You Might Like… Diversions of Various Sorts on Weight, Time, Toasters, Jackie O, Hank Williams, and More

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

Wired Magazine – The Search for a More Perfect Kilogram – Jonathon Keats – “Le Grand K” is held in a vault just outside of Paris under three bell jars. Even so, the standard has been losing weight — or we’ve been gaining it. So the search is on for a new constant.

GQ – The Ghostwriter – Andrew Romano – Thirteen singer/songwriters, including Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Nora Jones, put music to the lyrics left in a notebook by the great Hank Williams, who died 58 years ago at the shockingly young age of 29. This is the story of how the albumn, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, came to be. [As a bonus, here’s a brief clip from The Sermon On the Mount by Williams/Haggard.]

YouTube – Fifty People, One Question: Chicago – Galvea Kelly – The question? What is your favourite memory?

Edge – A History of Violence – Stephen Pinker – The noted Harvard Psychology prof expounds (and is questioned) on his proposition that the world has never been a safer place. Pinker’s recent book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” has been subjected to considerable criticism. There’s also a video on the Edge site of Pinker’s presentation and the discussion afterwards.

The Walrus – Food for Thought – Craille Maguire Gillies – Mirko Betti’s lab at the University of Alberta is inventing — and growing in vitro – meat.

YouTube / TED – How I built a toaster — from scratch – Thomas Thwaites – A charming man discovers that “it takes an entire civilization to build a toaster.” (Or, as Carl Sagan once put it: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”)

NPR – The Tyranny Of Modern Time – Adam Frank – A meditation by an astrophysicist upon the occasion of the autumnal equinox, on time and how it now “accelerates and compresses” our lives.

The Smart Set – Mean Girl – Paula Marantz Cohen – The author lets us know right up front: “I was never on the Jackie O. bandwagon, and I never will be now.” “Now,” of course, refers to the publication of Jacqueline Kennedy’s 1964 interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Salon – The birth of the Google Translate era – Thomas Rogers – “The rise of new technology is changing the way we think about language and the world.” A Canadian explains how.

Reuters – Chart of the day, median income edition – Felix Salmon – “[R]eal incomes [in the US] are more than 10% lower today than they were over a decade ago.” It’s fallen 6.7% in the two years since the recession was officially over.