interesting things
William C. Rhoden looks at the high number of no-hitters and near no-hitters this season and believes the reason rests more in the batter’s box than on the pitcher’s mound.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/more-to-rash-of-no-hitters-than-pitching/
Charlie Kaufman isn’t exactly an impersonal writer. His attempts to adapt The Orchid Thief turned into Adaptation., a movie about a painfully self-aware screenwriter named “Charlie Kaufman†falling apart while attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. It’s a struggle to imagine Kaufman, either fictionalized or IRL, thriving in the anonymous and often abrasive environment of a sitcom writer’s room. So it’s surprising that, before breaking into screenwriting, Kaufman worked in television for almost a decade, staffing on sketch shows like The Dana Carvey Show and The Edge and sitcoms like Get A Life and Ned & Stacey.
There’s evidence to support the idea that Kaufman might not have thrived in collaborative settings. In this oral history of The Dana Carvey Show, the writers describe him in the same way surprised neighbors describe convicted serial killers, mentioning that he was “really quiet,†“extremely shy and awkward,†and “kept to himself.†Considering how poorly suited Kaufman seems for the job of sitcom writing, I wanted to take a look at his episodes of Get A Life and Ned & Stacey and see if there was any evidence of the man who would go on to write, among other things, the definitive film about a freelance puppeteer possessing a major film actor.
—
See more posts by The Awl
via The Awl http://splitsider.com/2012/06/a-look-back-at-charlie-kaufmans-sitcom-work/
People who are depressed tend to check their mail compulsively, watch a lot of videos and switch between multiple internet applications more frequently than their peers.
via Vanity Fair | VF.com http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/06/Mitt-ann-romney-betty-ford-horses-addiction
LOS ANGELES — Troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan was banned from driving while filming “Liz and Dick” by the insurance company used to cover the movie…
via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/lohan_was_banned_from_driving_crash_ykdcuyhtcVqSH2Qanu9KZP?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six
He may have played the young drug dealer Bodie on “The Wire,†but J.D. Williams is, in fact, simply another innocent black man sick of being profiled and stopped and frisked. Capital ran into Williams at Sunday’s Silent March to End Stop and Frisk, where he was marching with a poster of Trayvon Martin to highlight how dangerous racial profiling can be. As for how his celebrity contributes to his being stopped by police officers, Williams, pictured far right in top image, said, “I might get recognized, but they’re not sure where they know me from…So, a lot of times an officer might think he’s arrested me before.†(Photo: HBO)
By a two-to-one margin, Americans favor the Obama administration’s new immigration policy, according to a Bloomberg poll released on Tuesday.
The results, which show that 64 percent of Americans agreed with the policy announced on June 15, suggest that the president has reinforced his standing on immigration, an issue that Romney and Republicans have tried to make gains in recently. Just 30 percent said they disagreed with the policy.
“President Obama announced that the U.S. would halt the deportation of some illegal immigrants if they came here before age 16, have been in the country for five years, have no criminal record, are in school or have a high school diploma or have been honorably discharged from the military. Do you agree or disagree with this new policy?” the poll asked.
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/poll-americans-favor-obama-s-immigration-policy-2-to-1-20120619
China has blocked a number of websites before, for a variety of reasons, but observers believe that last week marked the first time that an entire country has been blocked by the “Great Firewall”.
According to reports on Yahoo Japan, sites with a “co.jp” top domain were blocked for around a day and a half over June 15 and 16.
China and Japan enjoy a bitter regional rivalry of course, but quite why the co.jp domain was blocked remains a mystery. Tech blogger William Long has pointed out Japanese sites with “.com” and “.jp” domains had not been blocked, perhaps implying that the move was simply a mistake.
Of course, this being China, there’s also a much more fun, conspiratorial theory. And of course, it involves the incredible scandal of ousted Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai.
Multiple Weibo users have pointed towards the possible interference of “Headmaster Fang” — the un complementary nickname for Fang Binxing, the man behind China’s incredible online censorship project
Jimmy at Tea Leaf Nation has put together a great summary of the crazy “Headmaster Fang” theory.
Basically — Headmaster Fang himself grew extremely angry at Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun after it reported that he personally had a link to former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun’s US consulate visit in February (the incident that sparked the whole Bo Xilai controversy) and also may have played a role in Bo’s alleged surveillance of senior Communist Party officials (including President Hu Jintao).
He then used his power to block all Japanese domains for an day and a half before something (higher powers in Beijing?) prompted him to stop.
It’s clear that Fang was outraged — he expressed his anger on Weibo and called for an investigation — but the idea of him personally (and presumably, without the Party’s consent) banning all Japan’s domains with the push of a button really seems crazy.
But then again….
Watch the video below for a refresher of what happened to Communist bigwig Bo Xilai and his fall from grace:
<object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ id=”ooyalaPlayer_2v2ax_h3mydo4k” width=”618″ height=”346″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab”><param name=”movie” value=”http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=NpbmJrNDpsA4_9MLVQ0cckmbUOfGGetG&version=2″ /><param name=”bgcolor” value=”#000000″ /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”flashvars” value=”embedType=noscriptObjectTag&embedCode=NpbmJrNDpsA4_9MLVQ0cckmbUOfGGetG&videoPcode=BhdmY6l9g002rBhQ6aEBZiheacDu” /><embed src=”http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=NpbmJrNDpsA4_9MLVQ0cckmbUOfGGetG&version=2″ bgcolor=”#000000″ width=”618″ height=”346″ name=”ooyalaPlayer_2v2ax_h3mydo4k” align=”middle” play=”true” loop=”false” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” flashvars=”&embedCode=NpbmJrNDpsA4_9MLVQ0cckmbUOfGGetG&videoPcode=BhdmY6l9g002rBhQ6aEBZiheacDu” pluginspage=”http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer”></embed></object>
Produced by Daniel Goodman
Please follow International on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
Ramin Setoodeh attends a party of the ‘Home Alone’ star and ends up with a T-Rex painted to his face.
via The Daily Beast – Latest Articles http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/19/macaulay-culkin-s-life-after-fame.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29