Genetic portraits
Ulric Collette’s Genetic Portraits series features combined photos of family members (father/son, mother/daughter, etc.) that emphasize the facial similarities between them.
(via fresser)
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Entries for August 2011
How to speed up plane boarding
Physicist Jason Steffen has discovered a possible method for getting passengers onto airplanes twice as fast as the usual method.
The fastest method is one of Steffen’s own design: boarding alternating rows at the same time, starting with the window seats. The secret, he says, is that it leaves passengers elbow room to stow their luggage at the same time.
Even random boarding is faster than the back-to-front boarding the airlines currently use. (via jcn)
Two for tennis
Now that the US Open is in full, wait for it, swing, a pair of articles about tennis. First, an account of last year’s epic three-day Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.
Both players, clearly, were serving well. But their ground strokes were near-perfect, too. They made almost no mistakes. Isner remembers feeling so happy with his game that “it’s hard to explain. I never thought about technique. I had no dark thoughts in my mind. I was just swinging away and the balls were going in - no matter if it was a big point, or whatever. It was crazy.”
Mahut, meanwhile, recalls an almost spiritual dimension to his play. “When we got into the money-time at 6-6 [he says ‘money-time’ in English], there was only John, myself, and my team. No one else. I didn’t hear the crowd. There was only the present time. I didn’t think about the point before, or the point after. I just stayed in the moment. I had absolutely no fear. The level of focus and awareness I had was so high. Normally, you don’t keep up for a long time. But that moment - I kept it for a long time.”
Mahut’s enjoyment, he says, was triggered by more than competition. After the many frustrations in his career, his pleasure came from fulfilling his potential. In this regard, his experience recalls Jean Bobet, the French cyclist of the 1950s, who wrote about experiencing “La Volupte” - the rare and sensual state of perfect riding. “La Volupte,” wrote Bobet, “is delicate, intimate, and ephemeral. It arrives, it takes hold of you, sweeps you up then leaves you again. It is for you alone. It is a combination of speed and ease, force and grace. It is pure happiness.”
How did it feel, to play tennis like that? “It was the biggest moment of my life,” says Mahut, gravely. “It was magical.”
And then, from Grantland, a piece by Brian Phillips about “the long autumn” of Roger Federer. The once near-magical Swiss, his best days behind him, is now merely the third best player in the world…but is also still really really good, hanging onto his greatness longer than he should maybe?
Roger Federer has spent longer as a “still” athlete than any great player I can remember. You could even argue that it’s one of the signs of his greatness. Other top players hit the “still” moment, hang around for a little longer, and then whoosh, they’re gone, broken up into memorial clips and Hall of Fame inductions, classic rock bands who’ve sold their copyrights. Federer, after three straight years of diminished results — 11 to 12 singles titles a year from 2004 to 2006, then eight in 2007, and four to five every year since — is … well, still really amazing. He’s still near his best, which means he’s still playing some of the best tennis the world has ever seen. If anything, he’s improved his serve to compensate for what’s maybe been a slight decline in his movement and shot-making — although, as McEnroe pointed out during the French Open, his movement is “still great.” Heading into Wimbledon, historically his best tournament, he warmed up at the French by sensationally ending Djokovic’s 41-match winning streak and playing as well as Paris has ever seen him play against Nadal.
But because he’s been “still great” for so long — because we keep seeing the end coming, even if it never actually comes — Federer has also acquired an aura of weird sadness over the past few years that’s hard to reconcile with the way we used to think about him.
Speaking of sports, Grantland, and Federer, Bill Simmons said of Lionel Messi earlier this year that “he’s better at soccer than anyone else is at anything”. That’s a pretty short list but got me wondering, if you expanded the criteria slightly, who else might join Messi on the “better at their sport than almost anyone else is at anything at some point in the past 5-6 years”. Off the top of my head, possible candidates include Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Lindsey Vonn, Tiger Woods, Marta, Shaun White, Jimmie Johnson, and Annika Sörenstam. I don’t know much about hockey, but maybe Alex Ovechkin? No basketball, baseball, or football players on that list; Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds are the most recent candidates in basketball and baseball (please, don’t give me any of that LeBron crap) and I can’t think of any football player over the past 20 years who might fit the bill. Barry Sanders maybe? His team never won a lot of games and didn’t win championships, but man he was a genius runner.
