Travel Adventure
I've always wondered this myself - why is it more interesting that Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest than the sherpas who guided him up the mountain? Interesting article on adventure travel: I stayed on at the Lotus Guesthouse and struggled with my article for the Major American Adventure-Travel Magazine. Every time I researched some upscale mountain trek in the Nepal...
Culture
All that highbrow stuff, like reading and art and such, and thoughts on society and living. [116 entries.]
Strategic Incompetence
From the Wall Street Journal: To learn something at the office can be difficult. But to refrain from learning something requires years of practice and refinement. It's an office skill that Steven Crawley finds indispensable. "The inability to grasp selective things can be very helpful in keeping your desk clear of unwanted clutter," says the executive in HR, or what...
The Secret, Oprah, and the idea of "magical thinking"
Somewaterytart at Shakespeare's Sister tackles the subject of the new DVD/Book "The Secret" that Oprah's been touting. I'm inclined to agree with much of what she says. I first heard about the book from my mom, who works for Barnes and Noble, where the book is apparently flying off the shelves, so I resisted blurting out "That sounds nuts!" but...
The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse....
30 year-old virgins
Shakespeare's Sister has a great post (Who's Afraid of Virgins?) critiquing this wholly lame Salon article on the "tragedy" of virgins in their 30's. I don't have a huge amount to add to the subject, other than "what she said" but I wanted to link to it because I know several people who would find the subject matter interesting. And...
World Heritage List of Natural and Man-Made Wonders
World Heritage's list of the most important wonders of our world, both natural, and man-made. 34 of the sites on the list are endangered -- some because of the increased tourism due to being on this list....
Expedition Everest
Posted on Flickr is a photoset of the new Disney ride Expedition Everest, which I believe has just opened. The photoset was placed by the marketing department of Disney, which is phenomenally cool. And per Disney, the theme and decor is amazing. The idea is a fictional Nepalese version of Everest, where the mountain is guarded by the Yeti. Riders...
Graphic Artist Ian Albert
Ian Albert is an awesome graphic artist who has some interesting hobbies - like constructing huge maps of game worlds by grabbing screen captures. I was fascinated by Super Mario world, which I played with my old roommate back in 1993. He also has some other colossal images, like and enormous map of the world, that if printed, would be...
Melissa Etheridge and other cool stuff
My friend Amy gave me Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled by Melissa Etheridge a few weeks ago. I've been listening to it, but didn't get around to paying attention to some of the new tunes on it until this week. There's a very beautiful song called "This Is Not Goodbye" about going into surgery and having a loved one...
Cheese, Peas and Chocolate Pudding
When I was in second grade, the following story was in my school reader, (which I've since discovered was called "Believe and Make-Believe (Sheldon Basic Reading Series)") and I remember sitting with my mom at home listening to her read it out loud before bedtime. It was one of my favorite stories, and I was happy to stumble across it...
Robots Photoshopped into Classical Art
This is just a cool photoshopping contest on Worth 1000. Some of the artists did an AMAZING job altering classic paintings to make some of the figures into robots....
Library of Congress: Women of Protest
The Library of Congrss Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party The National Woman’s Party, representing the militant wing of the suffrage movement, utilized open public demonstrations to gain popular attention for the right of women to vote in the United States. Their picketing, pageants, parades, and demonstrations--as well as their subsequent arrests, imprisonment, and hunger strikes--were successful...
The Bilderberg Group
Back in 1997, when I was visiting my friend Cate in Germany, we took a trip down the Rhine River. We started in Cologne , and traveled on a tourist boat to Drachenfels Castle at Konigswinter, where we took a trip up the mountain on the Drachenfelsbahn to see the castle, then walked back down. While we were on the...
Gallery of roadside mural advertisements
Very cool gallery of photos of large mural advertisements painted on walls....
The Flying Spaghetti Monster and "Pastafarianism"
For those of you who might wonder about the new image that showed up on my car last night, it's the emblem of the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." Wikipedia explains it best: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a parody religion created to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes...
Kinetic Sculptures from Old Junk
I've posted several of these links before, but I wanted to aggregate them all in the same spot because they're interesting. They're all sculptures made of found objects. We were talking about this in Louisville this past weekend, because I was brainstorming some things I'd like to make, and there were a couple artists in the museum that were fascinating....
What the fish?
Oh, c'mon. I figured out the fish puzzle years ago, along with everyone else in my workplace. It's not that hard, for pete's sake, and I'd challenge that "98% of people can't figure it out" claim. Everyone I work with figured it out. It's a simple logic puzzle....
