June 20, 2008
In which you can never have enough hate
Hatred for stroller-pushing latte-sipping line-cutting moms in Brooklyn bike shops; hatred for the disappearing, long-forgotten past; and hatred for things in general, dammit. Warning: Some links more bilious than others.... Read more
June 18, 2008
In which we have no bananas
Dan Koeppel, author of the outstanding history Banana, has an editorial piece in today's New York Times. He suggests that the rising price of fuel and the ongoing floods in Ecuador will combine to produce $1/lb. bananas, a significant price threshold for this ubiquitous food. He discussed the factors that have kept banana prices low, and the monoculture that makes the contemporary consumer banana extremely vulnerable to blight, and draws the conclusion that we ought to look for a different fruit to enjoy on our bicycle rides. His book (full title: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World) does not directly answer a question that pops into my mind almost every day: why do bananas from the street vendors always cost a quarter? His methodical research and vivid writing have brought me a more clear understanding of the supply chain and shenanigans of getting a banana to the cart. Last week I tried a short red banana, a different variety from the standard Cavendish, and found it surprisingly difficult to eat. After having eaten at least a banana a day for decades, I am completely accustomed to the specific taste and texture of a particular banana; this Red Banana (PLU 4236) took me by surprise. The editorial is a reprise of themes from his book, written with a more moral tone than the book itself. … the Cavendish is the only banana we see in our markets. It is the only kind that is shipped and eaten everywhere from Beijing to Berlin, Moscow to Minneapolis. By sticking to this single variety, the banana industry ensures that all the bananas in a shipment ripen at the same rate, creating huge economies of scale. The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality and universally affordable. … In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. Getting used to life without bananas will take some adjustment. What other fruit can you slice onto your breakfast cereal? But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.... Read more
June 16, 2008
In which we chuckle at the ordinary
Like Emily Jo Cureton's daily crossword-inspired sketches, Steven Frank draws inspiration from the electronic everyday. His muse: SPAM Subject: lines. Some favourites: thank snoop, Bug Message, and like flipping a switch that will allow you to get exactly what you want. Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!... Read more
June 13, 2008
Out of Gas
Over three decades, Camilo José Vergara has photographed decaying gas stations. The New York Times published a slideshow of his photographs. Vergara photographs many aspects of decay and blight across America; the Chilean-born photographer received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002.... Read more
June 11, 2008
June 10, 2008
Tom Sachs vs. Tom Sachs
Although I have not seen Tom Sachs's massive bronzes at Lever House, I did walk through the Animals exhibition at Sperone Westwater. The title of the exhibition might as easily have been Sounds, rather than Animals: the sounds of an absent cat, of tools on their racks, or deadened (or amplified) pianos, and especially of animals becoming extinct -- all these sounds played an important role in the pieces. The Waffle Bicycle broadcast the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, from loudspeakers mounted to a massive modified bicycle. The bicycle has all of the necessary ingredients for making waffles, from the live chickens for producing the eggs to the refrigerated whipped cream for topping the end product. I first encountered Tom Sachs's work in the infamous Barney's Nativity display, and more recently on the cover of Dana Thomas's Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. I am still uncertain about my grasp on the intersection of consumer culture and art as Tom represents it, but I enjoy the very visceral presentation of his work in the gallery setting. Tom brings a lot of surprisingly frank and violent ideas to his outwardly-calm pieces, such as the wood block with King Heroin burned onto gold leaf.... Read more
June 8, 2008
In which the web is our foley
Instant Rimshot vs Sad Trombone. If only the iPhone supported Flash ... well, that can be fixed: I recorded these into .mp3 files and made them easily accessible for my own nefarious purposes.... Read more
June 7, 2008
In which we face the end of guano
“It would be an inglorious conclusion to something that has survived wars and man’s other follies,” Mr. de la Torre said. “But that is the scenario we are facing: the end of guano.” An article in The New York Times discusses the precarious position of the guano-collecting industry off the Peruvian coast. I learned of guano from the Tintin adventure Prisoners of the Sun.... Read more
June 6, 2008
How many Luxemborgs is Wales?
Arf's Sensible Units web site elegantly converts one measurement — 181 cm, say, — into something less abstract: 1.3 Alaskan moose antler spans. 15 CDs side by side. A little less scientific (and more joyful: "Convert boring units to real objects as you type!" is its slogan) than the sensational Google Calculator, but no less useful. For the record: 1 Wales is 8.0 Luxemborgs.... Read more
May 19, 2008
In which we make all languages one
Google's new translation tool has more languages and more shine. This tool has helped me read through innumerable web pages in the past. Although it does not answer all questions about internet sites in other languages, it provides excellent tools for reference-checking and for aiding me in understanding foreign-language posts. The new languages include Bulgarian and Greek (although not Attic, or classic, Greek; I am encouraging Google to apply statistical machine-translation methods to the corpus of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit literature), as well as improvements to the existing languages' translation facilities. I didn't say babel fish, nor babelfish. Nor 72 views of the tower of babel (I have been waiting for a while to incorporate that into something. Now is the opportunity!).... Read more
May 15, 2008
May 12, 2008
In which more is more
Andrew Bird wrote a piece about recording songs for his new album. Part of the New York Times's Measure for Measure blog, it has insight and humour and beauty. I love reading about the minutiæ of recording, especially about the contemporary music I really enjoy. Seeing large tape machines rolling, thinking about sliders and pots and mics and speakers and amplifiers, it's all quite exciting. Thanks, Aram, ever keen to the intricate technology of sound recording, for pointing this out.... Read more
May 8, 2008
In which I look at photographs
In looking over photographs on the internet, the short attention span in me enjoys many of the amusingly-captioned contributed-photography sites. LOLCats, of course; and also Man Babies, photobombing (not photobombing). Of course, plenty of stuff on flickr: sticker art, smashed cars, bicycle parking: something for everyone, especially for me.... Read more
May 7, 2008
In which I found that essence rare(r)
Aram pointed out, via the excellent Brooklyn Vegan, that stalwart Gang of Four rockers Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham are leaving the band (again). Did I write stalwart? I meant totally awesome. I could hope to fit all of that cool and kickass into my whole lifetime — they stuck it into each of their records. I got a copy of their first record from a girl at my high school who was moving to California (to attend Berkeley, if I remember correctly); I was a couple of years younger than she, and received a stack of her hand-me-down records (Psychic TV amongst them) when she cleaned house. I was not prepared for what came over the speakers when I first put the needle down: the rhythm! the energy! the anger! Give me punk rock! Give me funk! The first video is from The Old Grey Whistle Test television programme twenty-five years ago, the second from the Electric Picnic festival recently.... Read more
May 5, 2008
In which we see a clam in a jam
Emily Jo Cureton takes a few clues from each day's New York Times crossword puzzle and illustrates the resulting, sometimes fragmentary phrase. Favorites, though I needn't pick: bonsai egret, lets dropit, and ALIEN SOUSA.... Read more
April 30, 2008
In praise of the cooky
I appreciate the cooky as a unit of measure, as a mathematical proof, but mostly as a chocolate-laden treat.... Read more
April 29, 2008
In which we honor Mariah Carey; Or, lies, damn lies, and number-one singles
A few nights ago, the Empire State Building was lit in honor of the singer (and, lest we forget, actress!) Mariah Carey. With her new album (E=MC2) and its first single, she now stands second only to The Beatles for number-one singles on the Billboard Chart. (Does her new album count as "math rock"?) I like Mariah Carey: her voice, her songs, and how criticism about her enriches my vocabulary. I wonder how she ends up driving the music industry and having the lights on the Empire State Building honor her; why not Thurston Moore?... Read more
April 21, 2008
In which we valet-park, with robots
From JapanProbe: "Customers who come to the station by bicycle need only place their bike on a small platform and hit a few buttons, and the system will automatically store their bike in an underground parking garage that can accommodate 9,400 bikes. When the reporter asks the machine to retrieve his bicycle, it only takes 23 seconds to accomplish the task. The parking system costs 100 yen for a single use, or 1,800 yen for a monthly pass." More video at the JapanProbe site. San Francisco's own master bicycle valet parker kash runs the Warm Planet bicycle shop at the Caltrain station in San Francisco [PDF].... Read more
April 20, 2008
In we doff our hat
Seeing Adam Albright's name at the top of the new Language Log brought a smile to my face. The Language Log, long a favorite of both esoteric and popular linguistics, brings together academic writers on a delightful variety of topics. It also introduces me to other language-related blogs, including Mr Verb.... Read more
April 17, 2008
In which my eyes are plate-wide
Aram brought to mine attention this month-old post on Craigslist (San Francisco, for reasons that will become quite clear): http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/608546617.html. Craigslist has collected it under the "Best-of", which is a user-driven distinction. This post is a splendid successor to Theodocious Ferocious's "One Less Fixie" post of a few years ago, which commemorated the brief popularity of freewheeling front-brake-only pista bicycles and their numbskull riders. "my eyes are usually plate-wide with terror"... Read more
April 15, 2008
A few words on growing up Scots
In my younger years, I often fell asleep hearing pipers practicing on a nearby hill, and a subliminal message has since compelled me to avoid wearing pants -- although I missed last week's Wear a Kilt To Work Day, part of the Tartan Week festivities. Some words on the historical importance of the kilt (and of whisky), from The Glenlivet's advertising posters: The Glenlivet and the kilt share more than just Scottish origins – both were once against the law! Under England’s King George IV, the 1746 Dress Act banned all items of Highland dress. The same monarch imposed excise laws banning all production of whisky in 1781. Despite this, when King George IV visited Scotland in 1822, he himself insisted he would drink no other whisky than the “illegal” The Glenlivet. On this same trip, the king and his retinue also donned tartan outfits, reinstating both Scotch whisky and the tartan in the same visit. Kilt is a Scottish word that means “to tuck up the clothes around the body.” The word derives from the Old Norse kjilt, which means “pleated.” A 1746 description of the versatile garment states: “The garb is certainly very loose, and fits men inured to it to go through great fatigues, to make very quick marches, to bear out against the inclemency of the weather, to wade through rivers and shelter in huts, woods and rocks upon occasion; which men dressed in the low country garb could not possibly endure.” Today, the kilt is generally regarded as formal dress and can be seen at wedding and black tie occasions. The mutual vocabulary of Scots and Swedish intrigues me: words such as bairn and the comparable formations of sijkhus stand out. Through reading about the history of Scots, I came upon the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, which promotes languages and linguistic diversity.... Read more
April 14, 2008
Is it not art? We are artists!
