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Profile of Walter Werzowa, the man responsible for the Intel Inside theme. More here about tiny music makers, including the Windows 95 startup sound by Brian Eno, the THX theme, and the Mac startup sound.
John Cobb and Ray Edwards own a Honus Wagner T-206 card — the most valuable sports card in the world — and they’ve tried to sell it a number of times, but no one bites because the card hasn’t been properly authenticated (even though paper and printing experts have said the card seems real). Related: the obsessive Vintage Baseball Card Forum. (thx, david)
Graph of American house values from 1890 to the present. You can’t miss the sheer cliff starting in 1997. Houses have also gotten bigger over time. It would be interesting to see the same graph in price/square feet. (via ben hyde)
things magazine reviews Mark Danielewski’s new book, Only Revolutions. I quite liked Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which House things describes as “a combination of the Winchester Mystery House and the Tardis”.
The difficulties of interviewing Bob Dylan. “Dylan is rarely concerned about sounding polite, and he says things, but he sometimes makes them up. He also contradicts himself, answers questions with questions, rambles, gets hostile, goes laconic, and generally bewilders.”
Emdashes has the lineup for the New Yorker festival. Lots of good stuff there….plus a “New Yorker Dance Party”. Woo, sounds fun doesn’t it, kids? Tickets on sale Sept 7.
Brian Beatty: “Nobody important is keeping score, so do what you think is interesting.”
How GM and the other big US automakers are hamstrung by their dealers. It was their own fault, though. They misued the dealers and the dealers responded by gaining all sorts of regulatory protection that severely limits what the car companies can do.
An interview with Steven Soderbergh: “The hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear when creating anything. It’s the hardest thing in the world. It’s really easy to be obscure and elliptical and so fucking hard to be good and clear. It breaks people. Because you don’t often get encouragement to do that, to be good and clear.”
On Friday, September 1, I’ll be speaking at the 2006 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. I’ll be taking part in a symposium on simplicity organized by John Maeda (schedules: part 1, part 2). I’ve been furiously preparing my slides in Keynote for the past week or so. It’s my first talk using either Keynote or Powerpoint and I’m having fun messing around in Keynote. It’s a great little program. Thanks to John and the folks at Ars for including me…it’s a real honor.
Updates for the next few days will be spotty at best; the internet connection situation at both the conference and our hotel is unknown and I’ll likely be busy preparing for my talk1. And after the conference, we’re heading into the Alpine wilderness for a few days (maybe Salzburg, Munich, or Zurich as well) during which my internet status will likely be “offline” and my sausage intake status will be “every 6 hours”. See you when I get back.
So, now’s your chance to catch up on some recent doings around the site. Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks/months:
[1] “Preparing for my talk” may or may not be a euphemism for “throwing up repeatedly in worry about my talk”. (Actually, practice is a wonderful thing. It makes perfect, builds confidence, and reduces abdominal discomfort.) ↩
Stolen mobile phone + automatic upload of the thief’s photos to Flickr = art project. (thx, stewart)
A classic article by Stephen Jay Gould on the changing biological features of Mickey Mouse. Over the years, Mickey has become more well-behaved and his appearance more juvenile (larger eyes, short pudgy legs, relatively large head, short snout, etc.). “When we see a living creature with babyish features, we feel an automatic surge of disarming tenderness.”
William Drenttel discovers what happened to the small town in Oregon that renamed itself “Half.com”.
Gladwell on zero-tolerance policies: “making a fetish of personal accountability conveniently removes the need for institutional accountability”.
NPR feature on John Sawatsky, ESPN’s interview coach. (thx, doug)
The New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery has tons of great old photos of Central Park…among other things. thx, bryan
Great composite photo of Andre Agassi playing a point against Andrei Pavel in the US Open last night. Looks like Agassi had Pavel running a bit.
Update: Nice appreciation of Agassi with a summary of his career.
Street hacks: how to survive a freestyle rap battle. “Have your first real battle against someone you at least somewhat dislike. If you can find someone who just gets you emotional or who angers you, it makes it easier to flow about them.” (thx, steve)
Farecast, a site which predicts airline ticket prices so that you know when to buy them cheap, has added more than 50 cities to its roster.
