ESPN
10 April 2019
Inside the world's premier
Sasquatch calling contest (yes, that's a thing)
[…] When you go hunting for Big Foot in Whitehall [NY],
though, you end up discovering far more about human nature than you do about
the creature. At times, the phenomena here feel like an emotional pyramid
scheme, with the way each new sighting validates all of the past encounters
while bonding the townsfolk together and giving them something to talk, gossip
and complain about, like the weather. […]
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Slate
12 April 2019
Is CBS Piping Fake Birds Into Its Masters Coverage?
To watch the
Masters on television is to be transported to the natural, exclusive splendor
of Augusta National Golf Club. […] Listen closely and you’ll notice that there
seem to be a lot of birds at Augusta National—perhaps even a suspicious amount.
Could it be that CBS is piping in chirps? This is not a new conspiracy theory.
In 2001, the network copped to using recorded bird sounds at the 2000 PGA
Championship while insisting that the birds heard at the Masters “are live and
… indigenous to Augusta.” But, given the relentless cacophony at this year’s
tournament, could it be possible that something foul is afoot? […]
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Liv Strömquist, Fruit
of Knowledge: The Vulva vs. the Patriarchy, trans. Melissa Bowers (Seattle:
Fantagraphics Books, 2018), 105. Originally published in Sweden in 2014. “Some
say the superstition about walking under ladders originated from a fear of
menstruation – people were afraid a woman with inadequate sanitary protection
might be lurking up there and leak on their heads.” Strömquist’s source for
this fanciful explanation is Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth, The Curse: A Cultural History of
Menstruation (Urbana, IL: Illini Books, 1988 [1976]), p. 9. “And most of us
still consider it unlucky to walk under ladders, a superstition derived from
the primitive world, where people would not pass under bridges, clotheslines,
trees, or the like if a menstruating woman was about, lest some of the blood or
its mana fall on their heads.”
