Video Profiles: 89-Year Old London Illustrator David Gentleman On His New Book “My Town” (May 2020)
David Gentleman is an iconic British illustrator and designer who has lived a lifetime in London. Drawing from over sixty years of engagement with this most 
well-known capital city, his most recent book,
My Town presents London as it was and as it is today. His beautiful and intricate work – of the Thames, Hampstead Heath, Camden Town (where David Gentleman has lived in the same house for fifty years), London’s parks and sights – offers us the pleasure of looking again at the everyday.
Accompanied by reflections on the work of an artist, commentary on the possibilities of ink, pen and paint and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a delight for all those who flock to London.
David William Gentleman is an English artist. He studied illustration at the Royal College of Art under Edward Bawden and John Nash. He has worked in watercolour, lithography and wood engraving, at scales ranging from platform-length murals for Charing Cross Underground Station in London to postage stamps and logos. (Wikipedia)
2020 Election Primaries: “Iowa Caucus Explained”
The Iowa caucuses are biennial electoral events for members of the Democratic and Republican Parties in the U.S. state of Iowa. Unlike primary elections in most other U.S. states, where registered voters go to polling places to cast ballots, Iowans instead gather at local caucus meetings to discuss and vote on the candidates. During both the presidential and midterm election seasons, registered Iowan voters vote in a per-precinct caucus for the party of which they are registered as a member.[1] The caucuses are also held to select delegates to county conventions and party committees, among other party activities.
From Wikipedia
Nutrition Studies: 70% Of U.S. Fast-Food Meals Are “Poor Dietary Quality”
“Our findings show dining out is a recipe for unhealthy eating most of the time,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author and dean of the Friedman School.
At fast-food restaurants, 70 percent of the meals Americans consumed were of poor dietary quality in 2015-16, down from 75 percent in 2003-04. At full-service restaurants, about 50 percent were of poor nutritional quality, an amount that remained stable over the study period. The remainder were of intermediate nutritional quality.
BOSTON (Jan. 29, 2020, 9:00 a.m. EST)—The typical American adult gets one of every five 
calories from a restaurant, but eating out is a recipe for meals of poor nutritional quality in most cases, according to a new study by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
Published today in The Journal of Nutrition, the study analyzed the dietary selections of more than 35,000 U.S. adults from 2003-2016 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) who dined at full-service (those with wait staff) or fast-food restaurants, which included pizza shops and what has become known as fast-casual. The researchers assessed nutritional quality by evaluating specific foods and nutrients in the meals, based on the American Heart Association 2020 diet score.
Profiles: 55-Year Old Canadian Artist Mark Laguë – “Painter Of Light”
Painter of Light
Mark has developed an international reputation and has won numerous awards, both in his native Canada and in the United States. A dedicated painter, Mark Lague was born in Lachine Quebec in 1964 and he has had a fascination with drawing since childhood, a skill he practices constantly, even to this day.
Upon graduation from Montreal’s Concordia University in Design, Mark embarked on a 13-year career in the animation industry, working primarily as a background designer and art director. During this time, despite working full time, he began receiving international acclaim for his watercolour paintings through competitions, juried shows, and solo exhibitions.
In 2000, Mark switched to oil as his primary medium, and in 2002 made the jump to full time painter. As an artist he is a realist, who is open to virtually all subject matter. What keeps him excited about painting is his endless quest to simplify and get to the essence of whatever he paints. Mark has been featured in numerous national art magazines, and continues to receive international recognition for his distinctive style of painting.
WWI Literature: A Reading Of “In Another Country” – Ernest Hemingway (1927)
“In Another Country” is a poignant short story about the casualties of war, written by Noble Prize winner Ernest Hemingway, which deals with the experiences of an injured American army officer stranded and alienated in Italy who describes in first person narrative the events and the experiences of being rehabilitated during World War 1. It is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction.
Summary (Wikipedia)
The short story is about an ambulance corps member in Milan during World War I. Although unnamed, he is assumed to be Nick Adams, a character Hemingway made to represent himself. He has an injured knee and visits a hospital daily for rehabilitation. There the “machines” are used to speed the healing, with the doctors making much of the miraculous new technology. They show pictures to the wounded of injuries like theirs healed by the machines, but the war-hardened soldiers are portrayed as skeptical, perhaps justifiably so.