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
It's probably high time for me to write a BPAL review. Hell, everyone else is doing it. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is a perfume/essential oils small business, run primarily on the web, with some small boutique availability. They have a huge cult following for a couple of reasons; one of them is that their scents are blended, named and marketed...
Shorthand
No time, just recording these: Renegade Art Batman's bust Something to read further Pre-1960s Bollywood posters...
Weekend Update
Stephanie and I saw King Kong with Dan and Doug, Josh, and David and Garrett on the Terrace at the IMA. It was great fun; the sound was much better than in the past, and I love seeing movies with Dan and Doug; I haven't done that much recently, and I miss it. I spent a few minutes in the...
The Aristocrats Joke
I'm posting this so I can peruse it from home... Dead Frog features what has been described by the New York Times as "The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told" - The Aristocrats. Inspired by the forthcoming film from Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette which features 100 comics talking about and telling their versions of the joke. This site contains variations...
Mini Reviews
I've been meaning to write reviews for all these things for a while, but I've been so busy I haven't had time. So here are my mini reviews, because I can't seem to keep up with everything. All the President's Men I watched this movie for the first time this past weekend, and it was excellent. I knew the basics...
Cool Blue Photos
Really cool photography featuring the color blue. Also, 24 different ways to lace your shoes. Something I need: How to learn from you mistakes. And last but not least, Signs of Religion in the American South. Scroll down a bit and see the link to an interesting slide show of religious based church and business signs....
Painter of Dark
Not only does Lewis Barrett paint cool gothic style pictures that look like Thomas Kinkade's nighmares, he does them on commission and will paint pictures of the house of your choice. Hmmmmm....
Site Design: Oooo, Pretty!
Check out the new site design for the DNC....
Art Car Alert: Computer Keys
And here's a link for my friends the art car artists: An art car covered entirely in computer keys....
A-List?
A site called "blogebrity" (I won't even start bitching about that weird mash-up name) is ranking Blogs by category: A-List, B-List, and C-List. I don't make the list anywhere (Of course. Like I would). But what's weird is that 98% of the people on the A-List I've never even heard of. And I've been reading blogs and blogging since before...
Operation Clambake: The Inner Secrets of Scientology
What a fun site documenting the nuttiness of Scientology. Run, Katie, run!!! Favorite quote: But respecting and tolerating the opinions of others does not mean one either has to agree or suppress one's disagreement. The freedom to stand up and express critical opinions and views is what makes human thought evolve and is the core of what I consider my...
This is just too cool....
Unusual Cards -- collage cards by Francesca Berrini are greeting cards made of old retro images combined together, like old school books with kids playing combined with dinosaur illustrations, or old pictures of 60's casseroles overlayed on landscapes as "giant food."...
Creepy Cat Robots
This Japanese company makes some weird cat robots called Necoro cats. They're lifelike enough to be creepy. Call me when you make some monkey robots, people....
Hanzi Smatter
My friend Lori's site pointed me in the direction of this: Hanzi Smatter is a site that looks at Chinese or Japanese language characters that Americans have adopted as logos or tattoos and analyzes what they really mean. Which is often not at all what the American intended it to mean. Sort of their revenge for all the "Engrish" sites...
More about our shallow culture
Wow. A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones. Dr. Andrew Harrell presented his findings recently at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta. Harrell's findings are based on an observational study of children and shopping cart...
Our Shallow Culture
A study on how appearance affects pays scale: A study by economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle uses survey data to examine the impact that appearance has on a person's earnings. In each survey, the interviewer who asked the questions also rated the respondents' physical appearance. Respondents were classified into one of the following groups: below average, average and above...
Pick Two
Interesting post and subsequent design discussion at kottke.org on the old design adage of "good, fast, or cheap: pick two."...
Slow Food U.S.A.
Recognizing that the enjoyment of wholesome food is essential to the pursuit of happiness, Slow Food U.S.A. is an educational organization dedicated to promoting stewardship of the land and ecologically sound food production; reviving the kitchen and the table as the centers of pleasure, culture, and community; invigorating and proliferating regional, seasonal culinary traditions; creating a collaborative, ecologically-oriented, and virtuous...
This is the reason why I want to be rich....
and why I want to live in a huge house. So I can fill it with stuff this guy makes. Or even stuff from this other guy. Or better yet, I need to start making this kind of stuff myself. Hmmm....
