June 2011
Death in the Movies
Judy Bachrach, writing for Obit Magazine has a piece, Death Be Not Chic, on how Hollywood deals with death, in comparison to people’s real experience of it. Some notable quotes:
Death marks us permanently — and not simply because we are all, in another sense, marked men. Death defines who we are now and, inevitably, how we and our accomplishments will be considered at some later date most of us would generally prefer not to think about. At all.
Past Picture Picture in the Present
Dear Photograph is a website with a simple premise: take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.
The results are beautiful:
Note to entrepreneurs: Your idea is not special - Entrepreneurial
It’s awesome when an entrepreneur is obsessed with his idea. Every great product that I’m aware of came from an obsession of an idea and every great company followed. But for every entrepreneur that shifted the obsession with the idea into an obsession with the execution of the idea, I know many more entrepreneurs who got stuck on the idea, but never focused on building something from it.
— Note to entrepreneurs: Your idea is not special - Entrepreneurial
101 Marketing Quotes
View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing
Heavy sentences by Joseph Epstein
The following quotes are from Joseph Epstein’s book review in the New Criterion on Stanley Fish’s book “How to Write a Sentence. Epstein, throughout his review, demonstrates that he does not believe Fish to be in a position to teach this art, and provides examples from the book demonstrating his lack of command of the language. However, Epstein provides some helpful nuggets on the craft of writing from what he believes to be the best book on the subject, Style(1955), by F. L. Lucas’s .
[Lucas said, O]ne does best always to attempt to use strong words to begin and end sentences. Straightaway this means eliminating the words “It” and “There” to begin sentences and dropping also the pompous “Indeed.” This advice also reinstates and gives new life to the old schoolmarmish rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition, for a prepositon is almost never a strong word.
Luckiest tennis shot ever. Kim Clijsters LUCKY SHOT French Open (by…
Luckiest tennis shot ever.
Kim Clijsters LUCKY SHOT French Open (by AccepthisNEWS)
Learn to steal like an artist (via How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other…
Learn to steal like an artist (via How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me) - Austin Kleon)
Kinect Hackers: unlocking new possibilities in robotics
Microsoft’s Kinect is letting hardware and software hackers (the good kind) discover new possibilities in robotics.
Within weeks of the device’s release, YouTube was filled with videos of Kinect-enabled robots. A group from UC Berkeley strapped a Kinect to a quadrotor—a small helicopter with four propellers—enabling it to fly autonomously around a room. A couple of students at the University of Bundeswehr Munich attached a Kinect to a robotic car and sent it through an obstacle course. And a team from the University of Warwick in the UK built a robot that had the potential to navigate around post-earthquake rubble and search for trapped victims. “When something is that cheap, it opens up all sorts of possibilities,” says Ken Conley of Willow Garage, which sells a $500 open source robotics kit that incorporates the Kinect. (The previous non-Kinect version cost $280,000.) “Now it’s in the hands of just about anybody.”
Geek Alphabet (via ABC by *yllya )
Geek Alphabet (via ABC by *yllya)
(via Work Smarter and More Easily by “Sharpening Your Axe” )
bestrooftalkever : The zeppelin Hindenburg floats past the Empire State…
The zeppelin Hindenburg floats past the Empire State Building over Manhattan on Aug. 8, 1936. The German airship was en route to Lakehurst, New Jersey, from Germany. The Hindenburg would later explode in a spectacular fireball above Lakehurst on May 6, 1937. (AP Photo)
Diagram of geek culture: it’s a big world out there. (via HBO Programming…
Arty Bollocks Generator
Comic Sans Criminal - There's help available for people like you!
Author Vs. Author
Flavorwire has a collection of 30 of the harshest author to author insults. My favorites are the ones where I’m familiar with both the insult-or and the insulted. This one on Don Quixote is my favorite:
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes
“Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
Post-Artifact Books and Publishing
Zinsser's Relationships
William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, discuses the use of the word relationship to describe the everyday interactions with the people in our lives:
My problem with “relationship” is that it means whatever anyone needs it to mean. It doesn’t denote a specific act–like, say, “falling in love” or “getting married.” Those bold leaps of faith have long been sung by poets and troubadours. But nowhere in bardic lore is there any word of Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra, or Tristan’s relationship with Isolde, or Romeo’s relationship with the girl on the balcony. Cole Porter didn’t write “Let’s do it, let’s have a relationship.” He wrote “Let’s fall in love.” That’s what people used to do.
Game: Sinuous
This is a simple game that won the grand prize in the 10k Apart contents, that challenged developers to come up with a web-app that took less than 10 kilobytes.
Sinuous is game built using canvas and JavaScript - no external libraries. The game requires only mouse movement or swiping (iPad/iPhone/Android) as input. Total size: 6.9KB. The goal is to avoid colliding with red dots while looking for green ones. The longer you can stay alive, the higher you will score!