Consider Levi van Veluw; consider The Enigma. Art? performance? photograph? Does a specific application of technology equal art? Does art require the skillful and expressive match of technique to technology? Pete Goldlust's carved crayon series may be the result of advanced industrial automation, but the skill, vision, and execution are artistic. Finally, keeping it old-school: this morning's New York Times reported on Leonardo's having illustrated a chess book: The book, “De Ludo Scachorum,” or “The Game of Chess,” is by Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and Renaissance mathematician who was a friend and collaborator of Leonardo. One of the earliest chess books, it contains 114 diagrams of chess problems drawn in red and black. Long thought to be lost or destroyed, it was discovered in 2006 in a 22,000-volume library in northeastern Italy that belonged to Count Guglielmo Coronini, who died in 1990. The last part amuses me greatly: the book was long thought lost. With the instantaneous (well, hundredths-of-a-second) speed of information retrieval, the thought of something being lost in a library charms me.... Read more
April 12, 2008
MADison and 56th
View Larger Map The unusual engraving on the surface of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass show the location of the piece: 590 MADison Avenue. A-propos: within minutes of my having posted these photographs on flickr, web search through Google had indexed them (well, the text at least). The complete set is available; I took them in part because I have not been able to uncover good, publicly-available photographs of this sculpture.... Read more
April 5, 2008
In which we find the penny dreadful
Every few weeks, I haul the pocket-sized sack of coins that I have accumulated to the store around the corner; there I exchange them for a certificate I can redeem at a favorite online merchant. Many of the coins are pennies, but some of the sackful includes nickels, dimes, and quarters; half-dollars rarely circulate (and, I imagine, annoy cashiers at least as much as the Sacagawea dollars and Jefferson twos I cheerfully use to pay). The United States' approach to coin and paper strikes me as woefully sentimental. David Owens's penny piece in the New Yorker touches on points historical, technical, and social. It's great, including the misquotation (eggcorn?) of "hordes" for "hoards". I appropriated the new Jefferson nickel as an illustration, rather than the similarly expensive penny, because it is a truly impressive piece of engraving.... Read more
April 4, 2008
In which we see the b of the bang
The genius of this sculpture outside the site of the 2002 Commonwealth Games comes from a quotation attributed to the British sprinter Linford Christie (who is eminently quotable, and apparently ready to rumble): I start running at the 'B' of the Bang from the starter's pistol. Never mind that the whole thing is slowly falling apart, and even when I walked past I thought it was still under construction (it's not; it's under litigation).... Read more
April 2, 2008
On the tribulations of language: words and punctuation
This fellow read the OED from soup to nuts (perhaps from alpha to omega?) and is now blogging about it; this fellow documents the inconsistent treatment accorded to the letter L in hand-written signs, and blogs about it (with photos!); me, I am fond of the grocer's apostrophe and puzzling punctuation. ... as are other people: Apostrophe Abuse illustrates the perils of modern-day puncuation; ritual observation of the importance of punctuation happens on National Punctuation Day; and the "emphatic" use of quotation marks in signs and signage. And the most excellent writers of The Language Log share this gem: Proofreaders rejoice! The missing apostrophe on the granite base of the new Ernie Banks statue is now in place. It took a stone carver about 30 minutes Wednesday morning to complete the work, said Lou Cella, the sculptor who made the statute. The missing punctuation was noticed when the statue was unveiled on opening day at Wrigley Field Monday. later corrected to... Read more
March 3, 2008
In which proof of the Almighty is just a Calendar Book away
Read more at http://jameth.livejournal.com/3982795.html.... Read more
February 28, 2008
In which a photograph is worth a thousand wiretaps
The Billboard Liberation Front helps put things into perspective.... Read more
February 27, 2008
On finding and sharing over the Internet
I enjoy reading both passive-aggressive notes (especially this fine example!) as well as mis-cased &mdash not merely mis-spelled! — posters. Of course, I also enjoy puzzling puctuation, grocer's apostrophes, and signs showing food eating itself.... Read more
February 26, 2008
On tits and ass.
Did Apple make a clbuttic mistake? Whose conbreastitution does President Bush trample? Whose parish buttets are up for sale? Although spell-checkers are a boon, arbitrary use of global replace can be devastating. Take it from me, who removed all of the us from a client's web site some years ago.... Read more
February 19, 2008
Fidel Castro!!!
To borrow from another playbook: I mean Fidel Fucking Castro!!! I get really worked up about Cuba, partly from my romanticized notion of how the socialist ideal has played out. I saw Mikhail Kalatozov's Soy Cuba and fell in love with the stories, the colours, the tracking shots; I read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and thought about the intrigue of the island. The photograph and implied capitalist-style product placement come from The New York Times.... Read more
February 1, 2008
In which high taxes fit in to the Algebra
I enjoyed reading this NYT article about declining use of plastic bags, and feel encouraged by the suggestion that a very high tax on the consumption of bags will The Alegbra of Need, expressed by my friend William S. Burroughs, describes how this works: so long as demand exists for the item, suppliers will find a way to bring it to market. Eliminate the demand, in this case by jacking up the cost suitably high and by providing a reasonably-priced alternative, and hey presto! consumers switch to the alternative. Last year, San Francisco enacted a follow-up piece of legislation that requires large stores to cease using plastic bags; previously, the large stores (the definition is along the lines of how many outlets a particular store has, or how many square feet the store is) needed to provide a "recyling" facility for plastic bags. New York has now taken this same step, and hopefully will move quickly to the second, and discourage the use of plastic bags entirely. 2% of our landfill mass that will stay with us forever; hundreds of millions of carrier bags stuck in trees from Bryant Park to The Siq; a whirling mass of tangled plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean.... Read more
January 29, 2008
In which we go into the fold
Robert Lang writes on origami art and science. He makes mathematical, handsome arthropods from paper.... Read more
January 25, 2008
In which we wonder: art or technology?
