How “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” Changed TV Forever

 The debuts of “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons,” like the debut of "Citizen Kane" or Bob Dylan's ‘electric’ performance at the Newport Folk Festival, expanded the boundaries of genre and medium. Television, comedy, and American culture have permanently changed.
 
 Read more here...

https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/summer-2014-1989-and-the-making-of-our-modern-world/how-seinfeld-and-simpsons-changed-tv-forever/

Comforting Myths

"By the standards of the European industrial world, we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe."

Read full article here...

 https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/comforting-myths/

Why We Can't Save Her

Powerful video from the International Committee for the Red Cross...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm0TYebjyHQ

The Problem of Hyper Liberalism

Excerpt:  "In institutions that proclaim their commitment to critical inquiry, censorship is most effective when it is self-imposed. A defining feature of tyranny, the policing of opinion is now established practice in societies that believe themselves to be freer than they have ever been."

Read full article here...
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/john-gray-hyper-liberalism-liberty/

Canada at War Cartoons

El Chapo’s Arrest Unlikely to Break Mexican Cartel

“Sinaloa has managed to expand in such a way that the business can run itself,” said Samuel Logan, an expert on transnational crime at Southern Pulse, an investment and risk assessment firm. “The entire Mexican state could fall, and the drug trade will continue, as long as there is a demand.”

Comparing the cartel to McDonald’s, Mr. Logan said, “If the C.E.O. of McDonald’s was arrested today, you could still buy a hamburger in Tokyo tomorrow.”

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/americas/arrest-unlikely-to-break-cartel.html?src=me&_r=0 

More stories on the Drug War here....
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/search/label/drug%20war

The Bewildered Kingdom

Can't stay on top forever... 

The issue for the Saudis is not merely Iran’s putative nuclear capability. A deal on Iran’s nuclear program would legitimize the regime’s regional influence in a way that has not occurred in decades, thereby serving its hegemonic objectives. The deeper threat or fear is that Iran’s ultimate target is leadership of Mecca, the cradle of Islam.

That is why the Saudi royals prefer to keep Iran chained with international sanctions. True, even under economic sanctions, Iran has intruded ever more deeply into Arab politics, but it was the US that opened the door by overthrowing Saddam’s Sunni-minority regime in Iraq, which ultimately brought an Iranian-backed Shia government to power.

READ MORE HERE...
 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mai-yamani-assesses-saudi-arabia-s-increasingly-assertive-regional-foreign-policy-since-the-start-of-the-arab-spring

10 Questions for Woody Allen

Great interview because the questions were from the public and not the mainstream media!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLAYYrxtJfI

Snowden’s only safe choice may be to stay in Russia indefinitely

"Russia, on the other hand, would seem to get around all three of these problems. The country is not a liberal democracy, or at least not widely viewed as such, meaning Moscow would risk little international credibility by defying a U.S. extradition request. It’s big enough that it doesn’t need to worry too much about upsetting the United States, which it clearly doesn’t, and is economically mostly tied to neighboring European and Asian states anyway. But Russia is also geopolitically weak enough that, unlike in the Soviet era when it was a true global power that negotiated frequently with its rivals, Moscow doesn’t have lots of crucial ongoing deals with the Americans. The biggest ones, cooperation on terrorism and Syria, are mostly stalled anyway.

Maybe most important, though, is Russia’s long history of sheltering Western fugitives, unbroken even by the fall of the Soviet Union and complete transformation of the Russian government. Deposed heads of state, shunned by most of the world, get luxurious homes in the upscale town of Barvikha, a little Paris custom-built for high-profile exiles. British intelligence officials who were caught spying for the Soviets and fled there half a century ago are still under Moscow’s protection; George Blake, now 91 years old, is still living on a Soviet KGB officer’s pension, though neither the KGB nor the Soviet Union have existed in 20 years."

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/27/snowdens-only-safe-choice-may-be-to-stay-in-russia-indefinitely/?hpid=z2

Street Art

See more here...

http://www.streetartutopia.com/?p=10554

Also check out this exceptional documentary on street art...Exit through the Gift Shop...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIiOgj3uc0w

Most Expensive Banksy Street Art...

http://arrestedmotion.com/2011/09/banksy-top-25-most-expensive-works-ever/

Subway by Bruce Davidson

 

"I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day."  Bruce Davidson

See more incredible images here...
http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/194622.html

The World is Safer Now. But Who Cares?