As the narrator walks through the streets with fellow soldiers, the townspeople hate them openly because they are officers. Their oasis from this treatment is Cafe Cova, where the waitresses are very patriotic.
Podcast Interview: Founders Of “Vollebak” Outdoor Menswear On The Future Of Clothing
Steve Tidball is the CEO and co-founder of Vollebak, a men’s outerwear label launched with one question: what does the future of clothing look like? Steve and his brother Nick dreamed up the brand while running ultra-marathons in extreme conditions. Today, leaning heavily on science and technology, their team creates pieces from materials most have never thought to use, from titanium to graphene.
The Indestructible Puffer is made from Dyneema which is the single strongest fibre known to man today. If you’re into chemistry, it’s an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene that combines extreme strength with very low weight. On a weight for weight basis Dyneema is up to 15x stronger than steel and 40% stronger than high-strength aramid fibres. While it’s often used as a composite – an ingredient added to other materials to make them exceptionally strong – the entire outside of this jacket is made from 100% Dyneema.
Profiles: 76-Year Old Country Singer Terry Allen Releases New Album “Just Like Moby Dick”
The connections to Melville’s masterpiece are metaphorical and allusive, as elusive as the White Whale. The masterly spiritual successor to Lubbock (on everything), Just Like Moby Dick casts its net wide for wild stories, depicting, among other monstrous things, Houdini in existential crisis, the death of the last stripper in town, bloodthirsty pirates (in a pseudo-sequel to Brecht and Weill’s “Pirate Jenny”), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the “American Childhood” suite), a vampire-infested circus, mudslides and burning mobile homes, and all manner of tragicomic disasters, abandonments, betrayals, bad memories, failures, and fare-thee-wells.
Iconic and iconoclastic Texan songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s heartbreaking, hilarious new album, his first set of new songs since 2013’s Bottom of the World, features the full Panhandle Mystery Band, including co-producer Charlie Sexton (Dylan, Bowie, Blaze), Shannon McNally, and Jo Harvey Allen; mainstays Bukka Allen, Richard Bowden, and Lloyd Maines; and co-writes with Joe Ely and Dave Alvin.
Terry Allen (born May 7, 1943 in Wichita, Kansas) is an American Texas country and outlaw country singer-songwriter, painter and conceptual artist from Lubbock, Texas. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has recorded twelve albums of original songs, including the landmark releases Juarez (1975) and Lubbock (on everything) (1979). His song “Amarillo Highway” has been covered by Bobby Bare, Sturgill Simpson and Robert Earl Keen. Other artists who have recorded Allen’s songs include Guy Clark, Little Feat, David Byrne, Doug Sahm, Ricky Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Rolling Stone magazine describes his catalog, reaching back to Juarez as “..uniformly eccentric and uncompromising, savage and beautiful, literate and guttural.”
From Wikipedia
2020 Super Bowl: Amazon Releases Very Funny “Before Alexa” Ad (Video)
What did we do #BeforeAlexa? Watch now and vote for your favorite ad on Ad Meter!
Top New Science Podcasts: Australian Fires, Isaac Asimov’s Robots And The Coronavirus (Nature)
Listen to the latest from the world of science, with Benjamin Thompson and Nick Howe. This week, establishing climate change’s role in Australian bushfires, and revisiting Isaac Asimov’s thoughts robots.
In this episode:
00:46 Behind the bushfires
Researchers are working to establish the role that climate change is playing in the bushfires that are raging across Australia. News Feature: The race to decipher how climate change influenced Australia’s record fires; Editorial: Australia: show the world what climate action looks like
10:02 Research Highlights
The debate around how Vesuvius claimed its victims, and an ancient mummy speaks. Research Highlight: Vitrified brains and baked bones tell the story of Vesuvius deaths; Research Article: Howard et al.
12:21 Asimov’s legacy
This year marks the centenary of Isaac Asimov’s birth. We reflect on the impact of his writing on the field of robotics. Essay: Isaac Asimov: centenary of the great explainer
21:00 News Chat
The latest on a new virus from Wuhan in China, and social scientists’ battle with bots. News: Coronavirus: latest news on spreading infection; News: Social scientists battle bots to glean insights from online chatter
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