I appreciate the skilfull application of colour and symmetry to a project of technology, and wonder: is it art? Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder; lately I have visited some galleries and museums which make me wonder about the optical receptors these people must have, for I see little beauty in a scrap-heap of cardboard on the floor, or a "sculpture" of pasta and glitter, or a piece that looks exactly like the bunch of keys I have in my pocket. However, I enjoy looking at pictures of neatly-cabled datacenters and server racks, and am thankful that I do not run cable or crimp connectors. Nor shall I, now that slackers has moved out of my closet and into a real colo.... Read more
January 18, 2008
On maps
An image that maps each state in the Union to its counterpart in GDP, showing the formidable economic power of the United States. Upon checking in to a hotel a few days ago. I arrived in the dead of night, and the night clerk was reading a slim volume with an attractive cover. I eyed it while we went through brief formalities, and then asked about it. An Atlas of Radical Cartography: turns out that I know the editor, if slightly, through Lize Mogel's excellent map of green space in Los Angeles. I spotted this map several years ago on a bus shelter near the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax, and subsequently obtained a copy.... Read more
January 15, 2008
January 9, 2008
In which we have some language lessons
The New York Times Book Review had an all-Islam issue on Sunday, with an interesting essay on learning Arabic by the Times's Beirut bureau chief, Robert F. Worth. I have been studying Arabic intermittently for the past few years, and many of his observations ring clear and true. For anyone who knows only European languages, to wade into Arabic is to discover an endlessly strange and yet oddly ordered lexical universe. Some words have definitions that go on for pages and seem to encompass all possible meanings; others are outlandishly precise. Paging through the dictionary one night, I found a word that means “to cut off the upper end of an okra.” There are lovely verbs like sara, “to set out at night”; comical ones like tabaadawa, “to pose as a Bedouin”; and simply bizarre ones like dabiba, “to abound in lizards.” Dabiba (presumably applied to towns or regions) is medieval, but I wouldn’t put it past Dr. Zawahri to revive it. ... At the same time, all Arabic words have simple three- or four-letter roots, with systematically derived cognates that allow you to unfold a whole range of meanings from a single word. The word for “to cook,” for instance, is related in a predictable way to the words for “kitchen,” “dish,” “chef,” and so on. Arabic speakers are often dismayed to discover that the same principle is less common in English. As the months passed, the sounds of the language were gradually transformed. Arabic’s hard “h” letter, so difficult to pronounce at first, began to seem like a lovely breath of air, as if countless tiny parachutes were lifting the words above their glottal base. The notorious “ayn” sound, which often takes months for English speakers to produce, lost its guttural edge and acquired, to my ear, the throaty rumble of a well-tuned sports car. Like the author, when I first began learning Arabic I tried out my meagre conversational phrases on everyone I could, but my enthusiasm tapered off as I realised that I could sustain very little in the way of constructive dialogue. Sure, I could ask after the health of obscure relatives (the vocabulary for family is very rich), but I could not easily understand the answers, especially if they were spoken fluently. I was very surprised a few months ago when, sitting in the front seat of a downtown-bound cab, I not only got the gist of our cabbie's conversation, but understood entire sentences. His Arabic was remarkably clear and dialect-free, and he must have hailed from the Levant (alas, the group with me in the cab were all hurrying to catch a ferry, so I could not stop and make chit-chat with the driver).... Read more
January 7, 2008
In which I begin to understand
During a visit to the Dia Arts' Riggio Galleries in Beacon, I discovered the work of Michael Heizer in person. I had read about his ambitious terraforming earth sculptures and heard about his Levitating Mass (link goes to overview and criticism of public art in New York City). The ubiquity of satellite imagery on the Internet allows us to peek at Michael Heizer's City, a work in-progress in Nevada. Heizer has not made the work widely available to the public, and looking at aerial photographs feels like something of a spoiler; I shouldn't have looked for it. Heizer expects to complete City in 2010, but visits to its remote location might be as tricky as seeing his contemporary Walter de Maria's Lightning Field or Robert Smithson's . All of these pieces also receive support and curation from the Dia Foundation. The Foundation, long a supporter of visionary installation art, takes its name from the Greek δια, meaning "through": "chosen to suggest the institution's role in enabling extraordinary artistic projects that might not otherwise be realized." After not quite understanding two holes-in-the-ground, one at the Tate Modern and the other until recently at the Gavin Brown Gallery in New York, seeing Heizer's North, East, South, West, 1967—2002 at dia: Beacon caused my jaw to drop. Beholding the installation in its context revealed the art as transcendent, and seeing several galleries of similarly massive, innovative works was an epiphany. I need to go back to the Warhol Museum. All the exhibits at the dia: Beacon have developed with the collaboration of the artist, or with the artist's intellectual trustees. Gerhard Richter's grey mirrored panels appear in a beautiful rectangular gallery, lit by a glorious clerestory; Joseph Beuys's energy-channeling Fond series is in a sombre, dim room, and Dia has installed his Aus Berlin: Neues vom Kojoten in a room built to the specifications of its original début. Seeing galleries of such organization brought remarkable clarity to the works. One specific experience: walking in to the massive central gallery, ringed with isomorphic canvases in Andy Warhol's Shadows series.... Read more
January 5, 2008
In which I see arctic technology
The photography of Christian Houge, now in his first State-side show, at the Hosfelt Gallery, made a huge impression on me. He captures the hues of snowy landscapes marvellously. He combines the quiet natural beauty of Norway with the stark colours of man-made antennae. There is an island located between Greenland and the North Pole called Spitsbergen or Svalbard (“the cold land”). The seclusion of the island results in its having the cleanest atmosphere in the world and being one of the best places to do astronomical, meteorological or climate research. Hence, the remote and pristine landscape is marked by installations of technological and scientific equipment. The photographers who have most excited me all combine specific mechanical or technological elements in their work: O. Winston Link, who photographed steam railways; Edward Burtynsky, who photographs 'infrastructure' and especially strip mines and ship-breaking yards; and Christian Houge, capturing the systems used for searching the skies.... Read more
December 28, 2007
In which we offer money for our own subjugation
This online-only piece in the New York Times's JetLagged column surprised me with its frankness and length: The airlines, for their part, are in something of a bind. The willingness of our carriers to allow flying to become an increasingly unpleasant experience suggests a business sense of masochistic capitulation. On the other hand, imagine the outrage among security zealots should airlines be caught lobbying for what is perceived to be a dangerous abrogation of security and responsibility — even if it’s not. Carriers caught plenty of flack, almost all of it unfair, in the aftermath of September 11th. Understandably, they no longer want that liability. As for Americans themselves, I suppose that it’s less than realistic to expect street protests or airport sit-ins from citizen fliers, and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much from a press and media that have had no trouble letting countless other injustices slip to the wayside. And rather than rethink our policies, the best we’ve come up with is a way to skirt them — for a fee, naturally — via schemes like Registered Traveler. Americans can now pay to have their personal information put on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation." Despite glaring systemic and amusingly obvious holes in the security of airlines, the agenda continues to be both reactive and unnecessarily disruptive. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation. The prevailing notions of physical security around air travel stick in my craw not only because I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy flying from place to place, but also because the notions are wrong. Wrong-headed, and with the worst sort of ignorant, wrong intentions: these are measures that reflect no sophistication on the part of policy-makers or of law-enforcement, reinforcing the glorious stereotypes the legislative and executive branches have as dunder-headed troglodytes. We have massive models for the prediction of weather and traffic; and we have the ability to place a massive yellow first-down line underneath the image of football players onscreen; but we cannot reliably secure our transportation, merely provide the irritating illusion that we are doing something.... Read more
December 23, 2007
In which I cheat, and enjoy it
Rex Parker, who Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, is not only a welcome helpmeet, but his commentary both illuminates and amuses. He adds clip art, relevant movie posters, and welcome exegesis for the daily puzzle. I first found him when, stuck in a particularly nasty puzzle (must have been Thursday, the utter limit of my ability), I needed to cheat; now I enjoy reading his analysis after all the cheating is done and accounted-for. I don't now how the one-nine-hundred toll line ("$1.49 a minute") survives.... Read more