Hitler's Hit Parade
A new documentary showing film of Nazi-era German pop culture, especially that directed and produced by the National Socialist party. Displayed without commentary over pop songs of the time, the film is disturbing when we remember the atrocities that were perpetrated by the same people who were producing these romanticized portraits of their time. Some who've seen it have commented...
Good for Jennifer Aniston
From all the speculation, it seems that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt broke up because she doesn't want to have kids, and he does. Well, I can see where she's coming from. She's thirty six years old, and she's just now starting a serious career in movies, after a successful run on TV. If she doesn't get that done now,...
Best of 2004
Kottke.org's Best Links of 2004 Roger Ebert's Best Films of 2004 MSNBC's Year in Pictures 2004 The Washington Post's best photos of 2004 The NY Times Year in Pictures 2004 Discover chooses the top 100 stories in science for 2004 Amazon's Best Books of 2004 Amazon's Best DVDs of 2004 Salon Magazine's The top 10 books of the year Salon...
Weekend Update
Stephanie and I did a ton of work at my house this weekend to get the place ready for the party I'm throwing this coming Saturday. Mainly we did a lot of cleaning and organizing. The party will be a retro 80's party... and in gathering up stuff to wear, we've seen tons of appropriate stuff in the stores. Target...
map of Springfield
One of my co-workers printed this Map of the Simpson's Springfield to the plotter and has a large poster of it. Unfortunately, I don't have print drivers to the plotter. Damn it....
I'm sorry, but no matter how you slice it, the French are just cool.
From the Guardian: "Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries. "We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said." "Members of the force's sports squad,...
Hell Money
In China, the word Hell doesn't carry the same negative connotation as western Hell. The popular story has it that zealous Christian missionaries warned all non-Christian Chinese they'd "go to Hell" upon death. In a classic case of misinterpretation, the Chinese believed Hell was the English term for the Afterlife. The word was incorporated and printed on the traditional Chinese...
Gratuitous Wonder Woman linkage
For no real reason, except that I happened to click on it on someone elses site, a link to a really nice photo of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. Which is coming out on DVD on June 29th, BTW. You'll want to pre-order that right away. I did....
Urban Tribes
I was bookstore shopping with Stephanie and she pointed out a book to me that her friends had talked about, called Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment by Ethan Watters. It's a book that examines the cultural trend of young people getting married at a later age and of forming close tribe-like networks of friends that function...
Familiar Strangers
Interesting article I found on Boing Boing about blue-tooth mobile phones that recognized other blue-tooth enabled devices around them and keep track of their IDs, eventually building a list of "familiar strangers" or people who are often in your immediate area....
This is the kind of thing that makes me lose faith in my fellow man
Really, I wonder about the world sometimes. This kind of thing, and bad interior design really shake me up....
The Memespread Project
A project tracking the spread of a link on sites around the internet... pretty interesting and if you have your own blog (who doesn't these days? Oh, wait, Dan and Doug don't.) it couldn't hurt to link to them and spread the project around. And my friend Doug really needs a blog. I'm surprised I never thought of that before....
How the suburban shopping mall came into being
A very interesting article in the New Yorker about shopping malls, how they came into being, and how the design of malls was perfected. The most interesting part is how they came to replace downtown department stores--in some cases because the department stores influenced zoning and prevented new stores from moving downtown to compete. The new stores became anchor stores...
Halftime Janet Barbie
along with "JT" Ken. Talk about cashing in on the news....
The Three Kings Of Cologne -- A Legend Of The Middle Ages
By John Of Hildesheim - Modernized By H. S. Morris [Adapted]
Barbie and Ken Breaking Up; Ken to Date Don't Ask, Don't Tell Joe
The Guardian reports that Barbie and Ken are breaking up after 43 years as a couple. "The couple's 'business manager,' Russell Arons, vice president of marketing at Mattel, said that Barbie and Ken 'feel it's time to spend some quality time - apart.' " Arons hinted Wednesday that the separation may be partially because of Ken's reluctance to get married....
How to Sell Worthless Stuff on eBay
I swear, it just looks like and old kitchen cabinet to me, but it has a cool story attached, and thus sold, for $280.00. I need to keep this in mind when I start selling stuff....
One Good Thing About Indianapolis
Some fashion trends appear and disappear on the coasts without ever making it to the Circle City. Case in point: Tall Von Dutch Lug Boots. These are apparently out, according to Gawker.com. Thank Jeebus we dodged that bullet....
