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Brian Lebakken is blogging the Minnesota State Fair (here’s an article in the Pioneer Press about it). He’s planning on going every day and, from the looks of it, eating as much as he can while doing it, as every Fair-goer worth their salt should. (thx alex)
Lance Arthur examines living in San Francisco versus living in NYC and concludes in a highly dubious and hilarious outcome, that San Francisco is by far the better choice.
A reader inquires:
When the tsunami struck Asia last year, Amazon.com was quick to post a donation link on its front page. Don’t you think they should do the same for the victims of Katrina? How about using that platform of yours to apply some leverage to Jeff and the crew to get a link up there?
Amazon’s lack of a donation link was noted in our household this morning as well. How about it, Amazon? (thx scott)
In the meantime, you can donate directly to the Red Cross (the site seems a little slow right now, so be patient).
Update: Please stop emailing me about the tsunami/Katrina comparison thing. I don’t wish to debate the relative scale of natural disasters or who deserves more attention and aid when bad stuff happens. Individuals and corporations alike need to determine who they wish to aid on their own terms. In the past, Amazon has been a place to go to give aid…it’s the first place I thought of going when I heard of the escalating problems in the Gulf states (and I don’t think I’m alone here) because if they had a donation mechanism, it would be a fast link and easy for people to donate. That Amazon has chosen to not to set up a donation mechanism in this case is their choice and I certainly don’t fault them for it.
Update #2: InternetWeek is reporting that Amazon has decided not to add a donation mechanism to their site. (thx, julio)
Update #3: Amazon now has a donation link on the front page which goes to this donation page. (thx to several who wrote in, including those at Amazon.)
A man was forced to resign from the Met for videoblogging on the job. (via zach)
Nifty “straight man” redesign of The Onion. Khoi Vinh of Behavior explains how the design was realized. (via waxy)
Near the end of his article entitled A War to Be Proud Of, Christopher Hitchens offers 10 reasons why the war in Iraq was successful. (via 3qd)
Info-rich presentation by Marc Rettig on designing for experience. Includes a case study on redesigning a library. (via pwtm)
As technology plunges ever forward (or as we perceive it doing so), it’s not often that we stop to take a look back at how people thought the future was going to unfold before them. Peter Edidin of the NY Times recently did so, reviewing prognostications about radio, films, and television. It’s fun to read the ones where people thought the new technology was going to complete overtake and eliminate an older technology (which does happen, but not as often as people expect). Bruce Bliven on radio in 1922:
There will be only one orchestra left on earth, giving nightly worldwide concerts; when all universities will be combined into one super-institution, conducting courses by radio for students in Zanzibar, Kamchatka and Oskaloose; when, instead of newspapers, trained orators will dictate the news of the world day and night, and the bedtime story will be told every evening from Paris to the sleepy children of a weary world…
D. W. Griffith, the great filmmaker of the early era, had this to say of film in 1915:
The time will come, and in less than 10 years, when the children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again. Imagine a public library of the near future, for instance. There will be long rows of boxes of pillars, properly classified and indexed, of course. At each box a push button and before each box a seat. Suppose you wish to “read up” on a certain episode in Napoleon’s life. Instead of consulting all the authorities, wading laboriously through a host of books, and ending bewildered, without a clear idea of exactly what did happen and confused at every point by conflicting opinions about what did happen, you will merely seat yourself at a properly adjusted window, in a scientifically prepared room, press the button, and actually see what happened.
But it’s also fun to see when people got it right, more or less. In 1936, J.C. Furnas had this to say of television:
It is my hope, and I see no reason why it should not be realized, to be able to go to an ordinary movie theater when some great national event is taking place across the country and see on the screen the sharp image of the action reproduced - at the same instant it occurs. This waiting for the newsreels to come out is a bit tiresome for the 20th century. Some time later I hope to be able to take my inaugurals, prize fights and football games at home. I expect to do it satisfactorily and cheaply. Only under those conditions can a television get into my house.
Under that set of criteria, it probably took awhile for a TV set to enter the Furnas household, but by the time NBC started broadcasting sporting events in the mid-1940s, they probably had one.
Pan of the newish MoMA building in NYC. I like the new building, but I agree that there are too many people sometimes; they’re certainly not having a problem with that $20 admission price. (via cdl)
Update: a rebuttal by Greg Allen.
Katrina Check-In is “place to connect people affected by Hurricane Katrina to those their loved ones”. If you’re out of danger or looking for someone in the affected area, you may want to check-in here.
Shakespeare put coded messages about Catholicism into his plays that, due to the “Protestant, Whig ascendancy”, have not been decoded until now.
For my photography nerd friends: testing the accuracy of a SLR camera focusing system.
Short positive review of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (@ Amazon). Thumbed through it at the bookstore yesterday and it did look good…but I’ve got too many books in my queue already.
Dan Gillmor on Google’s unnecessary arrogance. I believe some of what people call Google’s arrogance isn’t that at all, but they are still a deeply weird company.
