Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Larry Franz

People who didn’t like Margaret Thatcher at all have driven “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” to the top of the charts in Great Britain (the British can be rude to their politicians, and good for them!).

In addition to writing the lyrics to that one, as well as “Over the Rainbow” (the actual title), Yip Harburg, born Isidore Hochberg, also wrote the words to this terrific song about the Great Depression. The music was composed by Jay Gorney, based on a Russian lullaby.

Bing Crosby recorded the most famous version back in 1931. This one is by James Crowley and the Top Hat Orchestra. It was released in 2011, in the continuing aftermath of the Great Recession.

If anyone in Great Britain records a new version of “The Witch Is Dead”, this would make a great flip side, if we still had flip sides.

Their Shoes Look Good, Too

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Larry Franz

You don’t often hear about a company that wears its atheism on its sleeve — or its shoes. Atheist Shoes, however, is a German company that claims to make very comfortable shoes “for people who don’t believe in god(s)”.

According to their website, they noticed that packages sent to the U.S. were having a lot of delivery problems. So they devised an experiment, mailing two packages to the same address, with “Atheist” clearly printed on one and not the other.

The results were or were not surprising, depending on your understanding of Americans and religion (and maybe the U.S. Post Office). You can see the results on their website, which is worth visiting just to see how they tell the story (apparently they are artists in addition to being atheists — and someone there also writes very good English).

P.S. — If you scroll way down the page, there’s an epilogue that discusses the results of their study and its scientific aspects.

http://www.atheistberlin.com/study

P.P.S. — This is also good:

http://www.atheistberlin.com/hole

Some Time Ago

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Larry Franz

I haven’t been in the mood lately to save the world one post at a time. However, there’s this:

These are songs that make me happy or sad when I hear them. Most of them weren’t the biggest hits and most are from the late 50s and early 60s. The oldest song is from 1949. The newest is from 2012. (My theory is that the music that makes the biggest impression on you is the stuff you listen to when you’re approaching or going through puberty.)

The sequence is intentional, but you don’t have to start at the beginning. You can start anywhere. My favorites don’t necessarily come first. Some of them come last.

The commercials aren’t my idea. Also, YouTube sometimes says you can’t play a particular song as part of a playlist. When this happens, it’s easy to play that song by itself and then use your browser return button to go back to the playlist, if that’s what you want to do.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1vCWCmzw3snpXOZ5eXUFEkEcCYm2eKkx