadron Leader Nigel Rose, a war hero from WW2.

2 A swift half? Oh go on then!

In celebration of happiness and a visit to the local.

3 Eddie Vedder takes a knee!!!!!

I love Eddie's support of those NFL guys.

4 Nature, enter me

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” HD Thoreau

Great piece that, okay, preaches to the converted but that's okay from time to time.

5 The open office
Another excellent vid from Vox!



Overtime
Caught up with some bookmarks this week (first week of our term holiday)

• Having a favourite anything is, erm, bullshit, apparently.
• Give yourself something worthwhile to pursue.
• Here's why you are not your thoughts.

Senses working overtime #127

1 Calm...breathe, calm...breathe (part 2)

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

My favourite Unsplash photo from the week.

2 Batman villains

Entertaining look at the female villains in Batman (zap, kapow)

3 Tim and Colin

Excellent piece about two American christians who also happen to be big time NFL Quarterbacks - Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick. 

Oh Yeah! BTW. The NFL is back baby!!

4 Radio Zimmer Head




Steller Vox look at how Hans Zimmer and Radiohead worked on a song for Blue Planet II.

5 Heavens to Betsy

Brilliant satire from The Borowitz Report:

In a ringing endorsement from the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos said on Thursday that she did the math on Donald Trump’s tax plan and that she estimates it will save the United States roughly eleventy krillion dollars.

“I took out a pencil and paper and figured it out the old-fashioned way,” DeVos told reporters. “I wound up going through a lot of paper, because eleventy krillion has ten hundredteen zeroes.”

DeVos stressed that the eleventy-krillion figure was actually a conservative estimate. “The exact number was between eleventy and ninety-quelve, but I rounded down to eleventy,” she said.

The Education Secretary said that the national debt, which currently stands at more than twenty trillion dollars, would be greatly reduced by the eleventy-krillion-dollar windfall.

“If you subtract eleventy krillion from twenty trillion, you get a number so small it has no name,” she explained.

Overtime: Cassini

The last pictures from Saturn. Beyond the beyond.

Senses working overtime #126

1 Calm...breathe

I love this photo.

2 Jon Hamm

Fancy a nice catch up with Jon?

3 Jacinda

You have to leave home to see the country clearly. So The Guardian have today's NZ election spot on.

4 Stop chasing perfection

Loved this latest piece from Thomas Oppong.

5 Longitudinal studies
I'm a sucker for these things. Try this one on for size - it follows thousands of superbright kids for four and a half decades, and provides a how to guide on raising a high-achiever. 

Overtime: Crown shyness

I didn't know this was a thing. Read and see more here. It was the best thing on James Whatley's Five Things this week (great to have the king of weekly newsletters back btw).

Senses working overtime #125

1 Women who draw
Freakin' awesome site that Austin Kleon's newsletter clued me into. Here's one (Cait Brennan) I clicked randomly:

2 Look up!
As a mini project, 88 of the women who draw looked up and drew what they saw. The results are stunning!

3 Nine eleven
This is sobering




4 Han Solo

Harrison Ford appears to be the most boring man alive in interviews and so freakishly awesomely cool as Han Solo. Appears. 

5 What's his name?

Dear old Mr Starkey doesn't get into the mainstream news much any more. But he did just now, with his revolutionary view on Brexit (smiley face, two thumbs...oops, wrong bloke, er, peace signs up).

Overtime
For me, cover versions have to add something to both parties to be meaningful. Think Hendrix doing Dylan, Joe Cocker doing The Beatles, and The Beatles doing The Isley Brothers.

I've been catching up on MySky recorded stuff and Norah Jones doing Young on Later With Jools Holland blew my socks off.

Unfortunately, that particular version (with Jools on some nifty organ) is not available on YouTube (annoying) but here's the cover she's put out: