This is pretty bad-ass. From the YouTube description: Buy the whole album at http://www.pigfaceboy.co.uk Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pigfaceboy A Complete History Of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris. Music by “Pig With The Face Of A Boy” Written and performed by DONALD NEWHOLM and DAN WOODS, with MALCOLM GAYNER & ROBIN HARRIS Photographed by TIM JORDAN Costumes by LUCY NEWHOLM Production assistant NICOLA LINCÉ Special thanks to JAMES LAMONT and REMY LAMONT Produced by CHRIS LINCÉ and DAN WOODS for the ‘Musical Comedy Lab\’ Directed, animated, and edited by...
Continue reading...History
Sounds familiar…
There was a cool story in the Times yesterday celebrating the history of women’s suffrage. Definitely recommend reading it. One part of the story really speaks to my 2010 self. Doesn’t this sound familiar? That year (1918) the 19th Amendment passed the House. It stalled in the Senate — blocked by conservative Southerners — but Wilson muscled it through in 1919.
Continue reading...Happy Anniversary, Women's Suffrage!
On this day 90 years ago, Tennessee became the final state to ratify the 19th amendment, finally giving women the right to vote. If you haven’t yet, go read Gail Collins’ excellent column last week describing the circumstances leading up to that historic vote: My Favorite August. I was thinking about how to best celebrate this occasion, and I think it’s in the spirit of gratefulness. Granted, that’s not my usual mood, particularly when it comes to women’s issues. As you know from my repeated rants, being a pro-choice feminist can be frustrating. When it comes to...
Continue reading...Great Moments in Campaign Advertising: "Read My Lips"
This is the ad that, maybe more than anything else, most likely sank President George H. W. Bush’s chances for re-election. Of course, it was those tax increases that made way for years of balanced budgets under Clinton, but don’t tell anybody. And, of course, that raising the gas tax was maybe just a little before its time, not to mention a policy many progressives want to further. But, it was a really, really effective ad. This is exactly the script I bet the Republican nominee will use in 2012.
Continue reading...Great moments in campaign ad history: Nixon Now
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonAuLOIjZ0&w=560&h=445] On August 9, 1974—36 years ago today—President Richard Milhous Nixon resigned the office and went home. What a catchy tune his 1972 campaign advertisement had, though.
Continue reading...How the scurvy cure was lost
Over at Idle Words, a fascinating story about the history of scurvy, and how the cure, which was basically discovered in 1747, was somehow not well-known even as late as Robert Falcon Scott\’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be...
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