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue…
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
(by theroyaltyclub)
Sad Vador “An actor dressed as Darth Vader waits for tourists who want to be…
Sad Vador
“An actor dressed as Darth Vader waits for tourists who want to be photographed with him, in front of the Brandenburg Gate during a thunderstorm in Berlin, Germany, on June 14.”
Coffee vs. Tea Infographic
This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly pressurized…
This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly pressurized glacier ice that contains almost no air bubbles. Thus it absorbs the visible light despite the scattered shortest blue fraction, giving it its distinct deep blue waved appearance. This cavity in the glacier ice formed as a result of a glacial mill, or moulin.
Rain and meltwater on the glacier surface is channelled into streams that enter the glacier at crevices. The waterfall melts a hole into the glacier while the ponded water drains towards lower elevations by forming long ice caves with an outlet at the terminus of the glacier. The fine grained sediments in the water along with wind blown sediments cause the frozen meltwater stream to appear in a muddy colour while the top of the cave exhibits the deep blue colour.
Statue of Soviet US Superheros
A group of pranksters in Bulgaria painted a statue of soviet soldiers to look like a group of All American Superheros.
Twenty years ago you would have been shot for stepping too close to this monument in Sofia in Bulgaria.
But after the smashing of the Berlin Wall, statues celebrating communist rule appear to be fair game to the graffiti artists of the former Soviet block in Eastern Europe.
denverpost : New Dietary Guidelines -The Post’s Mike Keefe, June 12, 2011
Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— Mark Twain
Seth’s Blog: The last minute (a case against brinksmanship)
Either you negotiate to make the whole bigger, to have both sides benefit–or you negotiate to have the other side lose. Winning by punishing the other side isn’t a particularly long lasting or satisfying strategy.
— Seth’s Blog: The last minute (a case against brinksmanship)
Daily *ism: Surrealism
Today’s Daily *ism is another artistic (revolutionary) movement that came out of the modernist period:
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers[who?] regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
How do you get this business card? (via Hello - The Indigo Bunting: Pretty…
How do you get this business card? (via Hello - The Indigo Bunting: Pretty fantastic business card)
5 Lessons from IBM
They’ve made it 100 years, so must be doing something right. Here’s the flash notes, click through for the details:
DVDLater - Save Theater Movies to your Netflix Queue
Reading Highlights: June 5 to June 20
Here’s the most recent edition of my reading highlights, passages of posts and books that I’ve highlighted on my Kindle.
Kevin Kelly – Chapter 8: No Harmony All Flux (kk.org)
Change comes in various wavelengths. There are changes in the game, changes in the rules of the game, and changes in how the rules are changed. The first level—changes in the game—produces the kind of changes now visible: new winners and losers. New businesses. New heroes. We see the rise of Wal-Marts, and of Nucor steelmaking. The second level—changes in the rules of the game—produces new kinds of business, new sectors of the economy, new kinds of games. From this type of change comes the Microsofts and Amazon.coms. The third level of change, which we are now entering, whips up changes in how change happens. Change changes itself. While the new economy provokes change in the first two levels—all those new business and business sectors—its deepest consequence is the way it alters change. Change accelerates itself. It morphs into creative destruction. It induces flux. It disperses into a field effect, so you can’t pinpoint causes. It overturns the old ways of change.
We are not running out of space. (via If the world’s population lived in one…
We are not running out of space. (via If the world’s population lived in one city… « Per Square Mile)
Super Cut: Other actors being Woody Allen. NOTE: This is only funny if you…
Super Cut: Other actors being Woody Allen. NOTE: This is only funny if you love Woody Allen.
A Retrospective of Woody Allen Surrogates (by FilmDrunkDotCom)
(via Quasi-Fictional Stand-Ins for Woody Allen: A Retrospective)
Daily *ism: Socialism
Here’s a political system that’s bringing down many parts of Europe. It’s also one that has to go by many other names, since its popularity is sagging, and its accomplishments leave such carnage in its wake.
Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system.[1][2] As a form of social organization, socialism is based on co-operative social relations and self-management; relatively equal power-relations and the reduction or elimination of hierarchy in the management of economic and political affairs.[3][4]
Daily *ism: Humanism
Today, I’m going to bring up a school of philosophy.
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. The term can mean several things, for example:
The last interpretation may be attributed to Secular Humanism as a specific humanistic life stance.[1] Modern meanings of the word have therefore come to be associated with a rejection of appeals to the supernatural or to some higher authority.[2][3] This interpretation may be directly contrasted with other prominent uses of the term in traditional religious circles.[4] Humanism of this strand arose from a trajectory extending from the deism andanti-clericalism of the Enlightenment, the various secular movements of the 19th century (such as positivism), and the overarching expansion of the scientific project.
