| Grandma |
[19 Aug 2015|10:00am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2015/08/grandma_with_lily_tomlin_reviewed_american_pie_director_paul_weitz_s_new.html In Grandma’s opening scene, Lily Tomlin’s Elle Reid breaks up with her girlfriend of four months in the cruelest way she can think of: “You’re a footnote,” she tells Olivia (Judy Greer), a minor postscript to the 38-year relationship that ended with the death of Elle’s partner, Vi, or Violet, 18 months earlier. Olivia burbles on about love, but Elle pays her no mind. “Leave your keys on the coffee table,” she tells the younger woman, cold as ice. Then she heads to the shower where she dissolves into tears.
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| Eat Your Space Vegetables |
[19 Aug 2015|11:02am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/08/space_vegetables_eat_them_before_they_eat_you.html In what was tweeted as a giant leap for deep space exploration, NASA astronauts on the International Space Station have eaten red romaine lettuce that they grew on board. Crew member Scott Kelly’s tweet (“It was one small bite for man, one giant leap for #NASAVEGGIE...”) was obviously meant to mimic Neil Armstrong’s historic first words from the surface of the moon. Yet Kelly missed the chance to not only correct the quote (Armstrong long asserted that he had actually said the much more poetic phrase “one small step for a man”) but to include the foliage pun “one giant leaf.” This tells us that, six months into Kelly’s year in space, he is spending too much time on scientific experiments and not enough time on tweet drafting.
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| Pile Paranoia |
[19 Aug 2015|01:03pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/travel_explainer/2015/08/why_do_hotel_carpets_feel_weird_explained.html At the beginning of Die Hard, a tense, aviophobic John McClane receives “the secret to air travel” from his seatmate: “After you get where you’re going, take off your shoes and socks, then walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with your toes.” If you’ve ever made fists with your toes inside your hotel room, you know the carpet feels mysteriously different. To a bare foot, it feels entirely unlike any carpet you would find in a real home—more like a fuzzy floor than a comfy bedroom carpet. Why do typical hotel carpets—the sort you encounter in a standard Hyatt or Marriott-type room—feel so weird?
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| The Liberty to End One’s Life |
[19 Aug 2015|03:55pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/08/death_with_dignity_and_gay_marriage_liberty_arguments_support_physician.html Aja Riggs doesn’t want the state of New Mexico to dictate how she’ll die. Riggs suffers from uterine cancer—currently in remission, but likely to return—and fears it will leave her in excruciating pain during her final days. To avoid so much torment, Riggs wants to be sure her doctor can ease her into death through a painless overdose if she so chooses. But New Mexico law prohibits physician-assisted suicide. So Riggs, along with two oncologists, is suing to have the statute struck down as a violation of her fundamental rights under the state constitution.
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| “1 Shot Fired by Officer” |
[19 Aug 2015|08:47pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/08/cop_shot_himself_and_blamed_a_black_driver_police_officer_kelly_stewart.html On Dec. 18, 2012, in Durham, North Carolina, police officer Kelly Stewart pulled over Carlos Antonio Riley for a routine traffic stop. What happened next is a matter of intense dispute. Riley, who is black, says the officer racially profiled him then attacked him. Stewart, who is also black, says Riley engaged him in a violent, physical struggle. The encounter ended when Stewart accidentally shot himself in the leg with his firearm. Soon after, the police department logged the gun’s discharge: “1 shot fired by officer.”
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| Fear the Walking Dead |
[19 Aug 2015|08:59pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2015/08/fear_the_walking_dead_is_a_zombie_parable_that_scarily_mirrors_our_own_age.html Fear the Walking Dead, the new spinoff of AMC’s monstrously popular The Walking Dead, put a pit in my stomach, made me jumpy and jangly, and generally filled me with anxiety and dread—which, really, is all you can ask of a zombie show. Except maybe for grotesque, flayed, desiccated, and otherwise gnarly moving corpses, permanently animated by a desire to chomp off faces. Fear the Walking Dead does not yet boast as many of these soulless cravers of human flesh as The Walking Dead, and fewer still that look like rotting carcasses in the advanced stages of limb loss, but give them, and the show, time. Zombies apparently need about six weeks of aging to reach peak putrefaction.
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