December 19, 2007
In which there are a lot of artholes
The new installation at Gavin Brown Gallery: a whacking big hole in the ground. Not as impressive as Doris Salcedo five-hundred-foot crevasse at the Tate, but I suppose space in the West Village is more dear than in Bankside (no! can't be!).... Read more
In which we cycle past
The Science Times article about Donald Norman and usable design mentions Delft, a Dutch town of which I am especially fond. Norman discusses the goals of usability, and how predictable behaviour manifests in many aspects of everyday life: To get along with machines, Dr. Norman suggests we build them using a lesson from Delft, a town in the Netherlands where cyclists whiz through crowds of pedestrians in the town square. If the pedestrians try to avoid an oncoming cyclist, they're liable to surprise him and collide, but the cyclist can steer around them just fine if they ignore him and keep walking along at the same pace. "Behaving predictably, that's the key," Dr. Norman said. "If our smart devices were understandable and predictable, we wouldn't dislike them so much." Instead of trying to anticipate our actions, or debating the best plan, machines should let us know clearly what they're doing. The ordinary should be ordinary.... Read more
December 18, 2007
In which everything is less than zero
Another piece of artistic rebellion ("You had better do as you are told / you had better listen to your radio!"): Wikipedia sez: Costello wanted to play "Radio Radio" on SNL. Columbia Records, Costello's US label, on the other hand, was interested in having an already-established song performed on SNL, to stoke the fires of interest in the band prior to the American release of My Aim Is True and This Year's Model. In the event, Costello began the SNL performance by playing "Less than Zero." However, after a few bars, he turned to the Attractions, waving his hand and yelling "Stop! Stop!," then said to the audience, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here," possibly referring to the obscure story behind "Less than Zero," which was written as a reply to British fascist Oswald Mosley. He then led the band in a performance of "Radio Radio." Costello was banned from Saturday Night Live for twelve years. This version of "Radio Radio" (fading into the "false start") can be found (in monaural) on Saturday Night Live: 25 Years of Musical Performances, Vol. 1. This happened thirty years ago, and I knew naught. The first Elvis record I picked up was the four-track EP (12"!) of "Less Than Zero" on Stiff Records, probably from the musty and dusty basement record shop adjacent the musty and dusty Carribean restaurant (who puts a restaurant in a basement?) on the once-glorious main drag of "upstreet" in Squirrel Hill.... Read more
December 15, 2007
In which he has to go when the whistle blows
I had not been following the shenanigans around Dr David Kessler and UCSF, and the news of his dismissal took me aback (the official press release is marketing crap). Dr Kessler's energetic work at the FDA led to the very thorough implementation of new food-labelling act, which first made me aware of what it was that I was hustling down my gullet.... Read more
December 12, 2007
In which the art is what you make [of] it
&tThe current installation at the Tate Modern fascinates me, although I have not seen it. Reading about the reactions that visitors have to seeing Doris Salcedo's massive five-hundred-foot-fissure in the imposing Turbine Hall reminds me that art is in the eye (and sometimes dexterity) of the beholder. Word of [another] mishap prompted a discussion among visitors of whether it might be wise to erect barriers around the exhibit, or seal it with some kind of Plexiglass-type material. No, was the consensus. “I think that would completely ruin the excitement of it,” said Rachel Laine, whose 2-year-old son, Charlie, was peering into the crack, searching for crocodiles. “The whole concept of why people are coming here is to see a huge concrete floor with a crack in it.” I take this quotation, and the preceding narrative, from Sarah Lyall's excellent article in yesterday's New York Times, which I am only reading today. Art is subjective, as is pornography, as is marketing (or is that art?). Eye of the beholder, caveat emptor, look before you leap.... Read more
In which the tough gets weird
One obstacle that Josef K. did not face was the thrill of waiting hours, time and again, to enter the court of justice. [ ... A ] construction flagger for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said his custody and child support case against his wife had been dismissed three times because each time he was delayed in line and missed a hearing. Each time he had to petition again to restart the case. Now he carries the court clerk’s number with him, so he can phone in when he is downstairs. Even with the steady rain beating down on his coat, he said this morning wasn’t that bad. He was standing only 20 yards from the entrance of the building. Even with the long line inside, he would probably be upstairs in about an hour, certainly less than two. The thought cheered him. “Sometimes I arrive here and I am standing outside Law and Government High School,” he said, referring to the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice several hundred yards away.... Read more
December 4, 2007
In which everything's gone green
The Landprint project [ English version here ] renders photographs on meadows, greenswards, lawns, and pastures by using robotic mowers. The projects uses specially-cultivated grass, having studied the growth patterns and appearance of various plantings, as well as the modified lawnmower. Crop circles have nothing on this -- ? Another foreign-language website with a succinct artistic idea: Face Your Pockets (in Russian and in English). Scan your face and the contents of your pockets. Some of the scans are striking beautiful in the juxtaposition of material goods and fleshy faces. For several months I kept a (paper) inventory of my pockets, in the days that I wore a field jacket and pocket-y pants. Now all one finds in my pocket are a wooden-handled folding knife, billfold, key, and telephone; everything else is in my briefcase.... Read more
December 3, 2007
In which we preload
A slogan generator (mine: "Take Two Bottles into the Solitude?"; one can also seed the generator); the web economy bullshit generator; the bullshitr, a bullshit-generator 2.0 (ha! bloody ha!); and the do-it-yerself demotivational poster. There. Now you are ready for the working week.... Read more
November 26, 2007
On manhole covers
Manholes have long fascinated me, and just a few days ago I noticed a large "Made in India" stamp on a ConEd manhole cover in Midtown. Today, the front page of the New York Times has a stunning photograph of a foundry with neat rows of naked men carrying buckets of molten metal to pour into moulds. The article and its accompanying photographs are stunning, reminiscent of Edward Burtynsky's beautiful industrial landscapes of shipbreaking in Alang. The author and photographer J Adam Huggins narrates a audiovisual slide presentation of his photographs. The article raises questions about the ethical aspects of contracts between municipal agencies and employers who do not provide even the most basic safety equipment ("We can’t maintain the luxury of Europe and the United States, with all the boots and all that,” said Sunil Modi, director of Shakti Industries. He said, however, that the foundry never had accidents.). I wonder, however, how many of the small pieces that make up our massive municipal machinery come from similar factories spread across Asia, Africa, and South America, where working conditions are not as closely governed or regulated as in the United States? Several years ago I picked up a copy of Manhole Covers (which you can buy from Amazon), a coffee-table book with lavish over-size photographs of steam-pipe covers, access panels, and all manner of plates that fall under the heading of manhole cover. More recently, a friend gave me a copy of Designs Underfoot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City.... Read more
November 8, 2007
Radio, live transmission
Yesterday, at the Computer History Museum: ABSTRACT OF TALK A major internet milestone occured on November 22, 1977. On this date the first known three-network transmission took place among SRI International, Menlo Park and the University of Southern California via London, England. The networks involved were the ARPANET, the Bay Area packet radio network, and the Atlantic packet satellite network. This inter-network transmission among three dissimlar networks is generally regarded as the first true Internet connection. It was also a major milestone in packet radio, the technology behind WiFi and other kinds of wireless internet access.... Read more
November 7, 2007
HOWTO tell if you are a quant
"If you’ve heard of Leonardo Fibonacci and Henri Poincaré, but have never heard of Georgio Armani and Louis Vuitton, you might be a quant." More witticism from Andrew W. Lo (.pdf link; as HTML here).... Read more
October 30, 2007
In which we diagram the sentence
A teaser on the front page of today's New York Times, print edition: "The New York Public Library is being given a cache of personal papers from the estate of Katharine Hepburn that focus on her stage career." The story itself.... Read more
October 20, 2007
In which we have social security through fahion obscurity