Scenes From Underground
thetenthamendment : “The powers not delegated to the United States by the…
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”’
Woody and Buzz Lightyear as reimagined by designer Luis Eduardo Vargas…
Woody and Buzz Lightyear as reimagined by designer Luis Eduardo Vargas Montoya. (via Toy Story Unleashed - Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation)
Daily *ism: Manorialism
Here I’m taking us back to an outdated political system. I’m not aware of any active political movements trying to bring it back.
Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society,[1] was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire,[2] was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy and new forms of agrarian contract.
pulmonaire : still time (by Amy Rice )
[](http://i.imgur.com/AnoXo.png )
Daily *ism: Romanticism
I’m a bit out of order on these. I suppose this post should have preceded the one on modernism, but at least I’m keeping on track with exploring relatively recent literary periods.
Romanticism (or the Romantic Era or the “‘Romantic Period”’) was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.[1] In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,[3] education[4] and natural history.[5]
zeroing : Banksy
60moons : Big Browser
How to attract women: according to Disney.
Where "Non-profit" colleges hide the money
The Cato Institute has a report on federal higher education spending and policy showing how the favorable treatment of non-profit over for profit education hurts both students and taxpayers alike:
Undergraduate education is a highly profitable business for nonprofit colleges and universities. They do not show profits on their books, but instead take their profits in the form of spending on some combination of research, graduate education, low-demand majors, low faculty teaching loads, excess compensation, and featherbedding. The industry’s high profits come at the expense of students and taxpayer.
Daily *ism: Modernism
Here’s the second installment in my Daily *ism series. Although, very destructive in many ways to Western culture and tradition, it still was a the movement that paved the way (or was the creation of) many great works of literature that I admire. I find that modernism, as an artistic movement, did produce art that was in far better alignment with the society it inhabited than the romantic period that preceded it.
Modernism , in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement , its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Daily *ism: Individualism
This is the first post in a new series I’m starting on this blog. I call it the daily *ism. It’s going to be mostly information copied from Wikipedia, but each entry is going to feature another *ism.
Now *ism’s have a variety of meanings, but at their root, they indicate a belief or principle. Now, I suppose there can be as many systems of though and belief as there are thinkers and believers. However, the credibility of some *ism’s are stronger than others, and unless you are a subscriber to relativism you will agree that some are more valid than others.
Lady or not: very true.
The 100 greatest non-fiction books
Get yours today! HAL 9000 Advertisment (by justinvg )
Book Excerpt: Exposing India’s Blood Farmers - Wired Science - Wired.com
Yadhav started as a small commercial venture that only propped up his dairy business. In the beginning, at least, he offered a straight deal to the drug-addled and destitute potential donors that he picked up at Gorakhpur’s bus and train stations. The $3 he gave for a pint of blood would buy food for several days. It was illegal, but it was also easy money. Yadhav could easily turn over common blood types for $20 quick profit, while rarer groups could fetch up to $150 a pint. It didn’t take long for the situation to deteriorate. As his operation grew, he got tired of trolling the city’s transit points. So Yadhav offered the donors a place to stay. With the men under his roof, it was only a matter of time before he took control of their fates though a mixture of coercion, false promises, and padlocked doors. The blood business got so big that he needed help. He took on a former lab technician named Jayant Sarkar, who had experience running an underground blood farm in Kolkata before he was chased out of the city in the late 1990s. Together Yadhav and Sarkar grew into one of the main blood suppliers in the region. The business concept was similar to that of Yadhav’s milk farm. The two were so interrelated that he kept the cowsheds and human sheds next to each other to economize on space.
— Book Excerpt: Exposing India’s Blood Farmers - Wired Science - Wired.com
29 Ways to Stay Creative
How to stay creative:
Or if you need a few more (or prefer to read rather than watch videos):
Do you remember how good Michael Jordan was? In case you forgot… Michael…
Do you remember how good Michael Jordan was? In case you forgot…
Michael Jordan - How Quickly They Forget (MJ vs Lebron) (by lcmj23)
Angry Birds Live (by lifeisforsharingDT )
Angry Birds Live (by lifeisforsharingDT)
WOMEN IN CHINA: A SOCIAL REVOLUTION - More Intelligent Life
nowadays no one was treated differently on grounds of gender; but older people insisted that you have to pay attention to how people behave, not what they say. The arrival of a baby boy is greeted with celebration, the birth of a girl with condolence. Official statistics say that newborn boys outnumber girls by 118 to 100 in spite of the fact that, according to my friends, boys cost more. Parents have to start saving to buy a house or a flat for a son from the day of his birth, because no man has a hope of marrying unless he can provide a home for his bride—and girls can afford to be increasingly picky these days, in this as in much else.
