![Morning Links
Find Your One Thing Twist Image blog
Can you sum up your professional you in one or two words?
I was very touched watching the documentary, Being Elmo, on PBS‘ Independent Lens. The movie is about Kevin Clash (the puppeteer behind Sesame Street’s Elmo). From a very young age, Clash demonstrated a strong desire to be a puppeteer. While that seems quaint and points to someone who was focused on what they wanted to do in life from a very young age, you can imagine the struggles he faced growing up in Baltimore. While all of the other kids were out playing baseball or causing mischief, Clash was at home sewing puppets together and entertaining the local toddlers.
How to Write about Wittgenstein Chronicle of Higher Ed
It [Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, by Norman Malcolm, a student of Wittgenstein’s at Cambridge and his lifelong friend] is a small book, published over half a century ago, but its influence would be hard to overstate. Not many philosophical books have created as many disciples. If philosophers were evangelists (and some are), Malcolm’s memoir would be the Gospel of John, a strange, beautiful little book that you leave in hotel rooms and hand out door to door. I read it again this week for the first time in many years, and it was still as gripping as I remembered it. What accounts for its lasting appeal?
‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow’ and More Life Advice for Grads From Songs The Atlantic
Graduation can be both exhilarating and frightening—suddenly, for this week’s graduates, the future is a big empty space, just waiting to be filled in. Happily, as ever, there’s at least some solace to be found in music, and there’ve been plenty of great songs written over the years about life and how to live it. So here’s a playlist of some of our favorite tracks with something to say on what life’s all about, and how you go about negotiating your way through it.
Illustration](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m47tjjpUHr1qjsf5ho1_400.jpg)
Morning Links
Find Your One Thing Twist Image blog
Can you sum up your professional you in one or two words?
I was very touched watching the documentary, Being Elmo, on PBS‘ Independent Lens. The movie is about Kevin Clash (the puppeteer behind Sesame Street’s Elmo). From a very young age, Clash demonstrated a strong desire to be a puppeteer. While that seems quaint and points to someone who was focused on what they wanted to do in life from a very young age, you can imagine the struggles he faced growing up in Baltimore. While all of the other kids were out playing baseball or causing mischief, Clash was at home sewing puppets together and entertaining the local toddlers.
How to Write about Wittgenstein Chronicle of Higher Ed
It [Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, by Norman Malcolm, a student of Wittgenstein’s at Cambridge and his lifelong friend] is a small book, published over half a century ago, but its influence would be hard to overstate. Not many philosophical books have created as many disciples. If philosophers were evangelists (and some are), Malcolm’s memoir would be the Gospel of John, a strange, beautiful little book that you leave in hotel rooms and hand out door to door. I read it again this week for the first time in many years, and it was still as gripping as I remembered it. What accounts for its lasting appeal?
‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow’ and More Life Advice for Grads From Songs The Atlantic
Graduation can be both exhilarating and frightening—suddenly, for this week’s graduates, the future is a big empty space, just waiting to be filled in. Happily, as ever, there’s at least some solace to be found in music, and there’ve been plenty of great songs written over the years about life and how to live it. So here’s a playlist of some of our favorite tracks with something to say on what life’s all about, and how you go about negotiating your way through it.
Today’s links
Science Fiction Gets Social (Part 1) Kirkus Science Fiction Blog
One of the characteristics of great literature is that it says something meaningful about life. Science fiction does that, too, except that the perspective is usually seen from an outsider’s viewpoint and is often focused on society in general.
Being fond of subcategorizing as we are, science fiction fans call such fiction “social science fiction,” and it’s concerned less with the tropes usually associated with sf (like spaceships and technology) and more concerned with human activities and how people interact in groups. Or, to tie it back to the “science” label, it’s concerned with “soft” sciences like sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, theology, linguistics, cultural studies and more.
Writing in the Dark: Confessions of a literary night owl New York Magazine
The moon is maybe one sixteenth full—or empty, really, thin as the rim of a shot glass, clear and high in a very black sky. The stars are out in layers, not like the desert or the mountains but unusual for the northeast, millions of distant acquaintances amassed behind the more familiar constellations; Orion in his swaggery stance, Cassiopeia watching sideways from her chair in the sky.
Not that I am seeing any of that, now. I keep my eyes on the ground. I’m moving fast, and it’s dark, and I don’t want to fall. There’s a hill in front of me: up, and steep. I hear my feet and my breath. They should disrupt the nighttime quiet but instead they amplify it. Up, up, up, up, and then a sharp turn, then rocks and gravel, louder underfoot; then a downhill dip, the black hulks of two familiar trees, a flagstone patio, a door. I stop in front of it, lean against it for a moment, let my breath slow, look up. It is one-fifteen in the morning. I have just come home from a run.
How Cartoon Network Became a Haven for Some of the Best Independent Comic Book Creators Working Today Publishers Weekly
The Cartoon Network’s flagship show, Adventure Time has quickly gained a loyal fan base since its premiere in early 2010. Produced by Frederator Studios and created by Pendleton Ward, the feel-good, silly but smart show about Jake the Dog and Finn the Human’s fun-filled exploits in the candy-colored, post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo is that rare cartoon offering that appeals equally to both kids and adults. The Adventure Time licensed comic, published by Boom! Studios’ kids’ comics imprint, Kaboom!, has also been hugely successful. Since the comic’s release in early February of this year, the first two issues have already sold out of multiple print runs.