Through the always-worthy News of the Weird email circular, I learned a little about the intersection of fashion and invention: That is a purse in the guise of a manhole. The New York Times article features such other items as a children's backpack that converts into a typical Japanese fire-extinguisher and a slender skirt that folds into a ersatz vending machine (and completely conceals the wearer). The idea is that the wearer of these clothes feels more comfortable walking alone in deserted areas, knowing that they might easily blend into the urban streetscape if they feel threatened. This concept might not work as readily around here: one sees few out-of-doors vending devices on Manhattan sidewalks; whether this is due to the ubiquity of bodegas, or the fear of vandalism, or some economic reason, I do not know. If the skirt converted to a nitrogen canister, or something more typically New York and non-interactive (neither a wire trash basket nor an umbrella vendor would pass muster), it could work. Also through News of the Weird, and also security-related: catch a thief, receive beer for life*. *"for life" works out to a carton per month, which does not really seem like a whole lot, really. But still: Croucher Brewing sound like they make some tasty beer, and I sure hate to hear that "some blighters" took off with their laptop.... Read more
October 13, 2007
In which we go round and round
It is like a song by The Cure. I found this site while looking for a book on the portraiture of Jenny Saville, who "wallow[s] in the glory of expansiveness". I do not know whose photograph appears above, but I really like it. I paged through hundreds of photographs on flickr answering to the "spiral" description, to no avail.... Read more
In which this is the Modern world
In London's Underground, one hears the admonishment "Mind the gap!" One hardly expects the same advice at the Tate Modern, but then one doesn't anticipate Doris Salcedo's Crevasse installation in the famous Turbine Hall. According to Salcedo, the fissure is "bottomless... as deep as humanity". However, it appears to be around three feet at its deepest point.... Read more
October 9, 2007
In which we mourn the hyphen
This piece by Charles McGrath on hyphens disappearing from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary strikes me as ironic, since the New York Times is no bastion of punctilious punctuation (pardon my hypallage). What’s getting the heave are most hyphens linking the halves of a compound noun. Some, like “ice cream,” “fig leaf,” “hobby horse” and “water bed,” have been fractured into two words, while many others, like “ bumblebee,” “crybaby” and “pigeonhole,” have been squeezed into one. That “ice cream” and “bumblebee” ever had hyphens to begin with suggests an excess of fussiness on the part of older lexicographers, and may explain some of Mr. Stevenson’s annoyance. The issue of proper hyphenation has always been vexing for the Brits, far more than it is for us, and occasioned perhaps the single crankiest article in Fowler’s “Dictionary of Modern English Usage,” first published in 1926. I am re-reading "Murder Must Advertise" and have been keeping a short list of the unusual words that appear, formed entirely of ordinary words linked with hyphens: guard-book, bosom-pal, shirt-sleeves, lunch-hour, block-maker, — a handful more. Probably through repeated reading of novels such as Sayers's, with their splendid punctuation, I have a dogmatic approach towards my own punctuation, from commas to emdashes, exclamation marks to obelisks.... Read more
October 8, 2007
In which he should not have kept the pipe, nor the hands
The CIA agent who tracked and arranged the killing of Che Guevara wishes he had kept Che's last pipe. Perhaps he could have arranged them with Che's severed hands, and formed a more perfect trophy? When the Gang of Four sang "See the Girl on the TV dressed in a bikini, She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb" little did they know that the essence of Cold-War fashion would be dressed up with a Marxist icon, post-modern to the hilt. Post-modern, or simply iconic?... Read more
In which we reach the rock
The New York Times's piece onYukihiko Ikumori, a venerable climber of Rat Rock in New York City's Central Park. This brings up essential questions about journalism: how did the reporter find this story? It is a human-interest piece, rather than breaking news or analysis, yet surpasses 'most anything the Times has printed in the past several months (or years, perhaps; Neil Straus's Mingering Mike story of a few years ago was another highlight).... Read more
October 4, 2007
In which we land a man on the moon
My sister Anar, reporting on space exploration and the terrestrial applications of satellites since Sputnik!... Read more
October 2, 2007
In which baby's got the bends
Radiohead have decided to provide their new album online and to charge whatever fans are willing to pay, even $0.00. 0¢. Seven years ago, the band made Kid A freely available online after pre-release copies leaked to the Napster download network. It subsequently went platinum in the first week of its US release, thereby suggesting that Radiohead are not entirely off their commercially-successful nut.... Read more
September 28, 2007
Salim is a moron.
Your search - "salim is a moron" - did not match any documents. update A few hours later:... Read more
September 25, 2007
In which we read a long ass-bug
The blog of Randall Munroe, author of the unpronounceable xkcd, pointed me in the direction of the most amusing Mozilla bug report I have read in a long time, about the "Long tooltips should wrap instead of being cropped" issue.... Read more
September 18, 2007
In which we pass through security
The current installment of Opus says it well:... Read more
September 16, 2007
The problem with Wikipedia
which explains how I started reading the cast list for Sidney Lumet's 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express and wound up staring at descriptions of the (first) Gulf War in one window and "Cultural references to Frank Zappa" in another: "A number of animals have been named after Zappa including a goby fish (Zappa confluentus[4]), a jellyfish (Phialella zappai[5]), an extinct mollusc (Amauratoma zappa) and a spider with an abdominal mark supposedly resembling Zappa's mustache (Pachygnatha zappa[6])."... Read more
September 13, 2007
HOWTO: Make an urban park in a parking space
The Rebar Group have a fun, illustrated write-up describing how to make a park out of parking. Got your Parking Day project all sussed out? Here's a map, a call for volunteers, and an inspirational video (from San Francisco, last year).... Read more
September 7, 2007
In which we have a lousy dinner
Stephen Holden's review of Romance and Cigarettes knocked me out. Not only do I want to see the movie, I really enjoyed reading the review itself. Sometimes criticism really shines, and Holden's prose dances across the page (or screen, in this case -- although it's on page ten of the first Arts section, somewhere in my bag, but I first read it online).... Read more
August 29, 2007
In which we go insane
From http://sane.nl/: After the glorious early years, starting in '98, the SANE conferences over the years have shown a slow decrease in the number of attendees, approaching a level where organizing a next SANE conference might become more a financial challenge rather than a nice conference with the rock solid content that you were used to find at SANE. The bad news is: there will not be a SANE 2008 conference. The SANE organizers will take some time off to analyze the possible causes of the decrease in interest for the SANE conferences and are looking for fresh opportunities and novel ways to reverse the negative spiral. If you think you can help us in any way, please don't hesitate to contact the SANE organization by email to: To be honest, we'd love to be able to continue the successful series of SANE conferences. We're hoping and aiming to be back with a SANE event in 2009. You can see me looking attentively (during Walter Belgers's Black Hat session) at the most recent SANE get-together.... Read more
August 24, 2007
In which Crack is Wack!
Reading about Keith Haring's "Crack is Wack" mural led me to an article on protecting graffiti from graffiti, and to the current patent-holders of this mysterious formula, who mention nowt the natural ingredients. I like graf in its many forms, and many others celebrate it. Why do some people deface murals and other public works of art?... Read more
August 22, 2007
In which we look to the stars
I am never getting work done again: Google Sky, an interactive browser of celestial photography, plus a massive flat-panel display and a fast processor have been making my entertainment heavenly.... Read more
August 21, 2007
In which we riff on the old, familiar, and uncomfortable
The Nietszche Family Circus, The Perry Bible Fellowship, Dysfunctional Family Circus, the end of parody?, and, of course, Ivan Brunetti (no longer available online, alas).... Read more
August 17, 2007
Plus ça change
Damon Schreiber has snapped a hypnotic series of photographs revisiting Toronto, thirty years after Shige Sakamoto captured the city during a weeklong visit. I don't know either of these people or their other work, but the juxtaposition of photographs is fascinating. My favourite: Elizabeth and College. Plus ça même chose.... Read more
August 16, 2007
In which we have a spade and an umbrella
Can you see the code in the tracks? The rain on the umbrella? The skeleton with a spade? (Props to Vesalius)... Read more
August 10, 2007
In which we litter by the billions
Great. Another plastic bag. Somewhere I have a photograph of a carrier bag fluttering high up on a tree growing from a crevice in The Siq. Some numbers, since statistics ne'er lie: "There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In the Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there's now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that's twice the size of Texas, including fragments of plastic bags. There's six times as much plastic as biomass, including plankton and jellyfish, in the gyre." I read once that 1% of the pellets used to extrude the plastic "t-shirt" bags are lost in transit, and many wind up in the sewage system in San Pedro.... Read more
In which we make a bad request: 400.
