On the Random Discovery of Life-Changing Books

Bruce Bauman on the books that have been his greatest teachers, from unlikely and wildly different sources.
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The private lives of 'Star Wars' Stormtroopers

In "Star Wars," we've seen stormtroopers in military roles. Now, "The Other Side," a new photo series, places them in mundane scenes of everyday modern life.
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The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine

The question was not “Should you eat human flesh?” says one historian, but, “What sort of flesh should you eat?” By Maria Dolan. (2012)
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ESPN shuts down Grantland, effective immediately

Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland. After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise. Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun. We are grateful to those who made it so. Bill Simmons was passionately committed to the site and proved to be...
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From Halloween to Home Alone: how John Hughes made the slasher movie safe for kids

What do Michael Myers and Kevin McCallister have in common? We make a case for Home Alone as a slasher movie.
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Man binge watching ‘The Walking Dead’ kills friend he thought was a zombie

A New Mexico man was arrested last Thursday after allegedly beating his friend to death with a microwave and a guitar, all because he thought the friend had begun to “change into a zombie.” Damon Perry, 23, told police that he had been binge-watching The Walking Dead on Netflix before the incident, according to KOB 4 Albuquerque.
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What "Narcos" Gets Wrong About the War on Drugs

The Netflix show distorts history and misrepresents the conflict
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The Pride of Strathmoor (2014)

Extracts from the journal of Pastor John Deitman, Strathmoor, Georgia. June & July, 1927.
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Three Horror Classics Rise from the Grave for Halloween

If you like ghosts, ghouls and witches, you won't find them in "The Case Against Satan," "Perchance to Dream," and "Songs of a Dead Dreamer" — their horrors are more familiar and far more frightening. Reviewed by Jason Heller.
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Paris Was Wild, Once

Luc Sante’s new book looks longingly back at a more sinful time.
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Deso Dogg, Ex-Rapper Who Joined ISIS, Is Killed by U.S. Airstrike

The German-born former rapper Deso Dogg, who abandoned his music career in 2010 and became a recruiter in Syria for the Islamic State, was killed in an airstrike this month, the Pentagon confirmed Friday. The musician, born Denis Cuspert, toured with the American performer DMX in 2006 but later abandoned rap music and became a well-known singer of nasheeds, or Islamic devotional music, in German.
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Royals-Mets, 2015 World Series Game 4: How to watch, Matchups, Preview

With Citi Field as the venue again, the Mets try to get even by putting rookie left-hander Steven Matz on the mound against right-hander Chris Young of the Royals.
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When It Comes To Counterterrorism, Why Bush And Obama Aren't So Far Apart

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with New York Times reporter Charlie Savage about his new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency.
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Mets make it a Series with Game 3 Win Over Kansas City Royals

The New York Mets climbed back into the World Series with a crucial 9-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals at a jubilant Citi Field on Friday.
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The City That Has Its Own Operating System

The Internet of Things is advancing on a metropolitan scale, with citywide sensors able to track everything from pollution to crime. In the UK, the Bristol Is Open project is a pioneering effort to connect all these streams of data into one “programmable city.”
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Getting to the Bridge

Washington Irving's “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in three paintings. By Colin Fleming.
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The Fin-de-Siècle Paris Theater Whose Performances Were Literally Torturous

A knife in the eye. A splash of acid in the face. Murder. Comedy. Ah, the theater! By Eric Grundhauser.
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Sci-Fi’s Hugo Awards and the Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul

A battle over diversity is raging in the world of science fiction. And it's a battle for the soul of all popular culture. By Amy Wallace.
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The World Indigenous Games

The first World Indigenous Games is underway in Palmas, Brazil, having kicked off on October 23. The games include 2,000 athletes from dozens of Brazilian tribes, as well as indigenous groups from 22 other countries.
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Al Molinaro, Big Al on ‘Happy Days’ actor, dead at 96

Al Molinaro, the actor best known for playing diner owner Big Al Delvecchio on “Happy Days,” died Thursday, according to reports.
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The Sum of All Parts

Most people thought that the recently deceased and much accoladed neurologist Oliver Sacks—he of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat fame—whose non-fiction works have been turned into operas, plays and even films, could really never have a worthy successor. At least not worthy of his style... By Mukul Sharma.
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"Marble Pie" by SakuraCheetah on DeviantArt

I have a new favorite Pie! Time Attack: This time it took 30 minutes. Enjoy!
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World Series 2015: Kansas City Royals vs. New York Mets Game 3 Live Score, Online Stream, FOX TV Schedule

The Kansas City Royals try to go for a 3-0 lead on the New York Mets in Game 3 of the 2015 World Series kicks Friday night. Here's tonight's live stream and TV info to help you catch the game.
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Kraftwerk - Zombie Nation

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The EU just made porn filters illegal

The European Union has voted through legislation that will require all internet providers to treat online traffic “without discrimination” – effectively ending porn filters established by David Cameron. The ruling, which has been greeted with dismay by anti-porn campaigners, will come into effect by the end of the year and is part of a broader move by the EU towards “net neutrality.”
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Philadelphia police join call to boycott Quentin Tarantino movies

