Link roundup

1. This week's Google research challenge is on an interesting topic. (I think this guy is the answer, and this is a description of the battle.)

2. Depressing article about soldiers struggling to reassimilate at an army base in Washington.

3. Thomas Barnett on the unlikelihood of war with China.

4. Walter Russell Mead on the possibility of war with Iran and Turkey's competition with Iran for influence.

Win a copy of the Baghdad Country Club

UPDATE: Pippa won and has been contacted.



Usually I find nonfiction to be desperately in need of a good condensing, but Joshua Bearman's new Kindle Single Baghdad Country Club is so polished and focused that it's like a handful of diamonds. Here's the official description:

Welcome to a place where even beer runs are a matter of life and death. As the Iraq War draws to an official close, Joshuah Bearman tells the funny and poignant tale of the real-life Baghdad Country Club, a bar in the Green Zone during the conflict's bloodiest years. Against all odds, its proprietors struggle to keep their raucous watering hole safe and well-stocked as the insurgency rages outside.

And here's a taste from the beginning:

A few weeks later, James was cursing himself for getting into the bootlegging business. He had never handled that much of his own money before—$150,000—much less handed it over to someone he barely knew, in cash. His entire life savings was now denominated in liquor, which he had piled into an 18- wheeler and driven through hostile Baghdad. He wound up circling the Green Zone several times, unsuccessfully seeking entry—wrong badges, wrong checkpoints, wrong turns through the often deadly downtown—and was starting to get nervous when he eventually made it through Checkpoint 18.
. . .
And so James became an extreme restaurateur, opening the only authentic bar and restaurant in the Green Zone. It would be the one place where anyone—mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and Iraqis—could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of Bordeaux, and light a cigar from the humidor to go with it. Patrons would check their weapons in a safe, like coats in a coatroom, and leave the war behind...

The book is also illustrated, but the illustrations are fairly lackluster, and really superfluous (you can get a sense by watching the animated trailer). The characters and locales leap off the page:

As the charming maître d’, it was Danny’s job to defuse any commotion. And despite his small (and clearly civilian) stature, he was pretty good at it. James thought Danny’s self-deprecating Jewish-guy-with-glasses routine helped him keep people from killing each other or getting out of control. There was, for instance, the time when Tony the Mouse, a notorious Lebanese pimp, showed up in the BCC brandishing his goods. Tony was short, sleazy, and self-confident; Danny noticed him the moment he walked in. Tony tried to dress like the contractors, but his gear was too big. Danny thought he looked like a kid in his dad’s hunting outfit. With him were several Iraqi girls of questionable age, done up in even more questionable makeup, doused in perfume, and wearing what in theory was passable Islamic dress but in material looked more like harem couture. “You smelled the girls before you saw them,” Danny recalls.

It's just begging to be turned into a series of novels or turned into a movie.

Highly recommended. You can read a longer excerpt here, and apparently see the club on Google Maps. The full version is available from The Atavist for the Kindle, the iPad/iPhone, the Nook, or iBooks.

I also have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner on Monday.

Link roundup

1. First wine, now violins:

In a double-blind test by professional violinists, most couldn't determine — by sound alone — which violin was an original Stradivarius and which was a modern instrument.

2. Topless Robot on Cartoon Network:

Bandai Japan demanded that Bandai Entertainment get the original '70s Mobile Suit Gundam series on Cartoon Network, despite the fact it was 20 years old, looked 20 years old, and was waaaaaaaay too boring for young American audiences. Cartoon Network, not being insane, refused. Bandai Japan then paid CN to run the original Gundam anime, thus *%$#ing up the Toonami block for years -- because once CN got paid to run an anime, the CN executives weren't going to run any anime without getting a check for it first. If you've ever wondered why an anime that would seemingly have been perfect for Toonami never [aired], chances are it's because the licensor couldn't afford CN's asking price.

3. Tyler Cowen on a book about WWI:

My favorite section details how the British responded when it turned out they had a drastic shortage of binoculars, which at that time were very important for fighting the war. They turned to the world’s leading manufacturer of “precision optics,” namely Germany. The German War Office immediately supplied 8,000 to 10,000 binoculars to Britain, directly intended and designed for military use.