Washing Machine Self-Destructs
This is what we do in America: instead of fixing expensive household machinery, we destroy it on video and put the results up on YouTube. It’s our gladiatorial pastime.
You’ll want to click away from this about halfway through (boring!) but stick with it until the end; it gets a lot better suddenly. (via stellar)
Update: Well, so much for being clever. This video was filmed in the UK, not the US. Perhaps I should have said “what we do in the first world” instead?
100 years of East London fashion
A couple dances their way through 100 years of fashion, from 1911 to 2011.
Super recursion
This is a fun little toy to play around with: a recursive branching algorithm with tons of tweakable options. I made this cute little guy:
(via stellar)
The geography of Foursquare
Great annotated list by Dennis Crowley of places that contributed to the creation of Foursquare.
Foursquare (and it’s predecessor, dodgeball.com) were designed and built in downtown NYC. Here’s a walking tour of where a lot of the ideas came from.
As Steven Johnson said, this is a “case study in how urban space fosters innovation”.
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?
From the Feb 1982 issue of Atlantic Monthly, an article by Edward Jay Epstein on how diamonds became so popular and so valuable.
By 1941, The advertising agency reported to [De Beers] that it had already achieved impressive results in its campaign. The sale of diamonds had increased by 55 percent in the United States since 1938, reversing the previous downward trend in retail sales. N. W. Ayer noted also that its campaign had required “the conception of a new form of advertising which has been widely imitated ever since. There was no direct sale to be made. There was no brand name to be impressed on the public mind. There was simply an idea — the eternal emotional value surrounding the diamond.” It further claimed that “a new type of art was devised … and a new color, diamond blue, was created and used in these campaigns…. “
In its 1947 strategy plan, the advertising agency strongly emphasized a psychological approach. “We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology. We seek to … strengthen the tradition of the diamond engagement ring — to make it a psychological necessity capable of competing successfully at the retail level with utility goods and services….” It defined as its target audience “some 70 million people 15 years and over whose opinion we hope to influence in support of our objectives.” N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. “All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions,” the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers. The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called “Hollywood Personalities,” which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars. And it continued its efforts to encourage news coverage of celebrities displaying diamond rings as symbols of romantic involvement. In 1947, the agency commissioned a series of portraits of “engaged socialites.” The idea was to create prestigious “role models” for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, “We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer’s wife and the mechanic’s sweetheart say ‘I wish I had what she has.’”
It’s fascinating to watch the advertising beast change its tactics as the diamond monopoly’s needs shift with new supply, new markets, and unexpected success.
Magnetic soap
This is beautiful:
I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism.
(via stellar)
As Seen on TV hardships
This one is mostly for my wife, who gleefully mocks TV infomerical actors who have trouble flipping a simple pancake or operating a mop.
(via devour)
A Super Mario Bros version of Portal?!
Wow. Someone is making a video game featuring the original Super Mario Bros worlds but Mario is outfitted with a Portal gun. Watch the demo:
More information on the game’s development is here.
Yes, this is an actual game being developed - it is not a mod of any existing one. It’s coded with L”ove (info at the bottom of the left menu) and will be released for free (so we don’t get stabbed by lawyers)
All the source code of the game will be available after release
The game will have mappacks, which will be downloadable from ingame. Users most likely won’t be able to publish maps directly, but will be able to send them in and we’ll add them for everyone to use.
The primary maps will have a story and some portaly puzzles. What kind, well, we’ll figure that out as we go
Level editor will be embedded in the game so you can edit the level while you play
Original SMB levels and Lost levels will be included
Simultaneous Multiplayer
Koyaanisqatsi live performances in NYC
The New York Philharmonic, joined by Philip Glass himself, will perform the score for Koyaanisqatsi while the film is projected on a screen above the stage.
Lose yourself in Philip Glass’s powerful music for the 1982 Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi: A Life Out Of Balance, performed live by the Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble, as the landmark film is projected on a huge screen above the Avery Fisher Hall stage.
