(Previous reading lists here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Your Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years Of Guilt<\/a> (NPR) <\/strong>Note: this story has a version in audio format, as well. Listening is recommended, if you can.<\/em><\/p>\n When NPR reported Bob Ebeling’s story<\/a> on the 30th anniversary of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, hundreds of listeners and readers expressed distress and sympathy in letters and emails…<\/p>\n “It’s going to blow up,” a distraught and defeated Ebeling told his wife, Darlene, when he arrived home that night.<\/p>\n And it did, 73 seconds after liftoff. Seven astronauts died. Cold weather and an O-ring failure were blamed, and Ebeling carried three decades of guilt.<\/p>\n “That was one of the mistakes God made,” Ebeling, now 89, told me three weeks ago at his home in Brigham City, Utah. “He shouldn’t have picked me for that job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ‘Why me? You picked a loser.’ ”<\/p>\n Jim Sides listened to the NPR story in his car in Jacksonville, N.C.<\/p>\n “When I heard he carried a burden of guilt for 30 years, it broke my heart,” Sides, an engineer, says. “And I just sat there in the car in the parking lot and cried.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Stop Trying To Be Creative<\/a> (FiveThirtyEight)<\/strong><\/p>\n In one experiment a bipedal robot programmed to walk farther and farther actually ended up walking less far than one that simply was programmed to do something novel again and again, Stanley writes.<\/p>\n Falling on the ground and flailing your legs doesn\u2019t look much like walking, but it\u2019s a good way to learn to oscillate, and oscillation is the most effective motion for walking. If you lock your objectives strictly on walking, you won\u2019t hit that oscillation stepping stone.<\/p>\n Stanley calls this the \u201cobjective paradox\u201d \u2014 as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n She Wanted to Do Her Research. He Wanted to Talk \u2018Feelings.\u2019<\/a> (NY Times)<\/strong><\/p>\n Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes. Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: \u201cI need to tell you,\u201d or \u201cmy feelings.\u201d The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: \u201cIt\u2019s late and I can\u2019t sleep\u201d is a favorite, though \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the three glasses of cognac\u201d is popular as well.<\/p>\n The author goes on to tell her that she is special in some way, that his passion is an unfamiliar feeling that she has awakened in him, the important suggestion being that she has brought this upon herself. He will speak of her as an object with \u201cshiny hair\u201d or \u201csparkling eyes\u201d — testing the waters before commenting upon the more private parts of her body. Surprisingly, he often acknowledges that he is doing something inappropriate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n How David Beats Goliath<\/a> (The New Yorker)<\/strong><\/p>\n Ranadiv\u00e9 was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless…<\/p>\n It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, and Ranadiv\u00e9 thought that that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent\u2019s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that made them so good?…<\/p>\n The Turks simply did not think that their opponent would be mad enough to come at them from the desert. This was Lawrence\u2019s great insight. David can beat Goliath by substituting effort for ability\u2014and substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life, including little blond-haired girls on the basketball court.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Bang Bang Sanity<\/a> (Stonekettle Station)<\/strong><\/p>\n Laws against theft and murder don\u2019t stop theft and murder, they give society legal options when theft and murder occur.<\/p>\n Saying new gun laws won\u2019t end gun violence is a non sequitur. Of course guns laws won\u2019t end gun violence.<\/p>\n Laws don\u2019t<\/em> stop crime, however what well written laws do is to put responsibility where it belongs \u2013 on the criminal<\/em>.<\/p>\n Well written laws are about pragmatism<\/em>.<\/p>\n For example, we all know that laws against drinking and driving won\u2019t stop drunk driving, but they weren\u2019t intended to. We know it\u2019s going to happen. People are going to drink and drive and kill themselves and each other. We know we can\u2019t eliminate it completely. That\u2019s the pragmatism part.<\/p>\n Instead, drunk driving laws were intended to do two things, 1) give us legal recourse as a society, 2) make us responsible for our antisocial behavior \u2013 which in turn leads over time to a change in culture…<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We need gun laws that give society legal recourse by making each gun owner\/user personally accountable for their own actions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n For Love and Honor: Hollis Frampton to Donald Richie<\/a> (Letters of Note)<\/strong><\/p>\n In December of 1972, Donald Richie<\/a>, then film curator at the Museum of Modern Art<\/a> in New York, wrote to artist Hollis Frampton<\/a> and suggested that they organise a retrospective of his work at this most prestigious of museums.<\/p>\n To an artist of any standing, this would be a tempting offer; however, Frampton took issue with one particular line in the proposal, a single detail of Richie\u2019s which rendered the suggestion entirely unattractive: \u201cIt is all for love and honor and no money is included at all\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Unwilling to work without financial reward, Frampton responded at length with a rousing letter, reprinted below in full, that has since become legendary in the art world for reasons which are plain to see.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Lawyering Is About Service, Not Self-Actualization<\/a> (Popehat)<\/strong><\/p>\n People traditionally recognized as being in need of social justice are also the people in most dire need of competent legal representation.