More pictures of the winners of the NYC P.S. Art competition here
| Art |
No matter how this story ends, it just doesn't begin well:
Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack.
Will Seamus become the most famous political dog since Checkers?
| Mitt Romney | 2008 Election |
(First by Coudal.)
| Paris Hilton | New York Post | History | Disasters | 1910s |
"BlankSheetofPaper.com is a free online utility to allow you to print a blank sheet of paper from your printer in case you need a clean white, blank sheet of paper to write on. No download required."
"Most modern DVD players cut costs by not including a rewind button. RewindDVDs fills the void by offering a free, mail in service to rewind any size DVD."
Via Frank.
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OK, so we're thinking about what actors we might ask to help us with a DonorsChoose training and promotion video. I think it would make sense to ask actors who have played teachers. A few come to mind:
Edward James Olmos, Stand and Deliver
Lily Tomlin, The Magic School Bus
Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds
Who else? I need your pop-culture minds on this one.
I never watched "Boston Public" -- is it still on? -- and so have no idea who was/is on it. And it looks like Gabe Kaplan is still a working actor.... Oooh! oooh! Mr. Kotter! oooh!
Update: A quick Google search turns up the "NEA's Oscars".
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Some pictures from a trip to MOMA, including works from Dan Perjovschi and Richard Serra. More here.
| Sculpture | MOMA |
Speaking of Imaginary Places, yesterday's post reminded me of La République de Rêves. Back in the 80s I read about the Republic, a project of a couple of Philadelphia artists, in Games Magazine, and sent away for a catalog. One could buy Rêverian passports, "poetic licenses," academic degrees and Rêverian titles, flags, and other ephemera from this imaginary place. Unfortunately all these were beyond my means, but I fell in love with the idea of it. I kept that catalog for some time, and when I finally got around to ordering something (probably a passport), I got my check back with a message that the Rêverian embassy was closed.
More information on La République de Rêves is here, there's an excerpt from the book they created, and here's an interview with G. Garfield Crimmins, the artist.
| Art |
Via Coudal.
| Imaginary Places | Mail Art |
3quarksdaily didn't make my feed cut -- frankly, there's just too much good content there for me to keep up -- but Kerim tipped me to this essay on Florida's use of the Gay Index "to monitor and predict cities that could host profit-generating high-tech industries":
If Florida’s hope is that a large number of gay citizens act as a predictive index for the potential of a city to house high-tech industry, what we’re really talking about is gays as guinea pigs. Florida’s cities are aligned with patterns of habitation within cities, particularly within gentrification arguments. The familiar narrative goes: first the gays move in, then the artists, then the yuppie hipster families, then the middle class. But obviously the gays weren’t first. The narrative implies a certain kind of urban grey-zone as a beginning point, where drug-addicts, non-model minorities, and general undesirables rove the streets, leaving opened fire hydrants, burning garbage bins, and a general gritty cacophony wherever they go. That Florida first equates gays (“the new outsiders”) with immigrants, and then as the precursor to the bohemian influx, demonstrates the role that the homosexual plays in this perverse narrative—bridging the gap between poor ethnics and young artists.This role is inextricably linked with what French author Guy Hocquenghem terms “the criminalization” of the homosexual—by virtue of being gay, these citizens occupy a curious position of being criminal enough to live in the margins while white enough to make those areas appear safe. And yes, for the most part the gays in these neighborhoods are white—from London’s Vauxhaull (now also part of Brixton), Boston’s South End, and New York’s Chelsea to Chicago’s Boystown and Los Angeles’ West Hollywood. And so the gays are the guinea pigs, sent to the periphery to make it safe for young white artists and café-goers all the way through to middle class families, negotiating color and difference and mediating what is edgy and safe.