There will be two performances, Nov 2 and Nov 3 at 7:30pm at Avery Fisher Hall. There are still tons of great seats available, but get ‘em while you can. Excited!
Steve Jobs and Norman Foster
There’s been a lot written about Steve Jobs in the past week, a lot of it worthy of reading, but one piece you probably didn’t see is David Galbraith’s piece on Jobs’ similarity to architect Norman Foster. The essay is a bit all over the place, which replicates the experience of talking to David in person, but it’s littered with insight and goodness (ditto).
The answer is what might be called the sand pile model and it operated at Apple and Fosters, the boss sits independently from the structural hierarchy, to some extent, and can descend at random on a specific element at will. The boss maintains control of the overall house style by cleaning up the edges at the same time as having a vision for the whole, like trying to maintain a sand pile by scooping up the bits that fall off as it erodes in the wind. This is the hidden secret of design firms or prolific artists, the ones where journalists or historians agonize whether a change in design means some new direction when it just means that there was a slip up in maintaining the sand pile.
And I love this paragraph, which integrates Foster, Jobs, the Soviet Union, Porsche, Andy Warhol, Lady Gaga, and even an unspoken Coca-Cola into an extended analogy:
Perfecting the model of selling design that is compatible with big business, Foster simultaneously grew one of the largest architecture practices in the world while still winning awards for design excellence. The secret was to design buildings like the limited edition, invite only Porsches that Foster drove and fellow Porsche drivers would commission them. Jobs went further, however, he managed to create products that were designed like Porsches and made them available to everyone, via High Tech that transcended stylistic elements. An Apple product really was high technology and its form followed function, it went beyond the Porsche analogy by being truly fit for purpose in a way that a Porsche couldn’t, being a car designed for a speed that you weren’t allowed to drive. Silicon Valley capitalism had arguably delivered what the Soviets had dreamed of and failed, modernism for the masses. An iPhone really is the best phone you can buy at any price. To paraphrase Andy Warhol: Lady Gaga uses an iPhone, and just think, you can have an iPhone too. An iPhone is an iPhone and no amount of money can get you a better phone. This was what American modernism was about.
Updates on previous entries for Aug 26, 2011*
How the US killed bin Laden orig. from Aug 26, 2011
Han Solo in carbonite ice cube tray!!!! orig. from Aug 26, 2011
* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.
How the US killed bin Laden
Fantastic account by Nicholas Schmidle in the New Yorker about how the US located and subsequently killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad safehouse.
One month before the 2008 Presidential election, Obama, then a senator from Illinois, squared off in a debate against John McCain in an arena at Belmont University, in Nashville. A woman in the audience asked Obama if he would be willing to pursue Al Qaeda leaders inside Pakistan, even if that meant invading an ally nation. He replied, “If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable, or unwilling, to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national-security priority.” McCain, who often criticized Obama for his naïveté on foreign-policy matters, characterized the promise as foolish, saying, “I’m not going to telegraph my punches.”
Update: There has been some question over the authenticity of this story.
Schmidle says he wasn’t able to interview any of the 23 Navy SEALs involved in the mission itself. Instead, he said, he relied on the accounts of others who had debriefed the men.
But a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.
The SEALs, he writes of the raid’s climactic moment, “instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft,” the mission’s name for bin Laden, implying that the SEALs themselves had conveyed this impression to him.
Although calling it a conspiracy probably goes a little too far…mentioning the JFK assassination when writing of the US government is like Godwin’s law in online discussions. (thx, everyone)
Han Solo in carbonite ice cube tray!!!!
Sorry about all those exclamation points but I just love this:
Perfect for your “Jabba goes to the Cantina” cosplay needs. (via mlkshk)
Update: Amazon is all sold out, but you can find the trays here as well.
Michael Lewis on Germany’s economy (and possible fascination with shit)
Michael Lewis continues his financial tour of the world with a stop in Germany. What, he asks, will the Germans do about the weakening financial situation in Europe and, more to Lewis’ point, why will they do it?
