Weekend Links 3-30-18

A shorter than normal collection of links for your weekend reading. Just means I had less time to hunt stuff down this week.

Facebook has been in the news a lot because of a data breach. But the problem goes much, much deeper as Gracy Olmstead points out.  I've long since stopped sharing personal stuff on Facebook and these days don't spend a lot of time there.

There's a lot of truth in this article: Remote Workers Outperform Office Workers. I have worked remotely for the past fifteen years and always find I am far more productive working remotely than in an office.

Wise words from Andy Crouch: It's Time to Reckon with Celebrity Power.

It amazes me that decades after the end of World War II there are still news stories connected to the war. The latest is the discovery of the wreckage of the USS Juneau which sank in 1942. The wreck is notable because among the victims were the five Sullivan brothers from Iowa who insisted on serving in the Navy together.

Via The Curious Reader, a wonderful analysis of master and servant, Jeeves and Wooster.

The benefits of practicing attention management.



And finally, baseball is back!

Ready for some baseball!

A post shared by Snoopy And The Peanuts Gang (@snoopygrams) on Mar 29, 2018 at 9:40am PDT

Weekend Links 3-23-18

Your Friday roundup of interesting stuff unearthed this week:

I've always been curious how rare book dealers appraise books. Surprisingly it's a much quicker process than you might think.

You can now take a free online course in Klingon.

Every wonder how to write a great Jeopardy! clue?

Why P. G. Wodehouse is the funniest author in the English language. It's hard to argue with this logic. This also happens to be one of my current favorite websites to visit.

Steve McQueen's 1968 Ford Mustang from the movie Bullitt is considered the holy grail among car collectors. For a long time it was thought to be lost. The fact that it was found is only the beginning of the story. 

In some parts of the country it's time for the dreaded PBS fundraising drive.
It's rare that umpires speak in public about their profession which is why this interview is so interesting.

This documentary about Fred Rogers looks like it will be amazing.



Related: Why Mr. Rogers still matters.

Weekend Links 3-16-18

A roundup of interesting stuff I ran across this week:

Last weekend marked the premiere of the film version of A Wrinkle in Time. Fans of the novel have been alarmed that removal of the faith elements from the novel are going to dilute the story. Plus here's seven things to know about the novel and its author.

Fifty years ago this week, Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered. The amazing ways the film foretold the future.

Matt Chandler delivers a powerful message on biblical masculinity and its absence in our culture is at the heart of the brokenness we see today.

P. G. Wodehouse was one of the most prolific writers of all time. Here are nine of his lesser known books that are worth reading.

Productivity tip: How to Send Insights to Your Future Self.

In this brief video, Karen Swallow Prior explains why Christians should be readers.

The easy response to the news is to tune out. The much more difficult (and possibly better response) is to carefully tune in.

I love the fact that Food and Wine magazine chose a local burger chain as the nation's best. It is really good. Well worth the visit if you're ever in the neighborhood.

This is a fascinating article: How a book warehouse is changing Columbia University's Library.

I've never seen a play like this before. I am not sure how he pulled it off.

This is a fantastic idea.

Video of the week - Nutella: The Miracle of World War II. (Hat tip: Tim Challies)

Weekend Links 3-9-18

Your weekly roundup of interesting things from the web:

One of the things I love about Brad Meltzer's thrillers is the tremendous amount of research he puts into his novels. His new novel The Escape Artist was just published this week. One of the characters in the novel is a mortician at Dover Air Force base. While visiting the mortuary to do research for the book he discovered a message from 9/11 victim that was sent from beyond the grave. It's a fascinating story.

Gracy Olmstead has a terrific column on discovering community through book clubs. She also quotes P. G. Wodehouse which is an added bonus.

Productivity tip. sometimes you need a reset day.

Legendary North Carolina Tar Heels broadcaster Woody Durham passed away this week. I shared a few of my own memories of Woody here but Adam Lucas did a much better job summing up how Tar Heel fans felt about him. 

While lots of sports news outlets are facing cutbacks, The Athletic is growing by leaps and bounds. Seems like every day they are hiring more writers.

For baseball fans, the dead ball era refers to that period in history before the home run became commonplace. Most of our sights of the era have been based on photographs. However, this video shows footage from actual games of the era. 

The assassination of President James Garfield rocked the nation yet few people know the full story. Now there is a move underway to mark the site of the assassination.  If you want to learn more about the assassination, I highly recommend Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

One of the best ways to stay informed is to read less news.

This may seem counter intuitive but actually makes a lot of sense: I wanted to be a good mom. So I bought a gun. 

