“Dr. John W. Mauchly, inventor of some of the original room-size electronic computers, poses in Washington, DC, on November 2, 1962 with one the size of a suitcase after addressing a meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. He now is working on a pocket variety which, he says, may eliminate the housewife’s weekly shopping list and the chore of filling it by hand. He predicted everyone will be walking around with his own personalized computer within a decade.
(via 50 Years Ago: The World in 1962 - In Focus - The Atlantic)
![theatlantic:
Singin’ in the Rain: 60 Years Later, an Example of Film Nostalgia Done Right
With pop culture apparently suffering from a retro epidemic lately, today’s 60th anniversary of Singin’ in the Rain provides a chance to look back at a film that was ahead of its time in the way that it, too, looked back. Still fresh and charming in present-day viewings, Singin’delivered a sophisticated take on a tremendous transition in moviemaking that had happened decades before its release. But unlike the recent Oscars’ slate of history-fetishizing films—The Artist, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris among them—it didn’t romanticize the past but rather voyaged happily forward. […]
Beyond the actual backdrop of an industry in flux, Singin’ in the Rain’s jokes and light parodies of actors and Hollywood culture are still surprisingly insightful and effective. There’s the dopey screen siren thinking that she’s in a relationship with her co-star because she read it in a gossip magazine. There’s Kathy Selden’s (Debbie Reynolds) attempt to insult the cocky movie star with her emphatic declaration that “if you’ve seen one movie, you’ve seen ‘em all.” And there’s the brilliant segment where Don Lockwood recounts his rise to fame, telling his fans that he was trained at Juilliard and brought up on Shaw and Molière, while we in the audience are treated to an amusing simultaneous montage revealing that he actually cut his teeth through thankless beer-hall performances and dangerous stunt work.
Read more. [Image: AP]](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/culture_test/singin%20in%20the%20rain%20jump%20615%20bahr.jpg)
Singin’ in the Rain: 60 Years Later, an Example of Film Nostalgia Done Right
With pop culture apparently suffering from a retro epidemic lately, today’s 60th anniversary of Singin’ in the Rain provides a chance to look back at a film that was ahead of its time in the way that it, too, looked back. Still fresh and charming in present-day viewings, Singin’delivered a sophisticated take on a tremendous transition in moviemaking that had happened decades before its release. But unlike the recent Oscars’ slate of history-fetishizing films—The Artist, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris among them—it didn’t romanticize the past but rather voyaged happily forward. […]
Beyond the actual backdrop of an industry in flux, Singin’ in the Rain’s jokes and light parodies of actors and Hollywood culture are still surprisingly insightful and effective. There’s the dopey screen siren thinking that she’s in a relationship with her co-star because she read it in a gossip magazine. There’s Kathy Selden’s (Debbie Reynolds) attempt to insult the cocky movie star with her emphatic declaration that “if you’ve seen one movie, you’ve seen ‘em all.” And there’s the brilliant segment where Don Lockwood recounts his rise to fame, telling his fans that he was trained at Juilliard and brought up on Shaw and Molière, while we in the audience are treated to an amusing simultaneous montage revealing that he actually cut his teeth through thankless beer-hall performances and dangerous stunt work.
Read more. [Image: AP]
Tebow has come to expose something weirdly profound in our culture. This is America, circa 2012: 43 percent of the people who know about Tebow believe divine intervention is a factor in his success. African Americans (60 percent) and Latinos (81 percent) believe God’s hand is reaching down to create more perfect spirals for #15.
Exhibit A in the case of our failed education system.
A look at the Dippin’ Dots manufacturing process, as the oddball ice cream maker files for bankruptcy — (via Dippin’ Dots, Futuristic Ice Cream-Maker, Files for Bankruptcy)
9/11: The Week Before
Photos as compiled by The Atlantic’s Alan Taylor of the world the week before 9/11/01.
World War II: The American Home Front in Color via The Atlantic
Amazing color photos from the WWII war effort at home — complete with propaganda captions!
Prepare to Have Your Email Read by the NSA
With a new major hacking incident seemingly daily, the Department of Defense is scrambling to find the right shield against future for attacks. But why hide behind a shield when you can charge onto the battlefield underneath the invisible but ironclad cloak of the National Security Agency? That’s exactly how the DoD is mounting it’s first strike back at the hackers—a preemptive strike that will increase online surveillance at defense contractors by partnering with internet service providers for privileged access to the rivers of data flowing through their cables. AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink are all on board.
Giving the NSA more access to the same internet tubes that power your Gmail account sounds a little invasive. At least that’s what James X. Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the civil liberties watchdog group the Center for Democracy and Technology. “We wouldn’t want this to become a backdoor form of surveillance,” Dempsey told The Washington Post, referring to the pilot program that DoD insists will remain limited to the contractors working closely with the government.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire
Alcohol Doesn't Actually Kill Brain Cells
Derek Brown investigates:
Recently, I’ve felt like everything that I learned in grade school is a lie. The Triceratops might not have existed, Pluto isn’t a planet, and now this: alcohol doesn’t actually kill brain cells. Yes, that’s right. Alcohol neither kills nor prunes the little party of punctilious petri specimens we have in our heads. I recently read Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, by Stephen Braum, and came across this nugget: “… alcohol does many things to the brain, one thing it clearly doesn’t do is wipe out neurons indiscriminately.” So I turned to a quick survey of reputable sources and, what do you know, there seems to be enough research to back it up.
If you want to have a badass story to tell at a party, go base-jumping. Off of a wind turbine.
Base Jumping Off Of Wind Turbine Blades:
Grist highlights an amazing video compilation of people jumping off wind turbines with hand-carried parachutes. Three things to note: 1) This is insane. 2) Wind turbines are huge; an increasing amount of wind turbines stand taller than 300 feet, or about the same size as the Statue of Liberty, including her pedestal.
How the Christmas Tree Got Its Lights
Alexis Madrigal explores the long history of the Christmas tree:
Old world German protestants had decked their trees since the early 17th-century with “roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold foil, sweets, &c.” By the first few decades of the 1800s, the practices had spread throughout western Europe and, according to Penne Restad’s book, Christmas in America, a history, to Pennsylvania, too. By 1821, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania resident named Matthew Zahm could write, “Sally & our Thos. & Wm. Hensel was out for Christmas trees, on the hill at Kendrick’s farm.” In 1832, a German professor at Harvard put “7 dozen wax tapers, gilded egg cups, paper corncucpiae filled with comfits, lozenges and barley sugar.”
Read the full story here.
73% of world income in 14% of the world population, and walled off from everyone else.
Maybe it’s just me, but those percentages don’t seem as bad as I would have guessed.
“Walled World”
We’re not even sure what to make of this.
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something which gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
Alfred North Whitehead, “Religion and Science” (The Atlantic, August 1925)
For use if you want a deep non-deity-based religion quote. If you’re really good, you could memorize it.
(via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
Senior citizens (not) living with their children
In 1850, 67.9 percent of U.S. seniors lived with their children.
In 1990, 15.6 percent did.
The 1940s was the first time a majority of seniors lived separately from their children, if any.
My name is 