Don't worry, the British sold vital supplies to the Germans...

Link roundup

1. Penny Arcade's business manager participated in an interview at Reddit.

2. Deadspin's picks for the top 10 sports articles of the year.

3. Teddy Roosevelt once gave possibly the best start to a speech ever:

Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

He wasn't joking.

4. The Smithsonian's top 10 science blog posts.

Link roundup

1. Lifehacker says Waze is the best turn by turn navigator for Android and iOS (and free).

2. The new media tools that allowed Martin Luther's message to spread virally. Via.

3. Tips for hacking Scrabble.

4. The beginning of a terrific, long article about a very small town pharmacist:

In the southwestern corner of Colorado, where the Uncompahgre Plateau descends through spruce forest and scrubland toward the Utah border, there is a region of more than four thousand square miles which has no hospitals, no department stores, and only one pharmacy. The pharmacist is Don Colcord, who lives in the town of Nucla. More than a century ago, Nucla was founded by idealists who hoped their community would become the “center of Socialistic government for the world.” But these days it feels like the edge of the earth. Highway 97 dead-ends at the top of Main Street; the population is around seven hundred and falling. The nearest traffic light is an hour and a half away. When old ranching couples drive their pickups into Nucla, the wives leave the passenger’s side empty and sit in the middle of the front seat, close enough to touch their husbands. It’s as if something about the landscape—those endless hills, that vacant sky—makes a person appreciate the intimacy of a Ford F-150 cab.

5. How to turn Christmas ornaments into hot air balloons.

6. I haven't watched it yet, but Mr. Plinkett reviewed Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (Presumably filled with very dark humor.)

Link roundup

1. Why do we call them "tuxedos"?

The evening dress for men now popularly known as a tuxedo (sometimes formally termed black tie attire), takes its name from Tuxedo Park, where it was said to have been worn for the first time in the United States, by Griswald Lorillard at the annual Autumn Ball of the Tuxedo Club founded by Pierre Lorillard IV, and thereafter became popular for formal dress in America. It became known as the tuxedo when a fellow asked another at the Autumn Ball, "Why does that man's jacket not have coattails on it?" The other answered, "He is from Tuxedo."

The town was named "tuxedo" supposedly from the Algonquin phrase ptauk seet tough ("place of the bear").

2. Apparently this is the fashion world's current "it" girl.

3. Another terrible review of Games Workshop's new Finecast miniatures (and customer service).

Hedy Lamarr helped invent GPS, WI-FI, and a homing torpedo

Wikipedia:

In 10 August 1933, aged 19, she married Friedrich Mandl, a Vienna-based arms manufacturer 13 years her senior. . . . Mandl prevented her from pursuing her acting career, and instead took her to meetings with technicians and business partners. In these meetings, the mathematically talented Lamarr learned about military technology. Otherwise she had to stay at their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. She later related that, although Mandl was part-Jewish, he consorted with Nazi industrialists. In Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr wrote that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler attended Mandl's grand parties. She related that in 1937 she disguised herself as one of her maids and fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce, and then moved to London. According to another version of the episode, she persuaded Mandl to allow her to attend a party wearing all her expensive jewelry, later drugged him with the help of her maid, and made her escape out of the country with the jewelry.

Newsweek:

In 1940, while acting alongside Jimmy Stewart and Judy Garland in the MGM musical Ziegfeld Girl, the 26-year-old Lamarr spent her free time devising a radio-controlled submarine missile-guidance system to help the U.S. Navy in World War II. What moved her to do this? “She didn’t drink and she didn’t like to party, so she took up inventing,” Rhodes explains. Of course, there was more to it than that. The torpedo was not the starlet’s only invention: she also came up with an antiaircraft shell with a proximity fuse, and a fizzing cube that could turn a plain glass of water into soda.

There's a new book called Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary inven­tion based on the rapid switching of communications sig­nals among a spread of different frequencies. Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today.

Only a writer of Richard Rhodes’s caliber could do justice to this remarkable story. Unhappily married to a Nazi arms dealer, Lamarr fled to America at the start of World War II; she brought with her not only her theatrical talent but also a gift for technical innovation. An introduction to Antheil at a Hollywood dinner table culminated in a U.S. patent for a jam- proof radio guidance system for torpedoes—the unlikely duo’s gift to the U.S. war effort.