Big movie stars may not have that big of an effect on a movie’s profit as the film industry thinks. “Looking across a sample of more than 2,000 movies exhibited between 1985 and 1996, they found that only seven actors and actresses — Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jodie Foster, Jim Carrey, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams — had a positive impact on the box office, mostly in the first few weeks of a film’s release.”
Photographer Noah Kalina has taken a daily photo of himself for more than 6 years and recently made a movie of the results.
Completely mesmerizing. Best viewed large. (via kdunk)
Gladwell says that some bloggers “believe that a reaction is the same thing as an argument”. Amen, brother.
Film critic Jim Emerson is collecting great opening shots from movies, including Star Wars, Primer, and Annie Hall. Do you have any favorites that Emerson hasn’t covered yet?
Flickr just launched an interface to geotag your photos. Geotag = situate your photos on a map.
Mars, Inc. is offering a reward of 2 million dark chocolate M&M’s for the safe return of The Scream, the Edvard Munch painting stolen from a museum in Norway in 2004. Mmmm….Munch. (via girlhacker)
More and more people are using their mobile phones to tell time instead of watches. Telling time has always been the #1 function I use on my phone.
Remember those neat library pictures I pointed to last week? Turns out that the Jedi archives in Star Wars Episode II were modeled after the Long Room Library at the Trinity College of Dublin. (thx, everyone who sent this in)
An outpost of Philly Slim’s, a restaurant specializing in Philly cheesesteaks, recently opened up near our apartment. In the weeks since its opening, the place has been near-empty every time I’ve walked past it. Without proper intel (i.e. a recommendation from friends or perhaps New York magazine), no one in the neighborhood wants to make the first move; when people wander by to glance at the menu, they take its emptiness as a sign that the food’s bad and head somewhere else for a meal. It’s a real catch-22 situation.
Last week, we were in the mood for some serious comfort food, so we tried out Philly Slim’s. And surprise of surprises, it was good. Really good. I tend to be disappointed by most steak sandwiches — the meat is usually thick, tough, and looks like it’s been boiled for weeks — but Philly Slim’s steak has a nice flavor and is sliced/chopped thin. The roll is nice & soft and doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the sandwich. The rest is pretty straightforward…Cheez Whiz, BBQ sauce, mayo, pickles, bacon, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce are among the toppings you can get on your sandwich. Add a Philadelphia-area soda, some onion rings, and a Tastykake for dessert, and you’re golden.
Bottom line: if you’re in the Union Square area and hungry, check out Philly Slim’s on University between 12th and 13th Streets. Ignore the lack of line and head on in.
The lost art of film editing. “Why has this chaotic, rat-tat-tat style of assembly, the kind usually associated with Michael Bay-brand megatonnage, been cropping up in such unlikely places?”
Henry Abbott reports on what he’s learned about William Wesley, a behind-the-scenes power player in the business of basketball. “Enter William Wesley. How’s this for a resume? He was right there in Michael Jordan’s ear. The whole time. ‘Wes’ helped pull off one of the great feats of modern legend-making. He held the hand of one of the NBA’s less likable characters — an angry, cussing, yelling, gambling, adrenaline addict with some sort of over-competitive personality disorder — as he became the most successful pitchman in sports history, complete with his own animated children’s movie.”
Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990. Even in 1800, New York was #1…and Nantucket was #14. (via fakeisthenewreal)
You know those spams you get touting penny stocks? It turns out they actually work. “The team found that a spammer who bought shares the day before starting an e-mail campaign and then sold them the day after could make a return on his or her investment of 4.9%. If he or she were to be a particularly effective spammer, returns to this strategy would be roughly 6%.”
Update: NPR report on the spam stocks study. (thx, jeff)
A short interview with Grigory Perelman, the Russian mathematician who proved the Poincare conjecture and turned down the Fields Medal. “Newspapers should be more discerning over who they write about. They should have more taste.” (thx pedro)
Malcolm Gladwell on how the demographics of companies affects their financial health. At the time of its bankruptcy in 2001, Bethlehem Steel “had twelve thousand active employees and ninety thousand retirees and their spouses drawing benefits. It had reached what might be a record-setting dependency ratio of 7.5 pensioners for every worker.” More from Gladwell on the piece here and here.
