The question is, Will, why shouldn’t you work for the NSA? A very prescient question, at that..
Shredding the acoustic guitar at 15 [Video]
15 year old Ben Lapps tries his hand at basketball & guitar. Check out his performance at the Canadian Guitar Festival.
Kurt Vonnegut to JFK [Letters of note]
‘On Occasion, I Write Pretty Well’ – thus wrote Kurt Vonnegut to JFK, 38 at the time, struggling to find success as a writer.
For all children who whistle in the dark [Poem]
A poem (& read aloud) by Maya Angelou “for all children who whistle in the dark and who refuse to admit that they’re frightened out of their wits” [via Brainpickings]
The Sachal Studios Orchestra – Everybody Hurts [Music Video]
The Sachal Studios Orchestra, based in Lahore, Pakistan, perform their version of REM’s Everybody Hurts. Music is universal in its language. The flute is ‘Beautiful’.
Our connected brains, memory & recall [article]
Dr Ben Martynoga writes about the connected brain in the School of Life:
The information, entertainment and connectedness that the internet provides is highly compelling and often hugely useful. However ultimately we have to decide which devices to use, when to use them, and when to simply turn them off.
An amazing bead chain experiment [Video]
Steve Mould demonstrates the amazing properties of a string of metal beads – they seem to levitate, defy gravity, & jump out of the beaker. Why do they do that? Mould thinks he knows the answer, & watching the experiment in slow motion might explain it to some extent. If you have kids or grand-kids, definitely try this at home!
Writing complaint letters a la Mark Twain [Letters of note]
Mark Twain Drafts the Ultimate Letter of Complaint (1905).
The Houdini Loop [Video]
A teenager created this tune by looping the sounds around the house.
The flight of the bumblebee: Yuja Wang on the piano [Music, video]
Chinese pianist Yuja Wang plays Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. 90 seconds, & you’ll be blown away by her mastery, & speed. She’s been learning the piano since the age of 6.