If I have not made my admiration for Adam Koford's artwork clear: the guy is a genius. And he uses aCreative Commons licence to distribute some of his work (like the set illustrating HTTP response codes).... Read more
July 31, 2007
In which you can't get it back
If you are ever in need of audio files of various people hiccuping, look no further than Hiccup (sic) Lovers dot net, the project of one Eric Clapton. Video, too. This is it. I spell the word hiccough.... Read more
July 30, 2007
In which we memorize awkward phrases
Another good Step Five. The one I saw previously was amusing; this one is useful. Phrases I use frequently include: "No." "Show me the log messages that indicate my code is at fault." "A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." "Let's drink."... Read more
July 28, 2007
In which I write like a king
Although I don't like rollerballs, I dig the technology behind them. I also dig hacking on things. Put the two together, and voilà: awesome pen for not much cabbage. I especially like Step Five (of twelve).... Read more
July 20, 2007
In which we work from home
Wired Magazine published an article about working from home as an independent web hax0r, and how the informal collective Jelly has got something going on. I couldn't sit in a cramped room with people that I was not collaborating with, and I have enjoyed no success with my own get-rich-quick^Wweb2.0 ideas (the Get-Into-Heaven cards, notably).... Read more
July 19, 2007
In which we flout the arbitrary constraints
One, two, three, four, or five? Prescriptive behaviour, adherence to arbitrary policy such as this, smacks of a personality without discipline. If one has discipline, one certainly does not advertise it. As Mildred asked Johnny, "What are you rebelling against?"... Read more
July 6, 2007
In which we have a winner
The Perry Bible Fellowship is my new favourite comic. It joins Sam Hurt's Eyebeam, the "minimalist computer art" and ;nonsequiturs" of Pokey the Penguin, the math, sarcasm, and romance (all equally important!) of xkcd (who today name-checks one of my favourite internet memes).... Read more
June 26, 2007
On liking things on the web
Information I can get through Swisstrains, a fantastic fan-site that the SBB should integrate, if they have any sense whatsoever!, might not be useful to me specifically, but the design and beauty of the site amaze and fascinate me. Wow! So clever. updateI broke this page, through a poorly-chosen default value for a new variable in an outer loop. That'll teach me. (Teach me what, exactly?)... Read more
June 19, 2007
In which we get all grumpy
Although I will never approach the public visibility nor the biliousness of Camper's Hate Blog, I do confess that I barely suppress rage at the inadequacy of some written communication -- and, very specifically, when people who respond to an email message respond to the poster and misspell their name, substituting the common spelling ("Rachel") for a less-common one ("Rachael"). Aside: Bitch Magnet is an excellent name for a band. I went to a show of theirs at CMU when I saw a poster bearing the band's named and laughed aloud. I do not keep the assiduous records what bolsinga does, but I suppose this was in '89 or thereabouts. I don't even remember the other two (or three?) acts on the bill.... Read more
In which we need to get to the J-Church on time
From the June issue of the Noe Valley Voice, something priceless and amusing: Like the J-Church line itself, the project to determine just what makes Noe Valley's main train late has fallen behind schedule. In a memo issued May 8, the team in charge of the J-Church Pilot Project announced that it required a six-week extension because the opening of the new T-line had caused problems with rail operator availability and schedule changes. According to the memo, which was signed by TEP Program Manager Julie Kirschbaum and Chief Operations Officer Kenneth McDonald, "Reports from regular J-Church riders...indicated that the first weeks of the [three-month] pilot were a success. They observed more trains, shorter headways, and greater reliability on the J-Church Line." During the week of April 1, on-time performance averaged 72.5 percent, with 84 percent of trains on time during the morning commute. Unfortunately, that success soon ground to a halt. During the week of April 19, on-time performance reached a low of 55.9 percent. The team believes that it can evaluate improvements to the J-Church line after the complications due to the T-line are addressed, so they plan to re-evaluate the J-Church Pilot Project in early September instead of mid-July. Anyone who has questions about the extension should contact Kirschbaum at 701-4305.... Read more
June 17, 2007
In which we laugh out loud
Apelad's Laugh-Out-Loud Cats vintage-style comic is one of the best (internet) things ever. I'm adding it to the list of things that make me laugh.... Read more
June 12, 2007
June 1, 2007
In which we find a magic number
Mental Floss Magazine offers Fifteen Reasons to Love Mister Rogers, including "writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I’m not sure if any of that was because he’d mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143. According to the piece, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three.”". Awwwwwww!... Read more
May 23, 2007
In praise of Malmö
To replace their beloved Kockums Crane, the weeping Swedes of Malmö turned to Santiago Calatrava, who drew inspiration from his sculpture and built the Turning Torso skyscraper. Calatrava has a fascinating design process and a predliection for pragmatism, despite the fantastic appearance of his structures.... Read more
In which we dig on pop
Although I was not at last weekend's Maker's Faire, I was glad to see these (high-speed!) pictures (of people popping balloons!):... Read more
May 20, 2007
In which the Cutty Sark burns
Blaze ravages historic Cutty Sark. A fire which swept through the famous 19th Century ship Cutty Sark may have been started deliberately, police say. The vessel, which was undergoing a £25m restoration, is kept in a dry dock at Greenwich in south-east London. An area around the 138-year-old tea clipper had to be evacuated when the fire started in the early hours. A Cutty Sark Trust spokesman said much of the ship had been removed for restoration and the damage could have been worse. Half the planking and the masts had been taken away as part of the project. Chris Livett, chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises which is repairing the clipper, said at the scene: "From where I stand there is not a huge amount of damage to the planking that was left on. "There are pockets of charred planking and some have gone, but it doesn't look as bad as first envisaged." The chief executive of the charitable Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty, said: "What is special about Cutty Sark is the timbers, the iron frames that went to the South China Seas, and to think that that is threatened in any way is unbelievable, it's an unimaginable shock." Following an inspection of the site on Monday afternoon, Mr Doughty said: "Buckling of the hull remains a big fear but until we do the measurements we are not going to know. "With my naked eye, as far as I have been able to see, the structure of the ship seems to be intact." Insp Bruce Middlemiss said detectives were looking into the possibility that the fire had been started deliberately. Special history Police are analysing CCTV images which are thought to show people in the area shortly before the fire started. Firefighters were called to the scene at 0445 BST and the flames were put out by 0700 BST. "The cause of the fire is now under investigation by London Fire Brigade and the Metropolitan Police," a London Fire Brigade spokesman said. A number of witnesses have already come forward and the police are urging anyone else who may have been in the area to contact them. A silver car was seen leaving the scene but police said there is nothing at this stage to link it to the fire. CUTTY SARK Built in 1869 at Dumbarton on the River Clyde Designed by Hercules Linton First voyage February 1870 210ft (64m) long Main mast stood 152ft (46.3m) above the deck Has had 15 million visitors Preserved as a tribute to merchant navy workers Greenwich Council leader councillor Chris Roberts said: "This is a devastating blow for what is a truly iconic symbol of Greenwich across the world. "The Cutty Sark has a unique and special history, which helps to draw millions of visitors to Greenwich every year." The Cutty Sark left London on her maiden voyage on 16 February 1870, sailing around The Cape of Good Hope to Shanghai in three-and-a-half months. She made eight journeys to China as part of the tea trade until steam ships replaced sail on the high seas. The ship was later used for training naval cadets during World War II, and in 1951 was moored in London for the Festival of Britain. Shortly afterwards, she was acquired by the Cutty Sark Society. The ship was undergoing conservation work because sea salt had accelerated the corrosion of her iron framework. Dr Eric Kentley, curatorial consultant to the Cutty Sark Trust, said of the ship: "It can be saved. It's certainly not completely devastated. "We will put her back together - but it's going to take much, much longer and a lot more money than we originally thought." Visit London's chief executive James Bidwell said: "The ship's need for vital conservation has put it in the public eye recently and we can only hope that this terrible fire will redouble all our efforts to preserve this wonderful part of London's heritage." The Duke of Edinburgh is due to visit the Cutty Sark on Tuesday. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell inspected the remains on Monday afternoon. The Cutty Sark Trust is appealing for funds to help repair the fire damage and complete the restoration.... Read more
May 17, 2007
In which we consume the quantity
UPDATE: Chris Jordan understandably disables linking directly to images on his site.... Read more
May 12, 2007
In which we read the newspapers
