John Coltrane, one of the great musicians of the 20th century, was born on this day. There’s a wealth of video on YouTube you can watch to get a sense of his greatness, including this (John Coltrane – My Favorite Things Live 1965 – YouTube)

You can watch him on YouTube, but better still, go and buy some of his music.

 

 

This map was taken from here: Where life expectancy is falling (in one map). Key quote:

The areas are by and large rural and lower income. They also tend to be areas with fewer doctors, likely meaning less access to the health care resources available elsewhere in the country.

I would be interested to know obesity rates and smoking rates in these areas. Also it is noteworthy that it is concentrated in the South of the U.S. I don’t know if there is a cultural element coming in there (and it would likely be hard to measure, especially compared to concrete things such as obesity, exercise rates, smoking, etc.).

Regardless, it’s not good.

P.S. Obesity rates are here and they overlap to a great degree.

I came across these great portraits of Enrico Nagel, like this one:

via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. I wanted to know more, and I clicked through to this link, Flavorwire » Enrico Nagel’s Delightfully Strange Scanner Portraits. I recommend you do too: there’s lots of great portraiture there.

It put me in mind of this cover art from the Tragically Hip from 1992, for the album, Fully Completely

The album came with art similar to Nagel’s. Both are really good. The Hip has the benefit of coming with great music too. 🙂