Plastic recently considered the question of perfect albums, those where every song is great and you never want to skip over them. Philip compiled a list of the responses; Radiohead’s OK Computer and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue came out on top.
A few days ago, I reviewed March of the Penguins, a well-regarded documentary film that’s doing quite well here in the US (despite being a well-regarded documentary film):
Like many sleeper hits, there’s something quite unHollywood about it; it wasn’t manufactured to push specific demographic buttons or market tested to within an inch of its life. It’s handmade, crafted, and full of soul.
Turns out the film is not quite so unmanufactured as I thought. The original film (en français) features voiceovers for each of the main family characters (dad, mom, baby boy) and some French pop songs. The effect is quite cheesy at times, particularly during the singing of the love songs. I wish I had a video clip for you watch…I’ve seen bits and pieces of the French version and can vouch for Joe Leydon’s take on the film:
Once he focuses on the primary couple, however, Jacquet uncorks the schmaltz while employing actors Romance Bohringer and Charles Berling to voice penguins murmuring sweet nothings to each other. It’s easy to understand helmer’s desire to personalize the birds with anthropomorphic affectation. But it’s difficult not to laugh out loud as nuzzling penguins pledge their troth as each other’s “soul mate.”
After seeing the film at Sundance, an exec at Warner Bros. initated a change in the film to ready it for American viewers:
Warner Bros. president Mark Gill saw the film at Sundance, called writer-director Jordan Roberts and asked if something could be done to make it more appealing to American audiences. Jordan wrote a narration, performed by Morgan Freeman, and hired composer Alex Wurman to create a new score. The final result is showing in close to 2,000 theatres across America.
The narration by Morgan Freeman is not a close translation of the original French voiceovers and I think it’s a better film that way (for a US audience, at least). It also explains the odd pacing of Freeman’s narration at times. Anyway, as I said above, not quite the clear expression of artistic vision as I’d assumed.
Daniel Dennett on why intelligent design isn’t science. “Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything.”
The NY Times has photos and video from Hurricane Katrina.
In addition to books, you can check people out of the Malmo, Sweden library. The library “will let curious visitors check out living people for a 45-minute chat in a project meant to tear down prejudices about different religions, nationalities, or professions”.
This NY Times article on the popularity of sudoku puzzles in US newspapers had me confused because it really didn’t explain what the heck these puzzles were and I’d never seen one before. Luckily, Wikipedia to the rescue.Ben: a Flickr version of sudoku.
Photo slideshow of where Manhattanites find the beach amongst the skyscrapers and bustling streets of the city.
A review of Weeds, Showtime’s new show about a mom selling pot in the suburbs. I’ve been watching it; it’s good but I’m not absolutely loving it yet.
Short roundup of NYC hot dogs. My favorite is still Nathan’s, although you can’t beat Crif Dogs for ambiance (cocktail Ms. Pac-Man) and *wrapping a hot dog in bacon*. (via afb)
How the presiding monarch of the Minnesota State Fair, Princesss Kay of the Milky Way, is selected…ending with her coronation and her likeness carved into a giant block of butter.
Interesting idea about having specific end dates for online games, instead of them ending when they fail. As Alice notes, time constraints will likely make for some interesting gameplay, especially in the later stages of the game. (via rw)
Fun little quiz on eight grade math…can you pass? I got 9/10 (got tripped up on what I thought was a trick question but wasn’t…erroneous! erroneous!).
Robert Cringely: Google may have peaked (“What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google’s corporate apex?”) and Microsoft may have more to worry about from Apple if they start distributing older versions of OSX (the Intel version) for free on iPods.
New Orleans blogger Brendan Loy is furiously blogging Hurricane Katrina.
The NY Times takes Google to task for blacklisting Cnet over them publishing some publicly available information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. I wonder if there’s a useful distinction to be made between implicitly available information and explicitly broadcast information?
Justin’s looking for the largest inbox smoothly handled by Mail.app…the current high is 26,700 messages. Mine only has around 100 because I filter most messages into a variety of folders. Update: he’s up to 43,000 283,686! (That’s gotta be on a G5 with a ton of RAM…my Powerbook would melt under that kind of weight.)
Totalitarian Institutions That Would Have Been More Fitting for George Orwell’s 1984, Considering How That Year Turned Out. “The Ministry of the Beef, and Where It Currently Is”.
James Surowiecki, the New Yorker’s resident economist, weighs in on the tipping debate. (Previously discussed here.)
Today’s big story is Hurricane Katrina htting the Gulf Coast of the US around New Orleans and Biloxi. Boing Boing’s got some pointers to accounts from that area. Be safe, everyone.
Greg reminded me that today is the 10th anniversary of the launch of Suck. I started reading a few weeks after it launched, but I do remember going back to read the first article that kicked it off. Here’s a lengthy and comprehensive look at Suck’s history.
To protect against wholesale theft of words (theft of words? I feel silly just writing that…), dictionaries insert fake words in their listings. The article says that the New Oxford American Dictionary’s fake word showed up on dictionary.com, but as of today, it’s gone.