Just confirms what I've always said: Gay is the new Black. After all, is there much of a difference between the Metrosexual and the Wigger?
| Economic Development | Race and Ethnicity | Florida |
Over the weekend I read Bit Literacy, another how-to-get-things-done book. More on it later as I start to figure out what to implement, what works, etc. The author's central tenet, though, is "Let the bits go." A good chunk of the book is therefore given over to your media diet. What are you going to read / watch / listen to? What's OK to let go?
Internet-wise, outside of email and writing / maintaining this blog, the mainstay of my media diet is RSS feeds. (One of the things I thought Hurst could have said more about was the use of a good feed reader as a way to stay on your media diet, since it discourages surfing, but he thinks that RSS is for "techies" only.) Over a year ago I put a stake in the ground and said that my limit was 99 feeds. Today, I've moved the goal posts (in a good way) and cut back to 43 feeds. (Link goes to my list of feeds on bloglines, so if you need to check if you're still in there go ahead.) Why 43? In honor of 43 Folders, the lifehack site, which is named for the 43 folders in a Getting Things Done "tickler file" I talked about here.
Cutting down to 43 wasn't easy. I got rid of nearly all my music blogs. I currently have more music than I have time to actually listen to. And yet I found myself constantly downloading more singles, tagging them, rating them to see if I wanted to keep them, filing them, etc. The signal-to-work ratio was getting pretty low, and from a time management standpoint I've eliminated a big distraction right there.
Onward and upward!
| GTD | Information Management | Bit Literacy |
Does anyone use "noise reducing" headphones that use "circuitry in the device creates a sound wave 180 degrees out of phase with [outside] sounds" . I am thinking of splurging on a pair (350 dollars for something I will use everywork day for years justifiable, I think). Has anyone ever used these? On the subway? Do they work?
I don't know why, but I find food pr0n far more interesting than real estate pr0n. Part of it has to do with the fact that the food pr0n I view is produced by amateurs, real people cooking up real food. Earlier I posted about Lunch in a Box, from there I found this collection of tupperware bento lunches . They are fun to look at and probably more fun to eat, but at the same time they still come across as the talented chef next door making lunch. Mmmm .... lunch.
| Lunches | Bento | Food | Flickr |
By now you've surely seen those ads with Scorsese and that "Lake Winnipesaukee" guy hawking the The Members Project at American Express. Cardmembers choose which project will receive up to $5 million dollars. That would be about 11,000 projects in classrooms! If you have an American Express card, please click on the link above and give a 5 star rating for project 5630. (We're not allowed to use the DonorsChoose name since the project is for "ideas" instead of "organizations.") Thanks!
DonorsChoose is a nonprofit organization that provides educational resources for public school classrooms. Donors can search through our website among the thousands of requests made by teachers for classroom supplies, art stuff, sports equipment, technology, books, etc. Once they find the one that speaks to them, they choose which project to fund (in whole or in part) with their donation. DonorsChoose buys the materials and ships them directly to the classroom, and donors receive a thank you package of letters from the students and photographs of the project.
Update: DonorsChoose has made the top 25! The semifinal round lasts until Sunday July 22nd. Please vote today!
| Charity | American Express |
Local publishers McSweeney's are in some financial straits as their distributor went bankrupt, leaving unpaid revenues of $130,000. They're selling a bunch of stuff for cheap, auctioning off some art, etc.
Books I'd recommend: Icelander, reviewed here.
Voyage Along the Horizon, reviewed here.
The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, reviewed here.
Not yet read but on the shelf and very well reviewed: What is the What.
Or, there's always the colossal squid t-shirt. (Colossal modifying squid, not t-shirt.)
Go help! Go buy!
Via Good Magazine.
| Sales |
My keyboard just came crashing to the ground, hitting some keys at random, and opening up this page.
Division on the grounds of lack of unity This is a process for which there is no provision in the Patent Law, and which is dealt with according to the rules of the Zivilprozeßrecht (Code of Civil Procedure) (Section 145 ZPO). Up to 1980 the procedure and time limits were set in accordance with the DPA's guidelines determined by decisions of the courts. Since 1981 the DPA has dealt with division in accordance with the new Section 39 of the Patent Law (see point 2 below). A Federal High Court decision of 10 July 1986 (X ZB 29/84) found that Section 39 was not applicable.