New Photo of Emily Dickinson
Interesting; a guy who found, via eBay, what appears to be a new photo of Emily Dickinson, of which only one photo is known to exist. And the website the article is posted on is "Common-Place.org."...
ah, sweet schadenfreude
Rocker Ted Nugent injures self with chainsaw. Not a fan of the Nuge, myself....
Mind the Gap
My sister Stacy sent my brother Gary a t-shirt for Xmas that says "Mind the Gap" the famous phrase that is announced on London Underground platforms as the trains are coming in to warn people not to step into the gap between the train carriage and the platform. Here's a website that examines the origin of the phrase. People who...
In Defense of Global Capitalism
Nevermind this, it's just a link I'll add to my library "to buy list" once I'm not busy at work....
"Mary Sue" in Online Fan Fiction
MARY SUE (n.): 1. A variety of story, first identified in the fan fiction community, but quickly recognized as occurring elsewhere, in which normal story values are grossly subordinated to inadequately transformed personal wish-fulfillment fantasies, often involving heroic or romantic interactions with the cast of characters of some popular entertainment. 2. A distinctive type of character appearing in these stories...
Polari - the lost gay language
Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang - "Polari has been the secret language of British gay men and women throughout the twentieth century. Like all slang, Polari is an ever-changing vocabulary. Derived from words used by criminals, circus artists, beggars and prostitutes, it also employs elements of Italian, Yiddish, French, rhyming slang, and backslang." Also: "Polari (also seen...
Denmark to Recognize Norse Gods as a religion
Well, that's quite cool. I wonder if the greeks would consider having the old greek gods as a religion in their country. I'd sign up as a worshiper of Pallas Athena....
Songs Inspired by Literature
What the title says... I have to admit, I didn't realize how many songs I know are based on literary works....
Do-It-Yourself Bayeux Tapestry
I know that I'm betraying how much of a geek I am... but this website is the most fun I've had in a long time. Just play with it....
Most Interesting Theatrical Synopsis
Salon magazine reviews an underground, possibly illegal, play staged in New York, entitled "I'm Going to Kill the President." The plot, which sounds quite fun, is this (quoted from Salon):...
This is why you should by Idiot's Guides, not dummies books
If you're using a particular book to make candles or soap, you may have a dangerous chemistry project on your hands. John Wiley & Sons Inc. is recalling 5,400 copies of the instruction book "Candle and Soap Making For Dummies," which sold in bookstores and discount department stores nationwide in August and September for about $20. The directions in the...
Atget Re-Photographic Project
Modern photographers set up and photograph the same Paris scenes as French photographer Eugene Atget, who took over 6,000 photos of the city between 1900 and 1926. Fascinating to see what is the same and what has changed over the decades. Reminds me a lot of a similar project, Vertigo: Then and Now which reproduces shots of San Franscisco as...
Mars/Venus Author says stupid shit, gets on my shit list
Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus author Dr John Gray said women should understand that emotional behaviour is often viewed by male work colleagues as a weakness. "Women have to speak the language of men at work," he said. "For example, if a woman's idea is stolen at a meeting, she should ensure she is not seen as...
World Beard Championships
I have long been a proponent of elaborate, artistic facial hair styles. Sadly, I have little to no influence over my male friends and family in their choice of facial grooming habits, or they would all look like this. Fu manchu! Fu manchu! As my co-workers examine the various facial hair styles available to the contestants, Rich projects what he...
Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die
From Technology Review: Interesting... I would have picked a couple of these (like cosmetic implants and landmines), but some I never thought of the car as a technology that should go away. But their arguments for finding good replacements make sense. 1. Nuclear Weapons, 2. Coal-Based Power, 3. The Internal-Combustion Engine (yeah, the car), 4. Incandescent Light Bulbs, 5. Land...
Wuthering Heights? Is that the cover of Wuthering Heights?
Okay... WTF? Seriously, did they do this to one of my favorite novels? This is the kind of thing that makes me want kick someone in the shins. Preferable the person that did it....
If the cover of computer books had Harlequin romance covers
I'm sending this Fark Photoshop contest to all the book cover designers at work. Maybe they'll get some ideas....
Marcus Cadman
I missed the Indian Market this year because of my magical exploding appendix, so I didn't get to see any more work by Marcus Cadman, a contemporary Native American artist. I went last year and was blown away by his paintings, which you should check out because I can't adequately describe them. He uses money, bingo cards and other items...
Johnny Cash, John Ritter and Jesus
Johnny Cash, John Ritter and Jesus all hang out in heaven in this sketch by Benjamin J Claassen, artist. You can buy it on eBay....