Density is an important factor in thriving cities. “If not enough people want to shop or eat out, there won’t be many good stores or restaurants. If the audience for music, theater, or art is small, these activities will not flourish. If the tax base is scanty, schools and municipal services will be substandard.”
Witold Rybczynski on perimeter security around prominent public and government buildings. “The problem is that huge hunks of reinforced concrete in city streets are not only an eyesore and an impediment to movement, they’re a blatant and unsightly expression of a siege mentality.”
Lengthy examination of what makes people gay by the Boston Globe. “What makes the case of [identical twins] Patrick and Thomas so fascinating is that it calls into question both of the dominant theories in the long-running debate over what makes people gay: nature or nurture, genes or learned behavior.”
As some of you may have noticed, I changed the way I do my remaindered links a few weeks ago. Instead of a “headline” with a single link accompanied by some (optional) extra text:
“Does anyone devote as much energy to avoiding simple, sensible solutions as the modern graphic designer?”
Novelty is necessary to foster innovation, but is missing the mark so frequently worth the effort?
I switched to a short paragraph of text with one or more links:
Following the elimination of tipping at Per Se, an op-ed by Steven Shaw says tipping should be abolished in restaurants. (via tmn) Considering the statistics on tipping, perhaps he’s right. For a less refined take, here’s why Reservoir Dog Mr. Pink doesn’t tip.
I’m really happy with the switch so far. Posting each entry takes a little longer (especially if there’s more than one link per entry), but the format is a lot more flexible than the headline/link/text way. It allows me to explicitly follow up on previous posts (e.g. Remember this link I posted last week? Well, here’s some more info on that…), make connections between what I’m posting and what I’ve read/seen/heard elsewhere previously, credit where I find links, and is generally more Web-like and weblog-like in style. That and I can still do the headline/link/text thing if I want.
It’s a subtle change, but in a lot of ways it’s a return for me to an older style of blogging: link-dense, off-the-cuff, linking for subtext and not reference (a practice pioneered by Suck). Not having to limit myself to one link (as with the old style of remaindered link) or feel like I need to write something of substance to justify a post with a title and it’s own archive page (as with my main posts…it’s kind of amazing how post titles and individual archives have made blog posts seem more like magazine or newspaper articles than, well, blog posts) has been great. There was a missing intermediate baby bear sort of post that was difficult for me to do easily and on a regular basis. With this switch, it’s just right.
For those of you who read the remaindered links in a newsreader, you may not have even noticed the change. Depending on how your newsreader works and how you use it, you may not be seeing the extra links. I still have the URL pointing to whatever it is I’m primarily linking to rather than the permalink for the entry. I’m doing it that way now for backward compatibility, but I’m not sure how long that will continue…it makes less sense with this new format. I may even roll the remaindered links into the main RSS file…it would make a lot of sense (although I would still offer a separate RSS file for the r-links).
The bottom line is, if you’re reading the remaindered links in a newsreader, you may be missing out. The relative simplicity of RSS/Atom (and the applications that utilize them) is often a strength, but it’s not ideal for some methods of content display, which can be frustrating to those of us who revel in the flexibility of HTML in formatting content.
As always, questions, comments, and concerns are appreciated.
ID magazine has a brief update on what Josh Davis is up to. I heard about most of this stuff at a conference a few months ago…Davis is a great speaker and does interesting work.
flylittlebird is “an experiment in building collective wisdom from hundreds of undergraduate commencement speeches”.
A small ocean microbe called Pelagibacter has the smallest genome of any self-sufficient organism with 1,354 genes. It also doesn’t appear to have any extra DNA…no junk or redundant copies of genes.
Flickr set of glitch art created when digital satellite TV goes a little wonky.
News.com ruminates about Google building a collection of tools that serve as a replacement OS. Where have we heard that recently? You’re welcome for the story idea and thanks for the non-link, guys…tech journalism at its finest. I hereby institute a policy of not linking to you for a year.
Michael via email: “please tell me you were kidding”. Well, mostly yes, particularly about the no link policy thing (it’s actually going to be two years).
Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.
Interview with Frans de Waal about his work with primate behavior and politics. “I call the human species the most bipolar ape, meaning that we go beyond chimps in our violence, which is systematic and often results in thousands of dead, and we go beyond the bonobo in our empathy and love for others, so that human altruism is truly remarkable.”
Short article about Pixar on the 10th anniversary of Toy Story. Their work process takes a cue from improv comedy by opening up possibilities with “yes, and…” rather than “no, but…” Gladwell talks about this aspect of improv at length in Blink.
The Morning News interviews James Kunstler about our energy-scarce future. I think Robert could have just asked him one question and let him roll. Also fun…a Google ad at the bottom says “the myth of peak oil, read the truth!” Heh.
Pharyngula rips Deepak Chopra a new one regarding his skepticism of evolution. Skepticism is fantastic, but Chopra seems to be deeply engaged in an impressive display of uninformed hand-waving. Deep, put down your cup of invigorating tea and at least read a little about what evolution is so that next time, you actually sound like you know what you’re being skeptical about.
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