The TPR Stream - May 2013
01.05.2013
Knots: Rational Tangles for Hangmen, Sex, Sailors, and Cowboys By Douglas Arvidson
Who cares about knots anymore but Boy Scouts and seamen, surgeons, hangmen, and those into bondage? The average person manages to muddle through life without much concern for how to tie things up properly. ‘Tis a pity...
02.05.2013
The Mystery of B. Traven By Anne Brechin
B. Traven was one of the best-selling novelists of his generation. His works were translated into thirty-two different languages. An adaption of his work, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starred Humphrey Bogart and won three Oscars in 1948. The only problem? Nobody knows who exactly he is. Editor Anne Brechin chases down the ghost. What she finds are crooked avenues and frustrating dead ends.
03.05.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved By Hunter S. Thompson
He considered it his first failure. Maybe it all went crooked when the illustrator got off the plane and he immediately stuffed him psilocybin. Maybe it was the whiskey. Then again, maybe it was just the Kentucky Derby. Either way, Hunter Thompson hadn’t even covered the race. All he had was a hangover and a deadline over his head. The result? Nothing less than the birth of Gonzo and a revolution in journalism. On the eve of Kentucky Derby weekend we present – with love and affection – the birth of Gonzo brought to you by the good doctor Hunter S. Thompson and the inimitable Ralph Steadman.
06.05.2013
The Plague in Rhyme (Or Not) By Vishwas Gaitonde
We all know them and grow up loving them. They are the nursery rhymes and limericks of our youth, but is there a more macabre origin to these simple verses? TPR Contributor Vishwas Gaitonde explores the Black Plague and its possible effect on well-known rhymes.
07.05.2013
There once was a tradition of goods being traded for service in Czechoslovakia. Since money was scarce, people offered tips and bribes in home-grown goods and delicatessen.
08.05.2013
Oil and Water: They Just Don't Mix By Ship Bright
Whether we’re talking about people, “they’re like oil and water”, or we’re talking about salt or freshwater and oil…they just don’t mix.
09.05.2013
How to Drink in a Herna at Seven in the Morning By Shaan Joshi
Prague is a town where you can find a drink whenever you want, but there is that hour of morning when even the late night bars close. All that’s left then are the hernas. They are the always open, often rundown casinos that litter the corners of this fair city. It’s the last stop in town and a world all its own. Step inside, won’t you? After all the beer is still flowing.
10.05.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: Stealing in the 21st Century By Shaan Joshi
What you're seeing here is the rapid high-frequency trading of Johnson & Johnson stock being traded between a number of different exchanges. The video is five minutes long, yet notes only a HALF second of trading. In this half second, over 1200 orders and 215 trades occur. The trades happen in such volume and such high speeds that it allows high-frequency traders to favorably position themselves before the market can catch up. This is how you steal money in the 21st century.
13.05.2013
The Eleven Commandments of Henry Miller By Henry Miller
There are few writers who approached the page with as much vitality and enthusiasm as Henry Miller. It bursted forth from a need deeper than expression of a particular personage or ego into the realm of spiritual extension. An extension whose thoughts were mirrored not in past or present but in the wellspring of now.
14.05.2013
Ground Control to Major Tom By The Editors
Canada’s Commander Chris Hadfield made touchdown yesterday after a notable stay on the International Space Station. It was an exciting journey that not just revealed the wonders of space but the majesty of our own planet. Through the voodoo of the internet, Hadfield brought the world to outer space and reminded us of the potential of social networking platforms to connect and inspire us all; a reminder that social networking's power exists in its ability to bring human beings from all parts of the planet (and beyond) into instant communication with each other to achieve more than knowing the ever-changing cut of Bieber's hair or what Kardashian sister is getting lipo today.
15.05.2013
In Search of Mucha: The Mysteries at Chateau Zbiroh By Max Munson
Royals. Freemasons. Nazis. Soviets. Booby-trapped wells. Lost artifacts. Energy channeling rooms and secret radar installations. The secrets of Chateau Zbiroh are as numerous as its rooms and the different people that have occupied them. Largely unknown but immensely important historically (it’s even said that Havel was unaware of the castle and the stealth detection technology it harbored), editor Max Munson sheds light on the mysterious place the immortal Alfons Mucha came to paint his masterpiece.
16.05.2013
Paranoia and Polarization: Why Are My Friends Tesla Kooks? By Scott Archer Jones
I've fallen in with the Tesla crowd. We meet at a crappy Thai restaurant where the best thing on the menu is fake-Thai Jewish chicken soup. Alternatively we congregate at a Mexican restaurant where the cheese is plastic. We speculate about the waitresses' abusive lovers or about how many jobs they work. The waitresses are all so tired in these places, exhausted actually. But so am I, tired of voodoo science and conspiracy theory. Sooner or later, over sopapillas or phat thai, we get around to Tesla.