The deputy finance minister further disturbs my wild assumptions about him by speaking clearly, even recklessly, about subjects most finance ministers believe it is their job to obscure. He offers up, without much prompting, that he has just finished reading the latest unpublished report by I.M.F. investigators on the progress made by the Greek government in reforming itself.
“They have not sufficiently implemented the measures they have promised to implement,” he says simply. “And they have a massive problem still with revenue collection. Not with the tax law itself. It’s the collection which needs to be overhauled.”
Greeks are still refusing to pay their taxes, in other words. But it is only one of many Greek sins. “They are also having a problem with the structural reform. Their labor market is changing-but not as fast as it needs to,” he continues. “Due to the developments in the last 10 years, a similar job in Germany pays 55,000 euros. In Greece it is 70,000.” To get around pay restraints in the calendar year the Greek government simply paid employees a 13th and even 14th monthly salary-months that didn’t exist. “There needs to be a change of the relationship between people and the government,” he continues. “It is not a task that can be done in three months. You need time.” He couldn’t put it more bluntly: if the Greeks and the Germans are to coexist in a currency union, the Greeks need to change who they are.
Wonderputt
Wonderputt is a wonderfully inventive mini golf game. You might even call it whimsical. (via waxy)
Rob Malda, aka Commander Taco, steps down from Slashdot
Here’s his final post. Not quite Jobsian, but Slashdot had a big influence in shaping early online media. Interestingly, he’s given up his posting rights to the site completely.
The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that’s part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven’t seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers — some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.
As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never ‘work’. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I’m walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I’d never move on. I’ll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut.
(via ★djacobs)
Steve Jobs resigns from Apple
From the press release:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
This can’t be good news regarding his health. I hope I’m wrong. Good luck, Steve…you’ve been a great inspiration to me.
The Kid Should See This
Great new site from Rion featuring online videos, photos, books, and other media that’s appropriate for little kids.
There’s just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven’t seen. It’s most likely not stuff that was made for them…
But we don’t underestimate kids around here.
With obvious exceptions, media “made for kids” is mindnumbingly dumb. YouTube, Flickr, and Vimeo are amazing resources of not-made-for-kids but totally-appropriate-for-kids stuff like what Rion is posting here. I’ve often wanted a Wikipedia For Little Kids (for the iPad) that’s almost exclusively video- and image-based that I could let Ollie loose on to learn about stuff. (via @swissmiss)
Watching 9/11
The Internet Archive has collected thousands of hours of TV news coverage from September 11, 2001 and the following days.
The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis.
Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media.
An amazing resource. But God, that’s hard to watch.
Keep cool with a new Hood Internet mix
Loving this new Trillwave 2 mix from The Hood Internet.
If you like that, here’s the first Trillwave mix.
Animated Sheet Music
Watch the sheet music go by as Miles Davis and his bandmates play So What.
See also Confirmation by Charlie Parker and Giant Steps by John Coltrane.
2011 Virginia earthquake
This afternoon, an earthquake hit Virginia between Charlottesville and Richmond. It measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. For an earthquake, that’s in the “moderate” range but for an East Coast earthquake, it’s quite unusual. A look at the historical data for the eastern US states shows that this is the biggest quake to hit this coast since 1897 (a 5.9 in VA) and the second biggest of all time (well, since they started recording such things) after a 7.3 that hit South Carolina in 1886.
Lego camera
This photo was taken by a camera made almost entirely out of Legos:
Even the lens is homemade; it’s just plexiglass ground into shape with fine-grit sandpaper. I misunderstood: the lens is store-bought but the focusing screen is made of plexi. (via ★alexandra)
Solitaire win screen sculpture
From designers Lars Marcus Vedeler and Theo Tveterås, a 3-D sculpture of the Windows Solitaire “bouncing cards” win screen:
(via colossal)
All in together now
It’s been great posting for you all the last week+! Thanks for the good times. I couldn’t pick just one video for you tonight, so here are 3. Watch them all, but not at the same time.
This one makes me tense.
This one was filmed in 8 hours in Brooklyn. Pretty, pretty, pretty.