The world is safer now, but no one in Washington can talk about it...

Excerpt:

Obama says terrorist networks remain the greatest threat to the United States. “We have to remain vigilant,” he warned recently. But global terrorism has barely touched most Americans in the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, with 238 U.S. citizens killed in terrorist attacks, mostly in war zones, according to the National Counterterrorism Center’s annual reports. By comparison, the Consumer Product Safety Commission found that 293Americans were crushed during the same stretch by falling furniture or televisions.

Beyond the United States, global statistics point undeniably toward progress in achieving greater peace and stability.
READ MORE HERE... 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-world-is-safer-but-no-one-in-washington-can-talk-about-it/2012/11/02/2e59cfea-2442-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html

Three Videos to Warm the Soul V

Incredible films...

Inspirational Moments in film...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCZFoXCbWk&feature=related

This is my winter...

https://vimeo.com/31572650

Green Day...American Idiot ...Wicked vid with a cool ending...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yi-LvnM_5M&feature=relmfu

 Also check out...

Three Videos to Warm the Soul IV

The Dynamic Duo

Two of the most amazing comedians of are time...

Louis C.K.

HBO Special- One Night Stand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x5PuGb9Pqs&feature=related

George Carlin
 
HBO Special-You Are All Diseased
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo8IyIPEPLU&feature=related

Lastly, here is an excellent tribute to the late George Carlin by Louis...
Louis C.K. honors George Carlin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU&feature=related

Pop Is Sad and AC/DC Isn't Edgy

Science proves music is getting sadder...interesting read...

Excerpt:

In the 2004 essay “Just Send Me Someone to Love,” Brad Zellar claimed all pop songs are either about love or desire, using the Hobbesian definition that they are essentially the same thing, with desire signifying absence and love signifying fulfillment. There’s nothing cheerful about not getting what you want. I brought the essay to a college class I taught to help us talk about motivation in short stories. My students, lovely bright-eyed sophomores, were skeptical. By the end of class I had convinced them that Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” is the saddest song ever recorded. I don’t teach that class anymore. It’s too depressing.

A year later I saw Katy Perry frolic onstage with two-dozen fans to Whitney’s lonely girl anthem, and it was still sad. Katy Perry’s Candyland concerts are even more depressing than Radiohead shows; instead of shuffling through a crowd of neurotic 30-somethings all wearing the same canvas shoes, you’re surrounded by 12-year-olds under such immense social and academic pressures they’re nostalgic for being 8. 

Read more here...

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/28/science_proves_music_is_getting_sadder/

Raising Successful Children

Excerpt:

So if children are able to live with mistakes and even failing, why does it drive us crazy? So many parents have said to me, “I can’t stand to see my child unhappy.” If you can’t stand to see your child unhappy, you are in the wrong business. The small challenges that start in infancy (the first whimper that doesn’t bring you running) present the opportunity for “successful failures,” that is, failures your child can live with and grow from. To rush in too quickly, to shield them, to deprive them of those challenges is to deprive them of the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging and sometimes devastating demands of life.

Read more here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/raising-successful-children.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes

Caring for your Introvert

Inside the world of introverts....Three great articles that are definitely worth reading....

Caring for Your Introvert

 

Excerpt:

Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses."

How many people are introverts? I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Are introverts oppressed? I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. 

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/

Also check out this article...

Confessions of an Introverted Traveler

Excerpt:

 

We introverts have a different style of travel, and I’m tired of hiding it.

Oh, I’m always happy enough when interesting people stumble into my path. It’s a lagniappe, and I’m capable of connecting with people when the opportunity arises. And when the chemistry is right, I enjoy it.

But I don’t seek people out, I am terrible at striking up conversations with strangers and I am happy exploring a strange city alone. I don’t seek out political discourse with opinionated cab drivers or boozy bonding with locals over beers into the wee hours. By the time the hours get wee, I’m usually in bed in my hotel room, appreciating local color TV. (So sue me, but I contend that television is a valid reflection of a society.)