<\/p>\n When they have a few days to contest an eviction or they’ve been arrested and may lose their job, they don’t need someone who is exquisitely prepared to explain and denounce the racist and oppressive structures that led to their unfortunate predicament.<\/p>\n They need someone who knows what he or she is doing.<\/em> They need someone who knows all of the petty substantive and procedural rules of landlord-tenant law and how the local court actually operates.<\/p>\n They need someone who can swiftly assess whether an arrest or interrogation was unlawful and formulate a plausible and effective plan for dealing with it.<\/p>\n They need someone who knows how to get things into evidence in court<\/em> even under pressure on their feet when the judge is being difficult and the opposing counsel is making nonsensical objections. They need a grubby little practitioner.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages<\/a> (Toronto Star)<\/strong><\/p>\n Before he crunched his numbers, the consensus among his fellow air force researchers was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. After all, these pilots had already been pre-selected because they appeared to be average sized. (If you were, say, six foot seven, you would never have been recruited in the first place.) The scientists also expected that a sizable number of pilots would be within the average range on all 10 dimensions. But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zero.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. One pilot might have a longer-than-average arm length, but a shorter-than-average leg length. Another pilot might have a big chest but small hips. Even more astonishing, Daniels discovered that if you picked out just three of the ten dimensions of size \u2014 say, neck circumference, thigh circumference and wrist circumference \u2014 less than 3.5 per cent of pilots would be average sized on all three dimensions. Daniels\u2019s findings were clear and incontrovertible. There was no such thing as an average pilot.<\/em> If you\u2019ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you\u2019ve actually designed it to fit no one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n My Wife and I Are (Both) Pregnant<\/a> (New York Magazine)<\/strong><\/p>\n Emily<\/i>: Exactly three weeks after we found out I was pregnant Kate called me at work and was like, \u201cGuess what?\u201d I fell off my chair. I was sitting on the floor, alternating between laughing hysterically and hyperventilating and crying. It was so overwhelming.<\/p>\n Kate<\/i>: We were like, \u201cOh my God, we just overshot this. We can’t live in a one-bedroom apartment with two babies!\u201d…<\/p>\n Emily<\/i>: I really loved being pregnant. It was very easy for me. I felt good, I was very happy. I didn’t have any issues at all besides the fact that my feet grew so much that I had no shoes. Everything has been very easy for me and nothing has been easy for her. I’ve really had to try to not feel bad about that because I don’t want to feel sorry for her. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy, of course I feel deeply for her, but I didn’t want that emotion to be a part of either of our pregnancies. And I didn’t want to not have a great pregnancy because I felt bad about it.<\/p>\n Kate<\/i>: The pro and con of having your wife, another woman, go through pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in tandem with you is that you can’t help but compare.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Star Wars Is a Postmodern Masterpiece<\/a> (Source)<\/strong><\/p>\n Star Wars<\/em> is a Western. Star Wars <\/em>is a samurai movie.\u00a0Star Wars <\/em>is\u00a0a space opera. Star Wars <\/em>is a war film. Star Wars <\/em>is a fairy tale.<\/p>\n A Jedi craves not such narrow interpretations. In fact,\u00a0Star Wars\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad<\/em>\u2014the original 1977 film that started it all\u2014is all\u00a0<\/em>these things. It\u2019s a pastiche, as mashed-up and hyper-referential as any movie from Quentin Tarantino. It takes the blasters of Flash Gordon<\/em> and puts them in the low-slung holsters of John Ford\u2019s gunslingers. It takes Kurosawa\u2019s samurai masters and sends them to Rick\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Am\u00e9ricain from Casablanca<\/em>. It takes the plot of The Hidden Fortress<\/em>, pours it into Joseph Campbell\u2019s mythological mold, and tops it all off with the climax from The Dam Busters<\/em>. Blending the high with the low, all while wearing its influences on its sleeve, Star Wars<\/em> is pretty much the epitome of a postmodernist film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Best of Luck: A brief introduction to death<\/a> (The Awl)<\/strong><\/p>\n The last thing I remember before the cardioversion was the anesthesiologist saying, \u201cThis is only going to take a second, but you do not<\/i> want to be awake to feel it.\u201d When I came to, my heart was back to a normal rhythm and there was an electrode burn on my sternum about the size and shape of a deck of cards. It lingered for weeks, scabbing over and itching and reminding me of the time they powered me down.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Lots of stuff for you here! Some creativity, some inspiration, some death, some life.<\/p>\n Next roundup post, some time in the future: ALL POLITICS, ALL THE TIME. Go ahead and delete your bookmark now, I guess, or else pour yourself a fifth and have it ready.<\/p>\n March 14, 2016 at 11:55PM 11 More Articles Well Worth Your Time By David Malki Here is (what I believe is) another Extensive List Of Articles (Arguably) Well Worth Your Time! When I read something interesting that I think you might like to see as … Continue reading \n
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\nvia Wondermark http:\/\/ift.tt\/1pLMukR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"