Four Saved From Giant Vat of Fish Feces (05-11) 15:52 PDT Turners Falls, Mass. (AP) -- This nasty rescue is no fish tale. Rescuers cut through a filtration tank of dense fish feces to reach four workers who fell into the sludgy dung Friday while cleaning the 18-foot tank at a western Massachusetts farm. The workers became trapped for 45 minutes after a bracket holding a plastic filtration pad collapsed as workers stood on it to clean the fiberglass tank at the Australis Aquaculture fish farm, said Capt. David Dion of the Turners Falls Fire Department and the fish farm's manager Josh Goldman. One of the farmhands fell below what Dion described as a sand-and-feces mix, while the other three had their heads above the sludge, he said. Goldman said the workers and the pad, which collects bacteria created by fish urine and feces, like some household aquarium filters, fell to the bottom of the tank. "Everybody's present and accounted for," Goldman said. "A couple of the guys even came back to say hi." Rescuers slashed through the feces mix until they were able to pull out the workers, Dion said. "It was very slimy and it was heavy," he said. "Never seen anything like it in my life." One worker who became submerged in the feces was airlifted to Bay State Medical Center in Springfield, but was talking with paramedics and did not appear to have life-threatening injuries, Dion said. The other three were taken by ambulance to a local hospital with minor injuries. Dion said rescue workers cut a hole in the side of the tank at the farm which raises barramundi, a new fish farmed as a replacement for grouper. And Bay Area newspapers report that the City of Berkeley has finally issued The Shipyard a cease-and-abate order. The Shipyard is an artists' and engineers' collective, housed in shipping containers at the western edge of the city.... Read more
May 11, 2007
In which I rofflemayo
I swear that no two neurons are connecting right now. Invisible LOLcat gags are making me chuckle (even with macro).... Read more
May 2, 2007
April 25, 2007
April 22, 2007
In which this duck could not dance
... because he had two left feet. Not the past tense, but he's still a lucky duck. "He's now only got three legs and a stump which means he's Stumpy by name and stumpy by nature."... Read more
April 14, 2007
In which I take delight in sharing
Thanks to the Creative Commons licence, I see works building on my photographs on flickr: a snap of elephants at the Buenos Aires Zoo turned in to a political cartoon; American Express used a photo of a boutique in Paris to illustrate a print and online publication; and random snapshots turn up in blogs 'round the world, near and far.... Read more
April 11, 2007
In which yes, it is recognizable
You cannot have a revolution without babies, you cannot have a revolution without bloodshed, and you most definitely can not have a revolution without Che. UPDATE: After receving remonstration that this post was useless without the photograph, I added a link to it. I also saw the Guerilla Drive-In project on BoingBoing.... Read more
April 7, 2007
In which we hear a good bed-time story
I have heard various versions of this gag, some with a serious tone, others completely comical. Snopes has the scoop.... Read more
March 30, 2007
In which we wonder about swimming across Lake Baikal in woolen bathing gear
The Google Maps application gets more environmentally-friendly, as these directions for getting from Chicago to London indicate. I did not know that a swim across the Atlantic was in any way feasible. I always figured the Strait of Gibraltar, the English Channel, or even the Alcatraz-to-Aquatic-Park to be boundaries of human effort. Benoit Lecomte swam from Cape Cod to Quiberon, France: "Navigated through the 40th and 50th latitude by two French sailors on a 12m (40 foot) sailboat and protected by an electronic force field, Lecomte swam 6 to 8 hours a day at two-hour intervals. He mainly used the crawl stroke, switching occasionally to a mono fin and using an undulating dolphin kick to carry him over the 5 600km (3 736 nautical miles) of relentless waves. 72 days later, on 28 September, he swam ashore exhausted but heroic at Quiberon, France. "Lecomte probably could not have done it without the modern techniques and clothing that have helped athletes reach astonishing levels of performance. The latest swimming costumes reduce drag resistance by 8%, resulting in a performance that is even better than when swimming naked. Consider that when Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875, his waterlogged woollen swimwear weighed about 3kg (lOlb). By contrast, the new Speedo one-piece weighs just a few ounces, even when soaked."... Read more
March 29, 2007
In which we wonder about the combination
You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, skittlebrau. To celebrate the arrival of The Simpsons movie, some 7-11 convenience stores will dress up as Kwik-E-Mart shops.... Read more
March 27, 2007
In which we blog too late to save a drowning which
One of my favourite images is the deceptively simple illustration on the cover of Frank Zappa's album "Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch". A few months ago, Aram described how the image is not unique to this album, but one of a series of Droodles, the brainchild of a comedian, not a cognitive scientist. Roger Price also created Mad Libs, thereby providing me with endless fun for very little effort. Just the thought of this image gives me a fit of giggles. Is micro-blogging a term? Twitter fascinates me with its strict limit on length of entries (140 characters, the multiple input methods (text-message, IM (!!), and web form) facilitate addiction^W stickiness, and the cosy UI make watching others' activities fun.... Read more
March 23, 2007
In which we have a Manhattan murder mystery
Through the vibrant and nostalgic world of subways and pay-telephones, Canal Street Station, a pay-phone murder mystery, begins with a call placed from a subway station (the web site notes that "This mystery takes place on the NQRW, 6, and JMZ platforms, NOT THE A C E Station.").... Read more
March 19, 2007
In which we skip the Forever part
As US postal rates increase, the Postal Service has plans to issue a "Forever Stamp" to allow customers to hedge against future franking costs. I know that, from the number of yellowing, adhesive-backed F, G, and H stamps in crystalline envelopes at home, that I rarely keep postage for long enough to make use of a Forever Stamp. Nor do I want to make what is effectively a loan to the Postal Service. I also recall the frustration I felt at the last rate increase, when the Los Angeles post office I went to did not have the new post-card stamps, not the 2¢ (or was it 3¢?) stamps needed to make up the difference from the old to the new rates.... Read more
February 26, 2007
In which the currency gets local
The New York Times ran an article on a currency experiment in Western Mass: "... several dozen businesses agreed to include an alternative currency in their daily transactions and give a discount to those who used it. "Now people can pay for groceries, an oil change, even dental work with currency bearing the likenesses of local heroes like Herman Melville and Norman Rockwell. ... Amazon [dot com] does not accept BerkShares, for example, but the Bookloft on Route 7 does."... Read more
February 16, 2007
In which the eaglets fly
Belltown, dateline Tuesday: eaglets appear next to Calder's Eagle. Seattle's attitude towards renegade art seems more enlightened than Beantown's.... Read more
February 15, 2007
In which we suffer embarassmint
Another item on the list of things the United States Treasury could do better: dollar coins. The new coin, first in a series, features George Washington, our nation's first President; subsequent coins will feature the succeeding Presidents (including the ephemeral William Henry Harrison! the dictatorial Roosevelt! the disgraced Nixon!). The old, golden coin had a much-lambasted three-quarters (hah!) profile of Sacagawea. Now, don't get me started on the Treasury and the problems with United States paper currency ...! The National Academies Press has a list of features that address currency accessibility issues. I am glad that Aram reminded me of the new coin this morning. (Did you know that he met a guy who had a spiritual vision?) And if you find yourself hankering for a golden dollar coin, head to that refuge of the disenfranchised and helpless: MUNI. MUNI dispenses dollar coins from machines in some of its subway stations, because it has neither the facilities nor the wherewithal to accept paper or electronic payment.... Read more
February 13, 2007
February 7, 2007
In which it's like a ring around a rosy
A portion of the David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh collapsed under the weight of a pickup truck. Or something like that: the engineers are still sorting out how to extricate the truck from the mess. "A 6-inch-thick section of concrete flooring in the second-floor loading dock of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center collapsed yesterday under the weight of a tractor-trailer, sending steel, debris and equipment crashing 30 feet down into a walkway and a water feature below. ... We have a crane company that we're talking to [about] how do we remove this [truck] or at least shore it up? But from a structural standpoint, it isn't going anywhere. It's lodged in there real good." The American Institute of Architects published a list of "one hundred and fifty favourite buildings in America. The Golden Gate Bridge is high on the list.... Read more
February 6, 2007
In which he breaks the record
Josh Wolf is still in prison. Josh Wolf, 24, spent his 169th day in a Dublin federal prison after declining a subpoena to turn over unaired videotape he shot of the chaotic 2005 San Francisco street protest against the G-8 summit happening a continent away in Scotland. Wolf's stint surpassed that of Vanessa Leggett, a Houston-based freelancer who served 168 days in 2001 and 2002 for declining to reveal unpublished material about a murder case. Wolf sold some of his footage from the event to local television stations and posted parts of the video on his Web site. He and his lawyers have argued that the First Amendment gives him the right to refuse the subpoena to turn over the rest of the tape. But judges have repeatedly turned down motions for Wolf to be released, citing a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. Constitution does not entitle reporters to withhold their confidential sources or unpublished material in a grand jury investigation or criminal trial.... Read more
February 5, 2007
In which we gild refined gold