This is not something I confess easily. I have long been shamed out of owning my introversion by the extroverts who dominate American culture. Extroversion has long been considered healthier than introversion, and introverts often try to push against our natural tendencies in order to fit in, to seem “normal” so people will stop scolding us. Extroverts are unintentional bullies, demanding that everyone join their party or be considered queer, sad or stunted.

Introversion and extroversion are inborn traits, and the difference between them is not that one is gregarious and at ease in the world and the other shy and awkward. Rather, extroverts are outwardly motivated and gain energy from interaction with the outside world while introverts are more inwardly directed and drained by interaction with others. Introverts’ thinking tends to be deep and slow, we require copious time alone, we prefer probing conversation to shallow chitchat, and our social lives are geared more towards intimate one-on-one interactions than “more the merrier” free-for-alls.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

http://www.worldhum.com/features/speakers-corner/confessions-of-an-introverted-traveler-20090309/

The Secret Power of Introverts

If you had to guess, what would you say investor Warren Buffet and civil rights activist Rosa Parks had in common? How about Charles Darwin, Al Gore, J.K. Rowling, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Google’s Larry Page? They are icons. They are leaders. And they are introverts.

Despite the corporate world’s insistence on brazen confidence–Speak up! Promote yourself! Network!—one third to half of Americans are believed to be introverts, according to Susan Cain, author of just released Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She contends that personality shapes our lives as profoundly as gender and race, and where you fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum is the single most important aspect of your personality.

Introverts may make up nearly half the population...

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/01/26/the-secret-power-of-introverts/

 

Best of Kultura 2011-The Articles

2011 Articles of Note


1.  The Little Trick

By Anton Chekov

A beautiful short story by the celebrated Russian writer.
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/03/little-trick.html

2.  A Grief Like No Other

By Eric Schlosser

Excerpt:

Patty also found consolation at her son's grave. During the first year after the murder she stopped by the cemetery two or three times a day. Usually she'd visit the grave for fifteen minutes or so. At other times, including his birthday, she would sit there all day. His birthday was in February, when the weather was harsh and cold. One thing she could not bear was the thought of snow covering Tim's body. Whenever it snowed, she had to visit the cemetery and clear off his grave. One day after a snowstorm she arrived and found that someone who knew how she felt had already removed the snow from Tim's grave."
 http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/07/grief-like-no-other.html


3.  Why We Travel 

by Paul Theroux

“Don’t go there,” the know-it-all, stay-at-home finger wagger says of many a distant place. I have heard it my whole traveling life, and in almost every case it was bad advice. In my experience these maligned countries are often the most fulfilling. I am not saying they are fun. For undiluted jollification you bake in the sun at Waikiki with a mai tai in your fist, or eat lotuses on the Côte d’Azur. As for the recognition of hard travel as rewarding, the feeling is mainly retrospective, since it is only in looking back that we see how we have been enriched. At the time, of course, the experience of being a bystander to sudden political or social change can be alarming.
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/04/argument-for-travel-during-turbulent.html



4.  Living in the Moment Really Does Make You Happier 

By Ian Sample

They found that people were happiest when having sex, exercising or in conversation, and least happy when working, resting or using a home computer. And although subjects' minds were wandering nearly half of the time, this consistently made them less happy.
The team conclude that reminiscing, thinking ahead or daydreaming tends to make people more miserable, even when they are thinking about something pleasant.
 http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/08/living-in-moment-really-does-make.html 



5.  ...the last sentence

The last words of some pretty cool people.
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/08/famous-last-words.html


6.  Dummy Land

Writer Avi Steinberg visits a ventriloquist convention...great article.

http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/07/dummy-land.html


7.  The Oatmeal

Hilarious comics with a little social commentary added...  By Mathew Inmann
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.com/2011/07/oatmeal.html  

The Oatmeal

Haven't laughed this much in awhile, simply hilarious...


Sure I'd Love to Help You Move Apartments
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/moving

The Four Seasons of Vancouver/Seattle Weather
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/seattle_weather

The Crap We Put Up With Getting On and Off an Airplane
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/airplane

7 Things You Really Don't Need to Take a Photo of...
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/photos

Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home 

Why I'd Rather be Punched in the Testicles Than Call Customer Service
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/customer_service

Minor Differences Part 1, 2, and 3
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/minor_differences

CONTROVERSIAL CARTOONS

SEE MORE CARTOONS HERE:
http://www.cagle.com/