BMW commercial featuring the beautiful kinetic sculptures of Theo Jansen, who I covered previously on kottke.org. (via poptech)
Quick review of Apple’s Mighty Mouse. My scroll ball wheel thing had problems after a month as well. And side squeeze = hand/wrist pain waiting to happen.
New Yorker piece on Clifford Ross’ new camera, a “high-resolution digital video camera that shoots in three hundred and sixty degrees”. Ross is one of my favorite contemporary photographers.
Amazing photoset depicting the aftermath of a hailstorm in Northfield, MN. Tennis ball-sized hail puts holes in everything. (via eyeteeth)
Is “dwarf planet” an ironym? “Pluto is a dwarf planet, but we are now faced with the absurdity that a dwarf planet is not a planet.” (thx, adriana)
Area Man Finally Works Up Courage To Sexually Harass Secretary.
After hearing the news that Pluto had been demoted from its full planetary status in the solar system, Meg and I decided to hold a contest to find a new mnemonic device for the planets, replacing the old “My very elegant mother just served us nine pizzas” (among others). The mnemonic could work for either the new 8 planet line-up, the 8 major + 3 dwarf planets, or the old 9 planet arrangement in protest of Pluto’s demotion. Thanks to everyone who entered; we received a bunch of great entries and it was hard to choose a winner. But first place goes to Josh Mishell for:
My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.
Josh’s protest mnemonic is memorable, topical, and goes beyond a simple description of the shameful proceedings in Prague to real-world consequences. As the winning entrant, Josh will receive a print from HistoryShots…we’re suggesting Race to the Moon. Congratulations to Josh.
Now, some runners-up. These came very close to winning:
Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet (Dave Child)
“My vision, erased. Mercy! Just some underachiever now.” (Delia, as spoken by Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh)
Most vexing experience, mother just served us nothing! (Bart Baxter)
There were several entries that referenced vegetarianism and veganism; this haiku by Evan Norris was my favorite:
most vegans envy
my jovian silhouette,
not usually
Update: A reader noted that Evan’s haiku incorrectly swaps the positions of Neptune and Uranus. Happily, “usually not” works just as well. (thx, peter)
The honorary mention for lack of sophistication goes to Andrea Harner and Jonah Peretti for:
Molesting Very Excitedly, Michael Jackson Sucks Underage Nipples
Best foreign language award goes to Bernardo Carvalho for his Portuguese mnemonic (remember, “Earth” is something like “Terra” in Portuguese so the t fits. And we’ll ignore the e too…):
minha velha, traga meu jantar: sopa, uva, nozes e pão (Translated: “Old woman, bring me dinner: soup, grapes, nuts and bread”)
And here are some of the best of the rest:
Mollifying voluminous egos means judiciously striking underappreciated named planetoid (Bruce Turner)
Most Virgins Eventually Marry Jocks So Unscrupulously Naughty (Aaron Arcello)
Morons Violate Every Map Just So UFOs Navigate Poorly (Sean Tevis)
My violin emits minimal joy since union nixed Pluto (C.D.)
Maximum velocity earns many joyous shouts, unless not planetary (Scott Tadman)
Thanks again to everyone who entered!
20 seconds to solve a Rubik’s Cube? With one hand? Blimey.
FDA says morning-after pills will be available for sale in the US to anyone 18 or older without a prescription. Since the morning after pill is just a bigger dose of regular birth control pills, does that mean women can get them over the counter now too? Why not?
Video of a guy doing a 720 degree slam dunk. It’s really more of a 540, but still, damn. (thx, armin)
Update: A much better version of the dunk by Taurian Fontenette. (thx, dek)
Robert Birnbaum interviews author Sebastian Junger about his new book, Death in Belmont. The interview is a little confusing if you haven’t read the book (or at least a synopsis) but there’s some good stuff in there. “I went to Bosnia with a bunch of notebooks and pens and flew to Zagreb and started. There will always be those young people. And I encourage them. My answer is save up a few thousand bucks and just go.”
Bruce Schneier: “It’s time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.”
You’ve got about 4 hours left to enter the Pluto mnemonic device contest. We’re getting some great entries, but I know you will come up with something better.
Great library photography. Bet you didn’t know those three words could fit together in that order. The Trinity College Library in Dublin looks lovely.
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