This one was filmed AND edited in 4 hours in Boston. (I love everything Paper Fortress does.)
Questlove’s celebrity stories
I missed this last summer when it went around originally, but all of Questlove’s celebrity stories are collected here. I had to post it at the end of the day because if this is relevant to your interests, and I think it may be, it’s going to run roughshod over your productivity.
David Letterman
thing is…i know they brought me in for the freakish factor. but only dave bothered to ask me what do i do in real life….so when i told him he was shocked like “wait you are an established artist?” even funnier was the reference “so if this like us picking up george clintons bass player thinking we got a random freaky guy and we messed around and got an icon?”—-i was flattered and said “lets hope you still feel that way when its time for my album to come out”
I’m pretty sure the Eddie Murphy story features Prince, but it’s too long to even excerpt.
Phil Collins
i “organixed” the shit outta phil in 97 at the grammies when i told him some geek shit like you and stevie wonder are the best ride cymbal crashers in modern rock after bonham. i told him “do you know do you care” shows that example in his cymbal work. man i made his day with that one.
Here’s Quest talking about Will Smith’s house. So you know Questlove isn’t easily impressed, this is the same Will Smith whose house was recently featured on the cover of Architectural Digest.
I’m telling you, the whole site is gold. Read everything.
For more Questlove awesome, see his recent interview on Pitchfork. Read everything there, too. It’s great.
(Thanks, Keith)
Stella McCartney Prints
Not completely sure what’s happening here, but what a gorgeous way to spend 30 seconds on a Monday afternoon.
(Thanks, Adam)
The Robbers Cave Experiment
Years ago, before this type of activity was frowned upon, scientists sent 2 groups of 11 and 12 year-old boys to live in separate sections of an Eastern Oklahoma camp. The boys didn’t know about each other at first, and they quickly developed independent social hierarchies and social codes. One group named themselves the Rattlers. The other group didn’t pick a name until after the groups discovered each other. They chose the Eagles, an animal that eats snakes. The scientists ratcheted up the competition between the two groups, eventually losing control of the experiment as the boys were executing violent raids on each others’ camps. The scientists finally separated the camps before someone got killed, but not before documenting some interesting concepts of how groups form social norms and how they react to others they perceive as different.
This post could go on forever, so, when you have time, click through to read about realistic conflict theory and illusion of asymmetric insight.
What’s fascinating to me, and the reason I’m posting, is this study seems to be closely related to Lord of the Flies, but the book was published in 1954, the same year as the study. I wasn’t able to find any discussion of which came first and whether they informed each other at all.
(Via You Are Not So Smart)
New Hodgman book: That Is All
John Hodgman has the details and release dates for his “FINAL BOOK OF COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE”, That Is All.
YOU WILL SOON start to see changes in both design and mood that will reflect the dark, apocalyptic vision of my book, which deals with the very last information you need to know before the coming global superpocalypse called RAGNAROK, plus some information on WINE and SPORTS.
That Is All is available for pre-order on the Kindle but if it’s anything like Hodgman’s other books, it’s more fun in paper (or in audio format).
BERG in the NY Times
Nice profile of BERG in the NY Times by Alice Rawsthorn.
Berg and its peers use design in the traditional way as a tool in the translation process, but they have also developed new means of enabling people to engage with technology, and to feel confident about using it. Mostly Berg does so by making complex technologies seem playful and humorous.
Superheroes are all around us
This chart shows former and future superheroes by movie. That is, George Clooney played Batman, so Out of Sight gets a Batman, along with another Batman for Micheal Keaton, and a Nick Fury for Sam Jackson. Lots of movies have 4 superheroes, though none on this chart have 5. Click through, you’ll understand. If you want to see how they all fit together, he’s made that chart, too. Raynor, you may raymember, also made the Harry Potter wizards in other movies chart.
HBO recently released a documentary about real-life superheroes. The trailer is below. It reminded me of the fascinating Rolling Stone article about Master Legend, but I can’t find it on their site because Rolling Stone doesn’t believe the internet needs to see old articles.
Incidentally, I found not 1, but 3 networks for real-life superheroes.