Do you think it has a deep and hidden meaning?
| German patent law |
Especially when big companies do it. Money quote: "waste is really a design flaw."
“We are constantly being asked: Is recycling worth doing on environmental grounds?” says Julian Parfitt, principal analyst at Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a non-profit British company that encourages recycling and develops markets for recycled materials.Studies that look at the entire life cycle of a particular material can shed light on this question in a particular case, but WRAP decided to take a broader look. It asked the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste to conduct a review of 55 life-cycle analyses, all of which were selected because of their rigorous methodology. The researchers then looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recycling with that of burying or burning particular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.
| Environment |
What could go wrong!
| Al Qaeda |
This blog is at the intersection of Tongue In Charts and Music Reviews. Check out his graphic take on a NYT concert review. Kewl.
| Tufte Alert | Information Mapping | New York Times |
That's the name of the latest book from our neighbor and pal Lynn Harris:
When the bodies of It-Girl writers begin to pile up, Lola starts asking dangerous questions: Are the murders connected? Am I next? If not, um, why not? If I solve the mystery, then will my agent remember my name?
It sounds a bit like Theater of Blood, but with chick lit instead of Shakespeare. Anyway, you can read a Huffpo interview with her here: Rachel Kramer Bussel: Interview With Lynn Harris: Death By Chick Lit. Go, Lynn!
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Another blog reviews the Pipettes show that Chris and I went to on Tuesday so I don't have to. Thanks, Fluxblog! Oh, and here's another one which includes pictures -- check out the opening act, Smoosh!
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In which our own Chris Molanphy examines the eternal debate: Sgt. Pepper or Revolver?
| Beatles |
Full set here.
| Brooklyn | New York City | Circus |
Here's the capture device for the sorta-controversial Google Street Maps view:
Below, the Imperial Probe Droid:
Coincidence? I don't think so!
| Star Wars | Surveillance Society |
Today we went to the Circus Sunday at the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook. (Highly recommended if you've never been; it's every Sunday in June.) Afterward, as we've done for the past two years, we headed over to Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies for some, well, Key Lime pie. I've always been a fan of the Key Lime pie, ever since my mom used to make them. Properly made, the combination of sweet and tart, graham and meringue, just adds up to delicious.
Now to get from the Waterfront Museum (really a barge) to Steve's, there are two ways. The long way is a bit of a hike, especially with two tykes. The short way goes through a park along the waterfront, and ends with a gate. Sometimes that gate's locked, and sometimes not. We decided to chance it, but the gate was locked. With delicious pie only a few yards away, it was a short matter to get us all over the gate and over to Steve's.
Steve himself happened to be sitting in front of his pie shop. He was livid. "How did you get here? Did you climb over the fence?" We admitted that we had. "How can you climb over the fence when there's a sign not to? What are you teaching your children?"
Now, if there's one thing that is guaranteed to tick me off, it's a stranger telling me how to raise my kids. Do I come in and tell Steve how to bake pies? No. Have I put my children in danger? No. So: you raise your kids, I'll raise mine, thank you very much.
We went into the shop and started looking at pies. Steve followed us, still irate that we had taken a short cut in order to purchase his wares. "You know what?" he said to his employee behind the counter. "I don't want to sell to these people. Not unless they come back the right way."
Well, Steve, you don't want to sell me your pies, and as of now, I don't want to buy them. We went to Baked instead, which was quite delicious, thankyouverymuch. On the way, I gave Ben an important moral lesson: Let The Punishment Fit The Crime. If Steve wants to punish fence-jumpers (and it's not his fence) by refusing them service, it seems out of proportion to me.
| Red Hook | Food | Pie |
Created with the Seal Generator that Trip just wrote about.
| Optical Illusions |
Wear it with pride or with air quotes: Merch from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
