Things I’m Digging: September

Posted: September 2nd, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Things I’m Digging: September

Will McAvoy on Twitter

We have to wait until November for Season 3 of Newsroom, but until then enjoy some amazingly motivated ghost-writing.  I especially love the times he takes people to task on their misconceptions, contradictions and blatant newsjacking for press.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

If this show isn’t on your radar yet, it may be for one of two reasons

  1. You don’t have HBO and have the technological saavy of Col Klink, so anytime someone mentions a show that’s not on basic cable, you think “oh, I’ll ask my kids about that when they come home for Thanksgiving”.
  2. You, like many Americans, cannot stand the abomination that local news and CNN have turned into, so anytime something resembling the news comes on, your eyes glaze over and you don’t take the time to see if it’s something you can get behind.

If you don’t fall into one of those two groups, I’m sure you’ve already seen John Oliver, either on HBOgo or on the great YouTube clips that his show puts out each week. (Really amazing for HBO to have a show that is so temporal they are totally cool with publishing on YouTube. This is pretty much what Bill Maher should have been doing years ago.)

Maybe it’s because of Oliver’s accent that I think there is an added element of credibility I don’t give to network newscasters, but I’m sure it’s more likely because being freed from the need to maintain advertisers has allowed the show to actually stake an opinion. I imagine that Last Week Tonight is what Newsroom would be like with a different host but the same agenda.

Art of Manliness

Particularly evident in their article on Lessons in Manliness from Fight Club, this site is not a tribute to machismo and bro-vado, but rather a discourse in being a modern gentleman.

There is a fighter inside you waiting to burst out as soon as you let it. Don’t squelch him with Candy Crush and Family Guy; enable him by reading more, working out more, and maybe even starting your own fight club.

Drake

I never anticipated this.  I was fighting the hype when he was featured on Jay-Z albums and remixes in the past. And then sometime last year I started being able to quote Drake lyrics in memes and gifs to be sent around the office and realized that more than being a joke, there was actually a lot to enjoy from the Canadian rapper.

Science Getting It Right

After the previous administration let religion set-back scientific advancement for 8 years, I’m glad to see we are continuing to make progress in medical science that can actually save lives and cure awful diseases (like diabetes, blindness, and other problems related to organ failure) instead of merely finding ways to manage the pain and keep people dependent on drugs for years on end.

This recent study showing the ability to grow complete, mature, functional organs in mice makes me hopeful that in the future there will be no need for anyone to go through what I watched my late Grandmother suffer with last year.