November 27, 2006
Art on the ice
The ANITA experiment down in Antarctica needed a box painted about 40% black. So my colleagues there held an art contest. Pretty good work!
November 16, 2006
35th anniversary of the Cannonball
Brock Yates is still reveling in his 15 minutes of fame. But it was a great moment. "At no time did we exceed 175 mph." Hopefully they'll figure some way of pulling off a 2007 version of the race...
October 27, 2006
September 25, 2006
August 31, 2006
When all else fails, crackdown on "crime" online
Zimbabwe plans to use Chinese technology to monitor telecommunications. It does seem to be the refuge of failed dictatorships and nascent ones perhaps as well...
July 25, 2006
For some reason these two articles worked well together
Okay, maybe it seems weird, but here goes:
- How Jell-O(R) killed the dinosaurs.
- Body parts found in nude dancer's apartment.
- And I'm going to go ahead and add in one additional link. Hypoxic devices may be restricted in sports.
June 08, 2006
June 07, 2006
Emergency frog rescue
One of the more interesting, and utterly cool, examples of "emergency" science. Rescuing frog species ahead of a lethal fungus infection. And bringing them back to the states in carry-on baggage...
June 01, 2006
The real trial of the century will begin soon
The Enzo-wrecking Swedish guy. Facing seven felony charges.
Cthulu Chick Tract
Do you remember those hilarious little Chick Tracts? The ones telling you that you needn't pack sweaters for the afterlife? It seems inevitable, now that the stars are right, that the Cthulu Chick Tract is now available. I want to be eaten first!
May 31, 2006
Silly patents
At Patently Silly dot com. The cordless jump rope (why bother?) and the "cylindrical object" (rock) skipping on water are my current favorites. Another beautiful demonstration of (some) failures of the patent system.
May 01, 2006
Zhou Tiehai: China's answer to Thomas Kincaide
Well, sort of. Zhou has underlings do his actual painting, but his satire on the art scene is being purchased by "serious" art collectors. Kincaide's brilliant parody of art is bought by suburbanites with no appreciation of the irony of their purchase.
April 27, 2006
Best of the Twin Cities
See all of the listings online.
A special thrill was seeing Outsiders and Others be selected as best Art Gallery. My little ones have had their art hung there and they just held a most excellent sale and silent auction there last Saturday. Darn it, it looks like I wasn't the high bidder though...
April 26, 2006
Build your own Iraqi police/death squad
It's pretty cheap, and the cool mullahs are doing it. Guns, uniforms, bulletproofed cars. All available for cash transactions.
April 07, 2006
April 04, 2006
Dancing is not constitutionally protected
And the number of cities or towns that allow couples to freely dance is down from ~1000 in the 1960s to about 300 today. Didn't Emma Goldman say something about this once?
March 24, 2006
I haven't kept up with Hitchens that well since he left the Nation
But I definitely enjoyed his spirited defense of Denmark, the free press, and democracy. And I think we can safely ignore his praise of the Iraq War. I am impressed that he's remained steadfast in his opinions, hmmm..., despite evidence that they're wrong?
March 01, 2006
February 09, 2006
Thinking about William Gibson, Joseph Cornell, and Count Zero
There's this old article by Gibson in Wired magazine on re-mix culture. Makes an interesting case to connect Cornell and the boxes to mash-ups and remixes.
The Nation on the Danish cartoons
What a wimpy editorial! I was hoping for a spirited defense of free speech in the face of threats and violence, or maybe a critique of right-wing European newspapers. Instead we get a little of everything. Signed by the editors and not someone specifically. Very disappointing.
February 07, 2006
You know how sometimes you go click on a link...
...and, presto, there it is. And it's really quite strange. And you scroll down, and it gets stranger. And it reminds you that Joy Division was a really long time ago, though I suppose not as long ago as Hank Williams. Senior. So, you click on the mp3s and listen while, oh my god!, the music plays and you read of Tuva and stolen passports. Then you look around on the site, reviews of Captain Beefheart in a Tuvan style. Feynman pretty much has to be to blame for making Tuva hip again. Kyzyl! The throat singing is amazing stuff, but covering the Rolling Stones? They just did the halftime show at some Bowling match or other. And got censored. Painted black. Black as black. The link already!
Music for today, tomorrow, and last Tuesday.
Sample lyrics from KAMGALANYR KUZHU-DAA BAR (We have protection force.):
Yenisei river's banks are full of natural richness, our amazing country has protection force.