What other book brings together 1920s Paris, player pianos, Nazi weaponry, and digital wireless into one satisfying whole? In its juxtaposition of Hollywood glamour with the reality of a brutal war, Hedy’s Folly is a riveting book about unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world.

Preorder for 40% off at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. T-Bob Hebert and Spiffy Evans - - two players on Grantland's 2011-12 College Football All-Name Team.

2. I enjoyed the copy of Lady with a Past: A Petulant French Sculptor, His Quest for Immortality, and the Real Story of the Statue of Liberty I was sent. Lots of interesting information about the building of the Statue of Liberty. For example, sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi devised the Statue of Liberty only after he tried and failed to convince "Ismail the Magnificent" of Egypt to build a rather different statue in Egypt:

His sculpture depicted a robed fellah, an Egyptian slave, holding a torch aloft in her stout hand.

The Kindle single is $2 at Amazon.

3. Comment and win an art book.

Link roundup

1. "One of the first American chefs to master French cooking was James Hemings, who just so happened to be Thomas Jefferson’s slave."

2. There has to be some crucial fact left out of this story by Business Week, right?

Fiat’s 22,000 factory workers in Italy assembled 650,000 cars in 2009, while the 6,100 employees at its plant in Tychy, Poland, built 600,000 vehicles.

3. Myke Amend's basically running his own kickstarter with prizes including high-res downloads of his airships, and holiday cards.

Link roundup

(The last batch of starred items saved in Google Reader.)


The Mississippi River Basin Model. Via.




"World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT." Via.




Pete Rose via.




"Zuckerberg's Bizarre Facebook Insignia Revealed, And What It Means." Via.




April Fool's prank makes a copier voice-activated. Via.

Link roundup

1. "Divers find 13th century wreck from Kublai Khan's Mongol invasion fleet that was destroyed by 'divine' typhoon."

2. Finally ate at Michael Voltaggio's sandwich place ink.sack. Sandwiches are about $6 each, there was no line at 11:30, and that was good because it took them forever to make the food. Thumbs down on the cold fried chicken, which tasted only of the ranch dressing, but thumbs up for the spicy tuna, Jose Andres, and CLT. I'll definitely go back.

3. Trailer for Super TIME Force (bullet hell).

4. Papercraft calendars and creatures (some cute monster paper toys for October). Via.

Art project dedicated to American history

A few of my favorites from the large and ongoing Momentus Project, dedicated to American history:


The Boston Massacre by Chris DeLorenzo.



The Declaration of Independence by Ellis Latham-Brown.



The Battle of Antietam by Glenn Thomas.



The Women's Suffrage Movement by Kristina Collantes.



The Watergate Scandal by Shed Labs.

*Buy propaganda posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. From an article at Grantland about WWE wrestlers not having union protection:

Jesse Ventura tried to organize a union in the 1980s6 but, according to the New York Times, "found it hard to find wrestlers willing to join him." When he later sued the WWF to reclaim royalties he thought were owed him (Ventura eventually won a more than $800,000 judgment), it was revealed in the proceedings that Hulk Hogan ratted out his union scheme to Vince McMahon. It's hard to imagine a more blatant example of a top star protecting his status by sabotaging collective action.

2. Two interesting articles by Walter Russell Mead: politics in Thailand (which has an Office of Prevention and Suppression of Information Technology Crimes); China's trouble in Burma.

3. NPR:

It's 1940. The Nazis have taken Copenhagen. They are literally marching through the streets, and physicist Niels Bohr has just hours, maybe minutes, to make two Nobel Prize medals disappear.

These medals are made of 23-karat gold. They are heavy to handle, and being shiny and inscribed, they are noticeable. The Nazis have declared no gold shall leave Germany, but two Nobel laureates, one of Jewish descent, the other an opponent of the National Socialists, have quietly sent their medals to Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics, for protection. Their act is probably a capital offense — if the Gestapo can find the evidence.

Read on. Via.

4. And speaking of science, "Daniel Shechtman, who has won the chemistry Nobel for discovering quasicrystals, was initially lambasted for 'bringing disgrace' on his research group." "He recalled how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and a double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening 'crusade; against him."