All 14,000 Members of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 have joined officers in New York and Los Angeles in calling for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films. “Tarantino has shown through his actions that he is anti-police,” the group’s president, John McNesby, said in a statement. “Mr. Tarantino has made a good living through his films, projecting into society at large violence and respect for criminals; he it turns out also hates cops.”
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Special Series - Putin's Russia: Kremlin Rules

Twenty-five years after the Cold War, fear of Russia's regional ambitions seems once again to be on the rise; while many Russians, in turn, feel threatened and misunderstood by the West.The country's president, Vladimir Putin, had said that he would "reclaim what was rightfully Russia's", and now this seems to be playing out in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. So how do Russians feel about their president and his "strong armed" way of governing?
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Time off for bad prose

The makers of the Romanian edition of the board game Monopoly may want to consider altering the “Get out of jail free” card to one reading “Wrote a book in jail”. A change in the law in 2013 allows convicts to claim 30 days off their sentences for every work they publish while in prison. This has led Romanian tycoons and politicians imprisoned on corruption charges to indulge in a frenzy of scribbling. It is a system as corrupt as they are.
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Jap Herron: A Novel written from the Ouija Board (1917)

Jap Herron was a novel written, supposedly, by a deceased Mark Twain from beyond the grave, dictated via the medium of a Ouija board. The scribe (faithfully taking down notes, or perhaps a little more than just that, depending on your view) was Emily Grant Hutchings, a woman who had actually corresponded with Twain 15 years earlier.
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Final volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography now on shelves

The third and final volume of the autobiography of legendary American author and humorist Mark Twain was published this week, courtesy of editors at the Mark Twain Papers and Project at UC Berkeley…
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The Great American Novelist Who Warned Us About Donald Trump, Fox News and the Rise of the Idiocracy

With a new biography out and a recent documentary still making waves, it's time to consider Gore Vidal's legacy.
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Who owns Dumbledore – JK Rowling or the Harry Potter fans?

JK Rowling has come under fire for signing an open letter opposing a cultural boycott of Israel. The form of the complaints, and Rowling's response, tell us much about the author-fan relationship.
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On Eka Kurniawan

When so little of a country's literature has made its way to us in translation, it's tempting to read what does appear as "news from elsewhere," source material to help us understand Indonesia's history and politics. Yet that would be an injustice to the ambition and seduction of Kurniawan's novels, the reckoning they enact both with his country's violent twentieth century and with the form of the contemporary novel.
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Art’s Blues

Art Tatum’s All Stars
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Motion Movie Posters

Digital motion posters of classic films created using scenes from the movies that feature the stills used in the original movie poster.
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The Ballad of Hollis Brown

Nina Simone
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Dave Brubeck - Take Five

From the album Take Five (1959)
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Shout Factory's VHS Vault presents FREE VHS versions of "Day of the Dead," "Night of the Demons" and more

If this time of year makes you nostalgic for dusty video rental stores, have I got a treat for you.
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Too many classic films remain buried in studios' vaults

Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of "Alias Nick Beal," a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be "The Wild Party" (1929), the first talkie to star 1920's "It" girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he'd like to score a viewing of "Hotel Haywire," a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director...
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Google’s Court Victory Is Good for Scholarly Authors. Here’s Why

The mass digitization involved in Google Book Search rescues countless books from the obscurity of print library collections. By Pamela Samuelson.
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The Art of Inventing Dothraki

Inside the world of lexicographers who create languages like Dothraki, Elvish, and Klingon. By Josephine Livingstone.
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Alex Anthopoulos Leaves Blue Jays After Rejecting Extension (29/10/15)

Read for more information.
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The astronomer and the witch – how Kepler saved his mother from the stake

When Kepler was at the very height of his scientific career, his mother was accused of witchcraft. By Ulinka Rublack.
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Phil Collins Plotting Comeback: 'I Am No Longer Retired'

Sitting in the master bedroom of his Miami Beach mansion just five days after undergoing major back surgery, Phil Collins is still weak and in no small amount of pain. But when the conversation for an upcoming My Life in 15 Songs feature turns to his future plans, he grows animated and excited. "I'm no longer officially retired," he says. "The horse is out of the stable and I'm raring to go."
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David Mitchell is over the genre wars: “Confining an entire genre as being unworthy of your attention is a bizarre act of self-harm”

The acclaimed author of "Cloud Atlas" talks about his new horror-inspired "Slade House," which began on Twitter.
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Notes on the Fourth Dimension

Hyperspace, ghosts, and colourful cubes - Jon Crabb on the work of Charles Howard Hinton and the cultural history of higher dimensions.
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Linguistic Anarchy! It's all Pun and Games Until Somebody Loses a Sign

The pun is in an interesting bind: it is both ubiquitous and reviled. Chi Luu tries to understand why.
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Johnny Cueto Spins a Big Win for Royals in Game 2

The complete game has become an endangered species in baseball. So when Johnny Cueto ran out of the dugout to finish off a 7-1 victory over the New York Mets in Game 2 of the World Series, the 40,410 fans in attendance at Kauffman Stadium greeted him with a rousing and prolonged ovation.
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Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

Emily Gould on Barbara Comyns’s second published novel and its daring depiction of childbirth.
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Suffering Is One Very Long Moment; How Oscar Wilde’s prison sentence changed him.

The first time Oscar Wilde saw the inside of a prison, it was 1882—thirteen years before he’d serve the famous criminal sentence that produced De Profundis, his 55,000-word letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas.
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