Yenisei runs and kicks his banks by his waves, if an enemy invades we have a lot of power to destroy him.
In taiga there is a lot of gold and other richness, in the north and south we have brother countries.
In the south and north parts of taiga there are a lot of minerals and furs, -- we have the powerful USSR giving a happy life to us.
KALDAK-KHAMAR
music - trad arr. A. Kuvezin
lyrics - Salchak Toka
"The name of a mountain pass through Tannu-Ola range at the south part of Tuva. In 1933-1934 the road from Kyzyl (capital) to region on Mongolian border was built; and on this pass for one year people were digging using only simple tools like picks, spades, hand-trolleys and enthusiasm. Now it is road of state importance connecting Siberia, Tuva and Mongolia. The lyrics written by first General Secretary of Communist Party of then-independent state of "Tannu Touva". Salchak Toka, leader of the Government and also one of the great writers of classic Tuvan literature - a Soviet Union State Prizewinner. This song about wish and striving to dig out Kaldak-Khamar pass, to build a smooth road and to rush by an iron devil-car like a kite."
January 26, 2006
One language, many meanings
In Mexico cajeta might mean nougat and be a reasonable name for a candy bar, but in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world it's a common slang term in line with its literal meaning, "little box."
January 20, 2006
Whale in central London
Bottle-nosed whale sighted passing Parliament and headed upstream. Let's just hope it wasn't one of the US Navy-trained animals showing up late for a Guy Fawkes Day reenactment.
January 17, 2006
Earwax removal
Me, I often have quite a bit of ear wax buildup though I do clean my ears on a daily basis. (Was that too much information?) Anyhow, this Canadian Medical Journal article details the emergency removal of earwax with a supersoaker loanded by a local four year old. It was "an off-label use" of the device. Not generally recommended, but something to add to your emergency medicine knowledge...
January 12, 2006
Continuing on the car theme...
Take a look at Top Gear's comparison of racing the NSX on a game machine and in real life.
And comparing modern road cars to race cars of the past.
Great videos. And why doesn't the US have either good car magazines or video magazines like the Brits? Check out Evo, Car, or Top Gear and compare them to the waste of paper that is the US auto magazine industry.
December 19, 2005
November 22, 2005
November 17, 2005
FBI's list of top ten art crimes
For unknown reasons, Thomas Kinkade isn't at the top of the list. Speaking of Mr. Light, there's a bit from the 60 Minute's piece on him and his paintings (and associated empire) here.
November 03, 2005
October 24, 2005
October 20, 2005
What's happening to Lake St. (Minneapolis)?
The street was obviously torn up, but I didn't know that $190M was headed into that old Sears building! When I first moved to the city I wondered why that building hadn't been taken over for cheap loft-space... Instead it's going to be expensive office space.
October 17, 2005
October 14, 2005
It's a slow news day...
So, why not just discuss the effects of the Coast Guard restrictions on the number, type, location, and coverage fraction of tattoos and body piercings. Go ahead, voice your opinions.
September 23, 2005
Bruce Springsteen and Garrison Keillor?
Wow! It's a strange world, isn't it?
Glory Days! read by Garrison Keillor. Sounds pretty different, doesn't it.
August 28, 2005
August 17, 2005
Preparing for Burning Man?
Do check out the advice here especially on shelter. There's no reason why you have to suffer out in the sun.
July 07, 2005
June 25, 2005
June 13, 2005
April 25, 2005
The Numbers Racket
Still going on... I had it associated with a distant time in the Northeast, back before state lotteries and legalized gambling in most places. An interesting article on the current version of the numbers game.
April 19, 2005
April 13, 2005
The Goal? To chill free speech?
The secret service visit and examine artwork critical of the president. Since the work was in the form of mock stamps, and features a gun to the Dubya head, I can picture two separate investigations...
March 26, 2005
Banksy strikes again!
He walked into the museums, and put up his paintings. While dressed as an "British Pensionner" which should allow for enough room to bring the painting in. The Met spotted and removed the work right away, the MoMA, Museum of Natural History, and Brooklyn Museum pieces stayed up longer. You can find out more about Banksy at his website.
It all reminds me of the Turner Prize scandal (well, there's one every year, but I was thinking of the 2002 one) at which Banksy spraypainted "Mind the crap" on the steps.
There's also a discussion of this going on at plastic.com.