Dick Cavett starts out picking at Bush's pronounciation and use of language, and works towards some interesting ideas about the devolution of English. Not only the oral form, but the written: Certain misquotes are rooted in marble. It would take another act of Creation to restore “gild the lily” to Will Shakespeare’s “paint the lily.” (“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”) There are hundreds of these. I don’t see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty — and evaporating quickly. Almost daily irritants, like the dumb cluck’s beloved, “between you and I” will never be expunged, it seems. “Loathe” and “loath” will continue to change places, and “phenomena” and “phenomenon” will still be used interchangeably. But, finally, what the hell? It’s only language. It’s only what we live by. I shudder at a lot of contemporary usage, and changes in the English language, but really enjoy watching the words evolve too: it's like watching a car wreck.... Read more
February 1, 2007
In which I was listening, listening to the rain
A massive digital camera system takes beautiful stitched photographs of Golden Gate Park, amongst other things.... Read more
January 29, 2007
In which we get all cheery about the vocabulary
Mike Solomon points out this gem of a phrase: Cream of the crap, from a pretty damn funny IM exchange with someone who, looking for a thug to settle someone's hash, stumbled instead upon Mike's homepage. Mike develops cool software, such as SIMBL, the Smart InputManager Bundle Loader. But he doesn't wallop wiseguys. (That photo isn't Mike. It's Frank, from a poster advertising a 1972 show at Cal State Fullerton, co-headling with Alice. The advertised show didn't take place in '72, but in '68.)... Read more
January 27, 2007
In which we get all huffy about the vocabulary
A list of pompous-ass (hyphen mine) words, including citations and deconstruction. The site's author rails against these words, suggesting that they are the enemy: we should know them, and never use them. An example: Word: in medias res Synonymous with: (Latin) In the middle of things: used esp. of a narrative that opens in the middle rather than at the chronological beginning. Example: Time magazine took care of it in its review of installment 2 of Lord of the Rings. From http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021202/story.html: It begins in medias res, as though you had just stepped out for a few seconds to get more popcorn. If you didn't see last year's The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson, the trilogy's wizardly director, isn't about to cut you any slack. Even though it's clear enough in context, it could have been removed entirely with no loss of meaning. Having it in there broke up the flow at the very beginning of the article because I stopped to wonder "what is that?!" Makes me wonder what my very-expensive liberal-arts education was for, if not to read bloody Time bloody magazine. Oh, yes, it's for reading comics online. Smartass. For my part, I consider certain contemporary notions disrespectful to, inconsiderate of, or resulting from a misunderstanding of, English. Turning a perfectly good noun, such as contact into a verb (a phenomenon); or creating a verb like burglarize out of burglar, when one could use the extant burgle (whence the burglar himself); or ravaging the verb to make a noun, such as utilization, while use, a poor monosyllable cousin, sits idly by. But English, she evolves, and I shrug.... Read more
January 26, 2007
In which we slice it and dice it
The Will it Blend? website has scads of amusing videos featuring all sorts of junk, in a blender! You can try some of these at home, too. In fact, all sorts of stuff can be blended or shredded, from refrigerators to royalty; from pigs feet to printers; and, of course, tonnes of AOL CDs and cars.... Read more
January 24, 2007
In which we see the places
Google Books now offers summary pages with books and maps extracted automatically: Around the World on A Bicycle, Just Keep Pedaling: A Corner-to-corner Bike Ride Across America, " title="Offsite: Google Books">French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure.... Read more
January 18, 2007
In which I wonder
Reading about Classfull networks and thinking about /8s, I wonder: where am I? And lo: I am here.... Read more
December 23, 2006
In which the lights in the city are art
The New York Times's Elain Sciolino ran a profile of François Jousse, the man responsible for lighting the fantastic buildings and avenues of Paris.... Read more
December 20, 2006
Our band could be your life
God bless YouTube. I found dozens of short pieces of Minutemen concert footage, including a seafaring concert, "Joy at Sea", in gorgeous sepia-toned grainy video; the video for "This Ain't No Picnic" (with the antagonist airplane pilot, Mr Ronald Reagan!); and some amped-up concert footage. The site has a slightly confusing but very pretty acoustic version of "Corona" -- confusing because of the Mike Watt spiel at the beginning and subtitles in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Plus seeing George Hurley sitting in front og a pair of bongo drums on the floor is kinda unsettling. (I first saw him play on my twenty-first birthday, at Lounge Ax; he was part of the Red Krayola touring ensemble. No stranger than Mike Watt picking up bass and hitting the road to Iceland with The Stooges.) Joy at Sea was a concert-on-a-boat based from San Pedro (but of course!) on June 15th, 1984. Our Band Could Be Your Life is a book by Michael Azerrad about the American punk-rock scene, and takes its name from the Minutemen song "History Lesson Pt. II". I made a small update to punkrock dot virji dot net (old page here) and will take advantage of the ample bandwidth that YouTube has. Tomorrow is Mike Watt's forty-ninth birthday (Happy Birthday!). Rumour has him talking with Greg Ginn about a reissue of the original, forty-five track "Double Nickels on the Dime", including all three covers and all four "car jam" bits. Oh, and "Little Man With a Gun in His Hand." That would be all sorts of swell.... Read more
December 18, 2006
In which we may have beluga barf!
A woman in Long Island may have received four pounds of whale vomit, ambergris worth about $18,000, as a gift from her landlocked sister. She almost certainly cannot sell it, though, as the US Endangered Species Act prohibits trading in ambergris and other whale by-products. I'm pretty sure I first learned about ambergris through the adventures of Encyclopedia Brown, boy detective (RIP), in "Smelly Nellie and the Ambergris".... Read more
December 17, 2006
Name that Dictator!
A game I enjoyed as a young 'un was "Name that Dictator!" The Radar Report (gotta love palindromes!) has a feature on autocrats and their trappings of power.... Read more
December 14, 2006
Man bites dog
This song is called pump it up, as in standing. Up. Up. Up! Area man hits seven-legged hermaphrodite deer; a Mongolian man (world's tallest!) operates on a dolphin; does news get any weirder than this carnival atmosphere? One can almost hear the barker: "Come see the bearded dwarf woman! The man with three eyes, who sees into the beyond!" And so on. UPDATE: The dolphin saved by the Mongolian Massive was not this, now-extinct white river dolphin.... Read more
December 11, 2006
In which it's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon
I am notoriously uncharitable towards pigeons, and am delighted to see that others share my distaste for these foul creatures. The comments in the story, about the need to cull the pigeon population in Kingston, illuminate the community's disposition towards the bird: I agree with this action. Pigeons carry all manner of diseases like AIDS, malaria, rabies and mad cow disease to name but a few. They are also very aggressive and I can vouch for this as I was attacked by a flock and pecked severely while on my way home from flower arranging classes. In fact I would be more than happy to help in the killing of these evil creatures. Well done Kingston council keep up the good work. Why not just round these flying rats up in a big net? Surely the council could find some practical use, for example setting up a tasty pigeon pie stall in the centre of town. I for one would be grateful to see these horrific beasts removed from the Royal borough altogether! They are a nuisance, and also the flying wizards of Satan. There, I've said it. I think the correct solution would be to hack the wings off as many pigeons as possible before joining them together to create one large wing. This could be wafted at the pigeons by any member of the townsfolk when numbers got too high. Children could also shelter under it at times of heavy rain or possibly loud thunder. The opposing viewpoints: Pigeons can be very intelligent creatures. This is because they are actually bred from dolphins and can travel vast lengths underwater as well as through the air. I warn you now Council folk, if you so much as dare remove or cull any pigeon from Kingston or the surrounding local I shall withhold my council tax! I'm prepared to go to prison to save these beautiful specimens of birds so just forget it ok? Continue reading and laugh.... Read more
November 23, 2006
In which we bounce on the Reload
The Nietszchean Family Circus: Not quite a web comic, but entertaing (in the I'm-glad-it-didn't-happen-to-me sense), well-written, and neatly-illustrated: The Worm Within. An excerpt: My tapeworm did not pant, did not throb, did not shake or tremble. It lay tangled in itself, seemingly harmless, and I had a momentary urge of scientific inquiry, wondering whether I should not scoop it out with my bare hands, place it in an airtight jar, and take it with me on trips to show to people when I tell this story and relive this life-changing experience. Share. Publish it online or in learned print journals. With illustrations.... Read more
November 22, 2006
In which we get a quote
The inappropriate usage of quotation marks has long held a fascination for me, and I have a small collection of photographs on this topic. Erik pointed me at this flickr pool and flick group which both collect photos of unconventional and incorrect punctuation.... Read more
November 20, 2006
In which we suffer the Mint
The US Mint once again tries its hand at issuing dollar coins. In their write-up of the dollar coin's history, CNN helpfully refers to Susan B. Anthony as a "sufferage (sic)" pioneer. I have long figured that the US Mint should consider a series of historically significant as well as culturally relevant coins, and make them according to some reasonable numismatic guidelines. None of this three-quarter profile Sacagawea stuff.... Read more