Farewell Woody

As the ACC basketball tournament gets cranked up this weekend, North Carolina Tar Heels are faced with the sad news that Woody Durham, the voice of the Tar Heels, has died.

Growing up in North Carolina the son of a Tar Heel (my father graduated in 1958) I had no choice but to become a Tar Heel fan. Woody started his career with the Heels in 1971 when radio was still the dominant medium in college sports. As a result, generations of Tar Heels like myself grew up listening to Woody's calls.

The impact that Woody had on Tar Heel nation was visible. It was not uncommon during football games for fans to chant "Woody, Woody" over and over again until he would lean out the press box and wave to the crowd acknowledging he had heard their chants. Fans would frequently bring radios to the game so they could listen to his call while watching the action.

It was also common when games were televised for many folks to "turn down the sound" and turn on Woody's call of the game. I can vividly remember while a student at Carolina being at numerous viewing parties where Woody's call was on while the game was on television.

When I was at Carolina there were only eight teams in the ACC so the basketball tournament would start on the first Friday of March. I always made a point to make sure I didn't have any Friday classes after noon (and if I did I would have skipped them) because not only would be calling the Carolina game he would call the entire tournament. That meant on opening day he would call four games. Stop and think about that for a moment. And he was just as sharp at the end of the day as he was at the beginning. It was the one time of the year that no matter which ACC school you pledged allegiance to you would have the privilege of having Woody call your team's game.

The reason that he connected so well with the fans was he was not only a Tar Heel (class of '63) but also at heart a fan. His excitement when Carolina had success was evident in the tone of his calls. All you have to do is listen to a few of his memorable moments to hear that at heart he's not just a broadcaster but a fan.

But I will always treasure the brief period of time when I got to work with him. I was a part time announcer and sports report at WCHL in Chapel Hill while I was at Carolina. I was fortunate enough to work with the Tar Heel Sports Network my senior year including conducting locker room interviews following home games during the 1987-88 season. I was able to sit in the booth and watch a master at work.

If I learned anything from working with Woody it was the importance of getting details right. For example, he was a stickler about getting players' names right. He hated mispronounced names. He also encouraged me to make sure to get the details right because they were important.

As a listener, Woody made it sound like he had a really easy job. But the fact of the matter is that he put an immense amount of preparation into each broadcast. It showed with the immense amount of information he managed to convey during a broadcast. Plus he was able to paint a word picture of the action like few other broadcasters have been able to since.

I would venture to say there are probably only a handful of announcers who have been able to make the personal connection with their fans they way that Woody Durham did. He was definitely one of kind. And Tar Heel nation will miss him greatly.

Weekend Links 3-2-18

After an unexpected week off a whole host of links for your weekend reading. I'm spending the weekend off of social media and am going book hunting. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, enjoy these articles.

This is fascinating: these astronauts have seen Earth from space. Here's how that experience changed them.

Odd but true: divers found an undetonated World War II bomb in Sydney harbor.

Someone decided to abandon a Boeing 737 in Bali and nobody knows why.

If you can't remember the last book you read or the last movie or television show you saw you're not alone.

Speaking of reading, here's how to read more books. I have found that I have to make time every day to read. Plus I have at least one book I am working on at any given time. Right now I am churning through about seven books a month and that feels like a pretty good pace. I also follow lots of different bookish people on Instagram and it's a treasure trove of inspiration.

Tim Challies weighs in on why men don't read books written by women. I think he's on the right track in terms of how writers target their writing for a particular audience but mostly I think it has to do with how publishers market the books.

Quote of the week: Carl Trueman on the Oscars:

I make a point of never watching the Oscars. If I want to waste four hours of my life being alternately patronized and reminded what an abject failure I am according to the criteria of contemporary society holds dear, I can always read The New Yorker.

I don't like to wade into politics here any more in large part because it has become far too toxic to discuss. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this column from Mona Charen. Last week she was booed off the stage at CPAC because she dared to call conservatives on their hypocrisy when it comes to sexual harassment and the chronic excusing of past behaviors of their candidates. I applaud her for her courage. I wish more conservatives had her backbone.

Guns have also been a hot topic in the aftermath of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. But this piece by David French is very thoughtful and worth careful consideration.

Joe Carter wraps up his series on how Christians should engage with the news. In summary, consume less of it. The previous installments are here, here, and here.

A related issue that frankly has been woefully under-reported is the plague of fatherless homes. Matt Walsh has some great insights into things every boy needs to learn from his father.

Matt Szczur may have moved on from the Cubs to the Padres but he still has fond memories of the 2016 World Series. He's also quite the talented artist.

"Great people choose to do what is right no matter what." That certainly rings true for Iowa's Jordan Bohannon who missed a free throw on purpose.  A very classy move.