17.05.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: A Final Message from George Orwell By The Editors
For a man who obsessed over the perils of an overly surveilled society, no actual moving images or recordings of his voice exist. But we like our Orwell shrouded with mystery, as if he exists beyond the technological grasp of any prying eyes.
20.05.2013
A Letter to My Children By Ship Bright
As TPR contributor Ship Bright prepares to embark for the States after a long spell in Prague, he pens a letter to his children. It's a message about the power of hope in the face of desperation.
21.05.2013
An Art of Arrangement: The Sorted Book Project By The Editors
In the middle of the last century, a man known by the simple Earth moniker as William S. Burroughs explored what was called the “cut-up technique.” He (Burroughs) would take a manuscript (a newspaper article, his own works, etc.) and proceed to literally cut out a selection of words and re-arrange them to his liking. Burroughs believed it a mystical exercise where the truth of a text would reveal itself and possibly more. "When you cut into the present,” Burroughs would say, “the future leaks out."
22.05.2013
The Tyranny of Facts By Elisabeth Morris
Once upon a time, very long, ago, when I was young, I used to dream of all the things I would someday possess. As time went on, the nature of the things I coveted changed, but not the dream of possession. Then, as some of these dreams found their fulfillment, a fundamental reconstruction of ideals took place.
23.05.2013
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon By Shaan Joshi
There are now 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air compared to 280 ppm when the industrial revolution started. The last time there was that much carbon dioxide in the air there was no ice in the Arctic and the sea level was 40 meters higher. It doesn’t matter that 95% of scientists are in agreement. I look forward to owning beachfront property in North Dakota.
24.05.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: Bill Gates on How to Fix Capitalism By The Editors
We all know why capitalism works and communism doesn’t. Capitalism relies on the greed of man and his willingness to accrue objects for his own pleasure. Communism, on the other hand, required a forced benevolence wherein man was to work towards some vague common good often stifling his own inner ambitions and desires. While true capitalism and true communism have never really been practiced, it remains true that greed generally trumps benevolence; but, hey, at least someone tried it.
27.05.2013
Inclement Weather: A Walk through a Long Distance Relationship By Anne Brechin
Being in a long-distance relationship is like constantly standing in a slight, fine drizzle. At the beginning it’s a minor irritant, which has no major impact on your landscape. You knew when you looked outside that morning that it was not going to be great. However, the prospect was manageable. Perhaps when you first stepped out it even seemed refreshing – a cool spray on your face, clearing your head.
28.05.2013
When I Paint My Masterpiece: The Art of Bob Dylan By The Editors
We all have our hobbies. Ways to spend that slight time free from the demands of family, friends and work. Some people read. Others go hiking. Even more rack up gross debt through an addiction to internet pornography. Whatever it is that you like to do, it's important that you do it. It affords character and keeps the mind sharp.
29.05.2013
Come Closer, Come Closer: Nin Writes Miller By Anais Nin
The correspondence between Anais Nin and Henry Miller is the stuff of legend. Carried out in those days in Paris when beer was cheaper than 8 euro — and while the pair were both married to their respective partners — Miller and Nin have become the classic embodiment of all the tremors, terrors, love, lust, frustration, joy, hate, anger, sympathy and resignation of being devoured whole by that leviathan known as love. Their letters speak to the inexorable need we human beings feel for one another with all the greatness and tragedy that entails. Forget Jolie and Pitt. Give us Nin and Miller.
30.05.2013
Sex, Junkies and Spiritual Healing By Petra Antevasin
Living in Prague gave me my first experience of living alone. I’m from the Middle East, and things like that don’t happen for young women in the Middle East. I was glad to get away from my family and just be, on my own, without having to relocate from room to room pretending that I hadn’t been crying a few seconds before.
31.05.2013
Because It's 5 O'clock Somewhere: How to Use Google Like Sherlock Holmes By The Editors
Human beings were a species who used to remember information that they then converted into knowledge. Aristotle was a physicist, biologist, political commentator, music critic, and, of course, philosopher. Benjamin Franklin was a writer, musician, kitesman, diplomat, statesman, and a total cad. Let’s not even get into Da Vinci. But then a funny thing happened. Mankind gained access to all the information in the world and promptly forgot anything he needed to know. Instead of using this miracle to learn and enhance, he used it to forget. The information was there waiting at his fingertips. It had no need for his brain. Maybe it’s part of the reason IQs were higher in the Victorian age. The question then becomes, what happens when somebody utilizes today’s technologies to enhance their own mental systems? What happens when Sherlock Holmes uses Google?
