What are people looking to do? The most popular searches, by one analysis, range from the achingly prosaic to the exceedingly specific—from “how to kiss” to “how to make a rainbow-loom starburst bracelet.” You can learn how to boil water, field strip an AR-15 rifle, or fly a 747. But stories abound of people—usually kids—achieving impressive proficiency in everything from opera singing to dubstep dancing by simply copying what they have seen in YouTube videos. YouTube pedagogy has swept through—and virtually helped create—fields like competitive cubing (Rubik’s), where solve times have plummeted, aided largely by the transmission of techniques via YouTube. – Nautilus
Tag: 01.09.20
Franco Ambrosetti In Splendid Company
For his album Long Waves, the Italian trumpeter and flugelhornist assembles a group of contemporaries to play his compositions and a couple of cherished standard songs. Ambrosetti’s fluid improvisations, sometimes with a Miles Davis bent, are consistently impressive. – Doug Ramsey
Buck Henry, Screenwriter, Director, Actor, And Comedy Legend, Dead At 89
“[He] created the satirical spy sitcom Get Smart with Mel Brooks, was a frequent early host of Saturday Night Live and turned plastics into a countercultural catchword with his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Graduate … A restless entertainer, Mr. Henry dabbled in improvisational comedy as well as theater, television and film. He received an Academy Award nomination for co-directing the 1978 afterlife comedy Heaven Can Wait with star Warren Beatty; wrote scripts for the sex farce Candy (1968), based on the novel by Terry Southern, and the Barbra Streisand screwball comedies The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and What’s Up, Doc? (1972); and appeared as a droll supporting actor in nearly every film he helped create.” – The Washington Post