==========
The past played no part in Chang’s conversations with the factory girls who had migrated from their villages to operate the assembly lines that produce the clothes we wear, the computer parts we need, the shoes, hats, handbags, games and gadgets that make the Western world go round. They work up to 13 hours a day, live in cold, dirty, overcrowded dormitories and eat poor food. They have no free time, health insurance, holidays or pension provision beyond the paltry state minimum. Three years ago their average wage was between 500 and 800 yuan—roughly £50-80—a month. Today, a shortage of labour means that young women in their 20s, the elite of the migrant workforce, can earn three times as much, or more. They return to their villages at New Year bearing gifts: anoraks, trainers, sweets and toys for the children, pretty jackets for their mothers. They also inject unprecedented sums of money into the rural economy. Young unmarried women now subsidise their parents, pay for the education of younger brothers and sisters, distribute handouts to elderly relatives, and command growing respect from the village as well as from their families. Some go back home to settle, bringing capital and know-how. A friend told me about her female cousin who returned to farm the land in the village where their grandparents lived in a mud house with paper windows. People like this are beginning to put up glass-and-stone two-storey houses in the country, conspicuous proof of an alien world of development and enterprise. Factory girls may look victimised to outsiders, who take them to be helpless, ill-paid and insecure, easy prey to sexual and financial exploitation, stuck on the lowest and most vulnerable level of society. “But that’s not how they see themselves,” says Chang. In their own eyes they are proud, resourceful, energetic risk-takers at the cutting edge of a social revolution.
==========
Heads always nodded in my audience when I said that all of us have bones to bury, things that are never talked about in families, things a whole nation might prefer to forget. People in China now dismiss their ugly memories just as people all over Europe dismissed the Holocaust for many years after the war. “Children can’t bear to remember what happened to their parents,” says Xinran, who recorded the life stories of men and women in their 70s and 80s in “China Witness” (2008), the only one of her books that remains banned today even in translation. Buck insisted that our grandparents’ world belongs also to us. The past made us what we are now, and we forget it at our peril. At the end of my last talk at Nanjing university, a student pointed out that burying the bones has a further meaning in China, where the dead are traditionally returned to the earth from which they came so that they may find peace. He might have added that it is only when the past has been acknowledged and accepted that it can finally be laid to rest.— WOMEN IN CHINA: A SOCIAL REVOLUTION - More Intelligent Life
James Abbot McNeil’s Whistler’s Mother recreated in balloons by Larry Moss.…
James Abbot McNeil’s Whistler’s Mother recreated in balloons by Larry Moss.
(via If It’s Hip, It’s Here: Airigami: The Fine Art of Balloon Sculpture by Larry Moss.)
BMW Powered Twin-Rotor Hoverbike, Gear Patrol
(via Robbie and Bobby - Tattoos are Like Cats )
Newspaper map
Big Willie Medley (Will Smith A Capella Multitrack) - Matt Mulholland Cover…
Big Willie Medley (Will Smith A Capella Multitrack) - Matt Mulholland Cover (by mattmulholland26)
I think he spend a bit too much time with the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire at the beginning, but then it get fun. Matt Mulholland might be Will Smith’s lost twin.
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) (by logreproduction )
70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) (by logreproduction)
Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco (via How to Create a Captivating…
Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco (via How to Create a Captivating Presentation :: Tips :: The 99 Percent)
How to make a movie that sells. (via The Successful Movie Formula - )
How to make a movie that sells. (via The Successful Movie Formula -)
Wine Taxonomy: by label
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but certainly feel free to pick a wine by its label.
“Unless you have an extensive knowledge of regions and grapes, the wine you choose is simply not going to matter all that much. What’s the worst that can happen? Unless it literally tastes like those sweat socks that wine people insist on using as a flavor comparison, you still end up with a bottle of wine you can drink. And last time I checked, a bottle of wine will get you nicely buzzed with your friends over the course of an evening no matter what you choose. So why not choose based on the label?”
Reading Highlights: May 16 to June 4
It’s no surprise to me that I’ve already fallen behind with this project to share the highlights from what I’ve been reading each week. But its better that I have fals starts now, early on, before I get many people tuning in than once I have an audience.
So, here it is my reading highlights from the past few weeks with links to sources:
DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet (douglasadams.com)
New Rules for the New Economy
When you pump your own gas at the filling station are you working for the gas station or for yourself? Are all those people waiting in line behind the ATM machine more highly evolved bank customers or just nonpaid bank tellers? When you take a pregnancy test at home, are you a savvy self-helper, or part of the HMO’s plan to reduce costs? The answer, of course, is both.
Nighthawks of the Living Dead (by Profound Whatever )
Nighthawks of the Living Dead (by Profound Whatever)
MI6 attacks al-Qaeda in 'Operation Cupcake' - Telegraph
(via The Force is Strong with The Muppets at Disney Parks « Disney Parks Blog )
Desiderata (via with heart wide open: things to be desired )
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.— Desiderata (via with heart wide open: things to be desired)
