Notes on Culture

Piracy Vs. Theft

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:30:58 -0400

Piracy Vs. Theft:

CULTURE BUZZ – A simple explanation of the key difference between the two.Clip it out and keep it handy.

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Clay Shirky on Gin, TV and Cognitive Surplus [video]

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:11:10 -0400

Clay Shirky on Gin, TV and Cognitive Surplus [video]

What's your Thoreau speed?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:50:39 -0400

What's your Thoreau speed?: In Walden, Thoreau proposed a modification of the traditional formula for calculating speed. Instead of merely dividing the distance traveled by the time it took to cross it, Thoreau proposed…

Infoviz slideshow

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:50:39 -0400

Infoviz slideshow: Slate has a nice short history of information visualizations, including work from Josh On, Jonathan Harris, and Martin Wattenberg. Many many more examples can be found on kottke.org’s infoviz…

Are You the Worker Who Jammed the Pen in the Copy Machine? [Creative Underclass]

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:50:39 -0400

Are You the Worker Who Jammed the Pen in the Copy Machine? [Creative Underclass]: …So you could be a hero when you miraculously fixed it? That behavior is more common that you think, says the Wall Street Journal—they’ve dubbed in “Munchausen at work.” (Munchausen’s…

Can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen this in a news report of new scientific finding

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:43:31 -0400

Can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen this in a news report of new scientific finding:

“Experts acknowledged that the research almost certainly has no practical applications.”

Cows have magnetic sense, Google Earth images indicate

Making Actresses Even More Fake [Advertising]

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:06:52 -0400

Making Actresses Even More Fake [Advertising]: This video is a sales pitch demo for Image Metrics, a digital animation firm. Notice anything strange? The actress is a fake. Her face is computer-generated. She’s a digital freak….

Handling adversity

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:59:15 -0400

Handling adversity:

The pithy Maya Angelou:

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

(via …

IMAGE OF THE DAY: The Seals Have 'Eyes'

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:58:49 -0400

IMAGE OF THE DAY: The Seals Have 'Eyes': CSIRO/AFP/Getty Images
This handout image was released by Australia’s Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Cooperative Research Center on Aug. 12. The colored lines track the journeys made by elephant…

Merlin Mann: What Makes for a Good Blog?

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:55:04 -0400

Merlin Mann: What Makes for a Good Blog?: A list of nine best practices. One of the smartest: “Good blogs are the product of attention times interest.”

People Who Live in Malls

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:55:02 -0400

People Who Live in Malls: Lisa Selin Davis has a story in Salon about the couple who lived in the Providence Mall (It was covered extensively on the blogs last year. See Ballardian and the artists’ website here.) The…

Design and the Elastic Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:25:44 -0400

Design and the Elastic Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

"Now that Brooklyn has been officially sanctioned as “hip” and “literary”—and..."

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:24:38 -0400

“Now that Brooklyn has been officially sanctioned as “hip” and “literary”—and you’ll excuse me for a second here while I roll on the floor in a spasm of ironic hilarity—it is high time for the bridge-and-tunnel literati to turn its gaze Verrazano Bridge–ward and begin discovering one of that borough’s most intriguing and authentic homegrown talents. Sorrentino’s Bay Ridge deserves to be appreciated alongside Malamud’s Crown Heights, Arthur Miller’s Coney Island, Henry Miller’s and Betty Smith’s Williamsburg, Hamill’s and Auster’s Park Slope, and Lethem’s Boerum Hill. Time to get on that Fourth Avenue local.”

- http://www.bookforum.com/archive/feb_06/howard.html

"This whole scene is cast in an immensely unflattering light in Sorrentino’s roman à clef–ish..."

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:23:13 -0400

“This whole scene is cast in an immensely unflattering light in Sorrentino’s roman à clef–ish 1971 novel Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, which might be described as a master class in distinguishing between writers with drinking problems and drinkers with writing problems—think Dawn Powell with an MFA from Brown. An unsparing catalogue of the endless varieties of self-deception, dilettantism, fraudulence, and self-serving malarkey among the marginally talented, it has always seemed to me a seriously bridge-burning sort of book (“Art is the undoing of many a hick … Wait till the folks in Terre Haute see this!” is one of its milder provocations).”

- Gerald Howard on Gilbert Sorrentino

A Chart-Based Review of Andrew Kuo’s Latest New York ‘Times’ Chart-Based Music Review

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:54:08 -0400

A Chart-Based Review of Andrew Kuo’s Latest New York ‘Times’ Chart-Based Music Review:

The Jams of Summer 2008 [NYT]

iPod Vending Machine

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:54:05 -0400

iPod Vending Machine:

TECH BUZZ – Eagle-eyed blogger Jason Kottke spots an iPod vending machine at a terminal at JFK airport. No, it doesn’t take cash.

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The…

Library of Dust

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:53:28 -0400

Library of Dust:

BLDGBLOG tells us about Library of Dust, a book of photographs of an Oregon state psychiatric institution.

Esteemed photographer David Maisel has created a somber and beautiful series of images…

Vintage business signs

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:53:09 -0400

Vintage business signs:

This is a fantastic set of photos of old business signs, many of them neon. As Ben says, “is it possible to favorite every photo in a set at once?”

(link)

Who Is The Solzhenitsyn Of China, Anyway? [Olympics]

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:52:49 -0400

Who Is The Solzhenitsyn Of China, Anyway? [Olympics]: When The Economist marked the opening of the Beijing Olympics by putting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the cover, we took it as a big hint to waste no time naming the Solzhenitsyn of China…

Milton's 400th anniversary.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:52:44 -0400

Milton's 400th anniversary.: Great art is great not because it enters an academic curriculum, and neither is greatness affirmed by the awarding of prizes or titles. But great is not necessarily a vague term. It can indicate work…