This could be a story about how Jack Kerouac contributed to the economy by using Willie Nelson’s guitar to imitate Vermeer sending a rude text message. Survey says Anyone who has ever taken a high school English literature class has surely wondered whether all the purported symbolism was legit. In 1963, 16-year-old Bruce McAllister decided to actually find out, so he mailed a questionnaire to 150 authors. What about arts tourism? According to new government research, arts and culture makes up a larger portion of…
Read MoreToday’s edition of HodgePodge brings you stories on the dismal science of Star Trek, a really old ocean, breaking the seal, Jony and Marc’s red objects, and America’s Sherlock. Where no invisible hand has gone before What’s geekier than talking about economics? Talking about Star Trek. What’s geekier than talking about Star Trek? Talking about the economics of Star Trek. The ocean at the end of the… other ocean Seawater believed to be 100 to 150 million years old has been discovered under the Chesapeake…
Read MoreHere’s your weekly look at some of the interesting stories we’ve read (and heard) this week. Coffee hacks You can keep your official NFL McDonald’s happy meal and official Hunger Games: Catching Fire Subway sandwich, I’ll take a fan-improvised Starbucks Butterbeer, please. American football The BBC wonders if MLS can survive and thrive. I’d love to see the league move to a more-traditional system of promotion and relegation, but that seems pretty unlikely. This Kai My commute home is really not complete without hearing the…
Read MoreHere’s your weekly look at the most interesting articles we’ve read around the office. TWI-P-O Twitter launched its long-awaited initial public offering this week. Here’s a helpful flow chart to help you decide whether to buy Twitter stock. Poynter takes a look at some media outlets’ first tweets. Time has a helpful tool for you to calculate your share of Twitter’s value. Can’t buy me love But, when it comes to wine, at least, money can buy happiness, says Reuters’ Felix Salmon. Shouldn’t it be…
Read MoreStep away from the Halloween candy and take a few moments to check out these stories about the FAA, unplugging, Mike Tyson, the perfect food and the most-quoted man. Angry Birds in flight The big news of the week is the new FAA ruling to allow electronic devices “gate-to-gate” on airplanes. If you don’t want to use up one of your free Times articles, here’s CNN’s take. No app for that Wired’s Mat Honan says it’s not the fault of technology that you can’t get…
Read MoreThis may be the only time in the history of ever that the CEO of a condiment company, the former head of a covert agency and Abraham Lincoln are mentioned in one article. Spice up your life No matter how you feel about spicy food, the story of Sriracha, and the enigmatic CEO of the company that popularized it, is worth checking out. (If you don’t want to read about it, you can always wait for the Sriracha documentary to come out.) Abraham is kind…
Read MoreBooks and movies and music and mansions, oh my. Here’s what we’ve been reading around the Hodges office this week. How do you get to the corner office? What’s the connection between studying music and professional success? My theory is that it teaches you to persevere through failure. If you’ve heard a middle-schooler practice the clarinet, you know exactly what I mean. Yo! NPR raps NPR’s The Record takes a look back at what turned out to be a pivotal year in rap (and pop)…
Read MoreFrom particle physics to popcorn, this week’s stories take a behind-the-scenes look at topics big and small. A Nobel particle It’s been back in the news a lot lately, with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for its discovery, but what exactly is a Higgs boson? It’s a perfect little snowflake, just like you. The other shutdown The fallout from the government’s arrest of the alleged leader of Silk Road, an online marketplace for illicit goods, is just beginning. One of the more fascinating stories…
Read MoreIn honor of National Taco Day, I’d like you to imagine each of these stories is wrapped in a delicious soft corn totilla. The cost of doing business You might have seen or heard the NPR piece on the dangers of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, which was produced in partnership with ProPublica. But did you know the reporting took two years to complete and cost $750,000? It’s like texting, only online and public On the occasion of Twitter’s IPO, Quartz brings us a…
Read MoreIf there’s one thing I learned this week, it’s that the writer/director of Clue also directed My Cousin Vinny. If there’s five things I learned this week, they’re all listed below. ‘The only true test of a movie is time.’ Apparently there are some people who don’t feel that Clue is one of the greatest movies ever made. Those people probably wouldn’t be interested in this long look at the making of a flop that became a classic. There’s a voice for that app The…
Read MoreToday we have a look into the design process of one of the world’s richest companies, which college majors earn the most (and the least), what rich people say in wedding announcements, how to make billions and still be called a failure and how to monetize Instagram. Behind the music (phone) I’m a sucker for the “oral history” format, which strings together direct quotes from disparate sources to tell the story of some event or product. I’ve also been called a sucker for Apple products….
Read MoreHow the British learned we dumped them, why we get ideas in the shower, what it was like to work with Stanley Kubrick and more in this back-to-school edition of HodgePodge. Slow news days News today spreads more or less instantly, but how quickly did news of the American Declaration of Independence reach England? The Journal of the American Revolution takes a look through some news archives to find out. Rinse. Lather. Eureka! Mental Floss explores why we get our best ideas in the shower….
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