Link roundup

1. How Whole Foods (and other markets) stages the market to encourage you to buy.

2. Wikipedia:

Stageira was an ancient Greek city on the Chalkidiki peninsula and is chiefly known for being the birthplace of Aristotle. The city lies approximately 8 kilometers north northeast of the present-day village of Stagira, close to the town of Olympiada . . . Philip II of Macedon later had more success, occupying and destroying the city. As payment for Aristotle's tutoring of his son Alexander the Great, Philip later rebuilt the city and resettled the old city's inhabitants, who had been enslaved. Many new structures were built at this time, including an aqueduct, two shrines to Demeter and many houses.

Via.

3. "Starting in October anyone with a PlayStation 3 or a gaming PC will be able to download and play DC Universe Online for free. They'll have access to all game content, two character slots, and the ability to purchase optional expansion packs should they choose to do so."

Original plan for Mount Rushmore

Wikipedia says:

A model at the site depicting Mount Rushmore's intended final design. Insufficient funding forced the carving to end in October 1941.

Via.

Link roundup

1. "US researcher Eric Poeschla has produced three glowing GM cats by using a virus to carry a gene, called green fluorescent protein (GFP), into the eggs from which the animals eventually grew." (If scientists admit to creating stuff like this, what have they done and kept secret?)

2. And speaking of genetic modification, I choose to believe that this is true:

Allegedly [carrots] are orange for entirely political reasons: in the 17th century, Dutch growers are thought to have cultivated orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange – who led the the struggle for Dutch independence – and the color stuck. A thousand years of yellow, white and purple carrot history, was wiped out in a generation.

(If you're not familiar with William of Orange, then I highly recommend Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.)

3. 15% off t-shirts at Zazzle with the code TEEMUGSPROST (through 9/25). I recommend Miskatonic University, Vonster, Adam Koford, and my own store.

Link roundup

1. Big gallery of Bruce Timm's comic work (NSFW).

2. For my fellow Blogger users: new Blogger app for IOS.

3. "Sidney Gottlieb proved to the world that there are few things more dangerous than a chemist with a metaphysical streak - especially if he collects a few thwarted ambitions. Born in 1918, he was deemed physically unfit for duty in the Second World War. Instead of going to war, he went to the University of Wisconsin, and graduated with a degree in chemistry. His degree didn't help him into the army, but it did interest the CIA."

4. From a summary of Gawker Media's first company-wide meeting:

Gawker Media's tech build-up includes what is said to be a very intense commenter system. (What was your top takeaway from the evening? I asked one writer. "Soon writers will be obsolete," the writer told me. "Reddit?" said another. To be fair, that's a common refrain over the years at Gawker, but it is an ideal outcome for a tech company. Gawker Media loves talent, but they also know there's always more talent.

(How many Gawker Media writers have you continued to follow after they left the company?)

Link roundup

1. Warren Ellis:

The New DC comics stuff looks so much like stuff I would never read that it oddly fills me with hope that they are targetting the core audience they want. If a 43-year old man looks at most of this promo stuff and goes meh, then that’s very probably a good sign for them.

2. Clever advertising by Morton's steakhouse.



3. Fascinating article about the Ottoman Empire and Turkey's current political plans.

Link roundup

1. Getting banned from Google+ not only leads to being banned from other Google services, but also apparently prevents you from even viewing other people's public Google+ pages.



2. Bill Simmons's latest podcast is an hour-long interview with David Stern about the state of the NBA lockout.



3. The Germanic conquest of England, circa 400 AD:

The massive movement of people was apparently triggered in 407 A.D., the year in which the ailing Roman Empire withdrew much of its army from Britain. Soon afterwards, it stopped paying its soldiers altogether. As a result, the last legionaries took off.



This left the island unprotected, an opportunity that the starving people on the continent couldn't pass up. Angles, Saxons and Jutes left their mound dwellings and broad bean fields in the wetlands of northern Europe in droves.



Entire family clans set out to sea, usually in the spring and summer when the water was calm. Their ships were bulging with household goods, cows and horses. According to an old chronicle, the land of the Angles was soon "abandoned."

Via.

Oil wells in Southern Calfornia

Wild vintage photos and postcards of oil wells in Los Angeles. Via.