1, 2 3. But also, hipster superheroes. Hulk is only smashing ironically. And here’s a list of all the superheroes. All of them.
Lastly, I’d be remiss not to mention Petsaresuperhero.es, a project I put together with a friend. You know your pet’s a superhero, now you can show the world.
Updates on previous entries for Aug 21, 2011*
Skyliners Paris trailer orig. from Aug 20, 2011
* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.
Now this is something
I’d been looking for something to post to say goodnight, so it was good that Rogre sent something over. It’s a fitting way to end the weekend considering it features Killian Martin and Danny MacAskill (featured here earlier in the week). The video is goofy and not as jaw-droppingly jaw-dropping as their solo videos, but they do seem to be doing their thing in a fancy theater the name of which I should know. This reminds me of the commercials where the sneaker commercials get ALL of their athletes into one commercial.
The Mexican truffle
Huitlacoche (pronounced weet-la-KOH-chay) is a fungus, called corn smut in the US, that has recently become something of a delicacy. “Before, it was seen as a food of the poor. Now it’s the food of the rich,” following the same track as lobster. The cultivation of huitlacoche is growing dramatically, as an infected stock sells for more than a normal corn cob. The flavor is described as earthy and unique, perhaps most similar to a mushroom.
In recent decades — before huitlacoche really took off — the fungus largely was sauteed with garlic, onions and poblano chile strips and served by street vendors in quesadillas, folded-over corn tortillas. Then cooks realized its flavor would make nearly any dish sensational. Restaurants sometimes offer it with beef, fish, in crepes with chipotle sauce, with eggs, in cream soups or with shrimp.
I would like to eat corn smut.
(Via Balloon Juice)
Blame it on David Foster Wallace
In this week’s NY Times Magazine, Maud Newton tells us why she doesn’t like David Foster Wallace’s writing and blames DFW for the voice of the internet being too familiar. Maybe she’s not actually doing this, but the whole thing is really sort of annoying, too, because to me, it kind of seems like she kind of uses all of the DFW tropes she’s railing against. Then again, who am I, anyway? (Those previous 2 sentences are an example of the internet writing Newton claims DFW inspired. I think I’m a master and I probably should have written the whole post in this style.) I think I missed the point, Ms. Newton, I’m a lesser thinker.
Of course, Wallace’s slangy approachability was part of his appeal, and these quirks are more than compensated for by his roving intelligence and the tireless force of his writing. The trouble is that his style is also, as Dyer says, “catching, highly infectious.” And if, even from Wallace, the aw-shucks, I-could-be-wrong-here, I’m-just-a-supersincere-regular-guy-who-happens-to-have-written-a-book-on-infinity approach grates, it is vastly more exasperating in the hands of lesser thinkers. In the Internet era, Wallace’s moves have been adopted and further slackerized by a legion of opinion-mongers who not only lack his quick mind but seem not to have mastered the idea that to make an argument, you must, amid all the tap-dancing and hedging, actually lodge an argument.
(Via Gabe Delahaye)
The weather wheel
I’ve been staring at Edlundart’s weather wheel for 10 minutes trying to understand exactly how to read it. It shows relative temperature, precipitation, and wind speed, and it’s just gorgeous. Bonus points for including Boston.
The Weather Wheel is based on widely available weather data, but does not display the actual numbers. Things like millimeter precipitation readings are not very meaningful to most people, so thinking of and showing these metrics in a relative way instead seemed like a clean and elegant approach.
Minimalist business card
Boris made himself a set of business cards that are brilliantly simple. Is there an award this can win? I’d vote for it.
I went looking for more minimalist business cards to see if this was the most minimal of all, but the resulting lists are annoying and most of the business cards are less minimal than this. Think, “25 BEST WORDPRESS THEMES OMG!”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, here’s a crappy cell phone picture of the back of my business card based on a design by my pal Chris Piascik. This is less minimal.
(Via Minimalissimo)
Update:
Here’s another pretty card from Alex Keene.
Nick Cave’s letter to MTV
In 1996, Nick Cave was nominated by MTV for Best Male Artist. This was an award he was not interested in winning, so he wrote MTV a letter. “I am in competition with no-one.” Click through to read the sincere thanks in the first paragraph, and the loony bin muse protection in the third.
(Via Stellar and @Lettersofnote)
Updates on previous entries for Aug 21, 2011*
Skyliners Paris trailer orig. from Aug 20, 2011
* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.
Skyliners Paris trailer
These folks attached a cable to France’s highest twin towers and then walked around on it. Really wild shots. These guys are wearing saftey harnesses, which tells me they’re stupid or crazy, but not both, and definitely not at the same time. I love them for that.
I saw the title and the teaser shot this morning and knew immediately this is what I’d be posting on Kottke tonight. Incidentally, I was looking for more information on highliners or skyliners, but I couldn’t find any… I thought everything was on Wikipedia?
Update:
Couldn’t find it on Wikipedia because it’s called Slacklining, not highlining. There was subtle misdirection in the video description. Also, peep the Daft Punk soundtrack. (Thanks, @Complex)
Blade Runner II?
You may have heard by now that Ridley Scott has signed on to “direct and produce a new installment of Blade Runner.” Nobody seems to know if it’s a prequel or sequel, but I imagine either way, Harrison Ford will be around for a paycheck if there’s a role for him. It’s often said that Hollywood is out of ideas, but this is a perfect project for Ridley Scott whose next film, Prometheus, is a “cousin” of the Alien franchise.
If it seems I’m not giving this story the proper respect, it’s because I only saw Blade Runner once while [Redacted because it’s too long of a story for the throwaway sentence at the end of a post. You’ll have to trust it was less than ideal cinematic viewing conditions.].
(Thanks, Jason)
Unedited thoughts about technology better left unposted
Matt Buchanan’s Unedited thoughts about technology better left unposted is like the sportswriter ‘nuggets from the drawer’-type column for tech writing. Seems like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr would have been low hanging fruit, what other tech companies are missing? On the other hand, there are 9 paragraphs and 4 of them relate to Apple in some way. Maybe this should have just been unedited thoughts about Apple better left unposted.
(Via Stellar)
Slow motion surfing
Friday night, getting late? Perfect time to watch a slow motion surfing video. It’s only a minute and a half, but it feels like it’s at least two minutes and fifteen seconds. Just beautiful. It’s body boarding, but it’s about the waves anywave, right?
(Via @heinekensdaily)
Cliff diving in Boston
The 2011 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is in Boston this weekend and divers are jumping off the Institute of Contemporary Art into Boston Harbor. Here’s a slide show of the divers practicing yesterday.
(Thanks, Jessie)
Theater critic reviews theater of open kitchen
I haven’t seen this before, but it seems like such an obvious idea. Charles Isherwood, a theater critic for the NY Times, recently reviewed the experience of eating at the chef’s table of a restaurant as if it were theater. The restaurant’s open kitchen allowed Isherwood to critique the experience of watching a kitchen work. The review of George Mendes’ Aldea features only one sentence about the food.
The idea that drama resides only in conflict is a superficial truth. The fascinating magic of watching a high-level kitchen function lies partly in the accretion of detail, as you see the dishes being constructed in layers and with the kind of expertise that, as in a good theater production, makes the most difficult feats look easy.
Do attractive athletes make more money?
In discussing whether Jeff Francoeur was worth the 2 year contract extension granted by the Royals, Jonah Keri wondered if Francoeur scored a more lucrative contract because he was handsome. Turns out, he probably did. As longtime Kottke acolytes, you already knew this phenomenon applied to regular people.
To put this result in perspective, we found that a “good-looking” quarterback like Kerry Collins or Charlie Frye earned approximately $300,000 more per year than his stats and other pay factors would predict. Meanwhile, quarterbacks like Jeff George and Neil O’Donnell, who, sadly, were not found to have very symmetrical faces, suffered an equivalent penalty.
Poor, poor, Neil O’Donnell. Did you ever wonder if good looking people get paid more because they’re better at what they do? Eli Cash’s follow up to Wild Cat and Old Custer tackles this question. “Well, everyone knows attractive people get paid more. What this book presupposes is… maybe they deserve it.”
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