December 2009
75 posts
Hey, fashion, do you really think you can go on...
Think again. NYTimes’ critic Cathy Horyn calls fashion houses on their pitiful presence on the World Wide Web.
Go to the sites of the most innovative labels — Prada and Balenciaga, to name two — and you find almost no appreciation for the potential of digital technology. No special films that might illuminate the creative process, no animation, no design gestures that are consistent with...
“I don’t give a shit what people like Ann Coulter think of me.”
– Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, discusses the benefits of stirring up controversy and “knowing how to pick a fight.” With the right people - i.e. not Ann Coulter.
— In Seed Magazine, from London.
Duck sex freaks me out. →
— In Not Exactly Rocket Science, from London.
1 tag
Kottke just posted this and I almost died laughing:
Richard Dawkins
People who have their significant other grab them under the table in order to shut them up whenever someone else at a dinner says something absolutely ridiculous and wrong.
Because lord, nail on head.
— From London.
“You’re supposed to make only two quarts of Kool-Aid from a package, but he...”
– Richard Brautigan’s observation of his childhood friend - The Kool-Aid Wino - in ‘Trout Fishing in America.’
— From Melbourne.
“If you say there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to...”
– Gabriel García Márquez, in a 1981 interview with the Paris Review, explains how he found the right tone for One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
— From London.
“The trouble with living with a human rights lawyer is that you can never get the...”
– — Kathy Lette to whom Richard’s intellectual man-crush Geoffrey Robertson Q.C is married.
— In This much I know (The Observer), from Melbourne.
WatchNon-euclidean geometry, general relativity and crochet.
Following a long-overdue Skype encounter with Hematophobia and Melbourne, this is the video M sends me. Margaret Wertheim, Australian science writer, shows that the best - if not the only - way to model hyperbolic geometry is with crochet. Something over which mathematicians went nearly “bonkers” for decades before deciding it...
Copenhagen failure: UN to "take note" of proposed... →
Depressing really:
The outcome pushes back work on a worldwide climate agreement by at least six months and raises doubts about the long-term viability of the limited Kyoto Protocol, if a binding treaty for non-developing countries is not signed next year.
— From Melbourne (in The Age & all press).
Rosa, by Jacques Brel.
— From London.
Citizen Scientist, or how you can help... →
Tons of research projects around the world are in dire need of help, and the good news is, you can volunteer.
Anyone who’s interested, anyone at all, even people with no serious scientific knowledge can help. That means you. And you. And even me.
Dave Munger, who normally blogs here, logged on to one such research project and began categorizing galaxies. Just like that. Without telescopes...
One American swallows 7 DVDs of data per day. For... →
It’s hardly news that all y’all in the States are info junkies (to be sure, you’re not the only ones, but the story is about yanks, so shut up).
What’s pretty shocking is that whatever any of you sees/reads/hears/watches each day (EACH DAY!) on your spare time (SPARE TIME!) could fill 7 DVDs (SEVEN DVDs!).
Congratulations. That is a crapload of stuff. Now get out and...
“I used to be an astronomer, but then I got stuck on the day shift.”
– Brian Malow, science comedian.
Scientists, tired of academia, go to San Francisco and turn to something else (I think I heard this one before). In this case, it’s comedy.
— Great story in the NYTimes, from London.
Frank Black Did NOT Shame the Decade, YOU Did,...
The Guardian, in true London fashion, finds tons of reasons to bitch about key people of the “noughties,” or, in normal speak, the 2000s.* On their list, Frank Black, leader of the Pixies:
Reforming your band for the moolah was something only desperate old sell-outs like the Sex Pistols used to do. But after (Frank) Black Francis persuaded his former Pixies to patch up their...
Sozinho, Caetano Veloso.
— From London.
2 tags
Her Anxiety, W.B. Yeats
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie. Such body lovers have, Such exacting breath, That they touch or sigh. Every touch they give, Love is nearer death. Prove that I lie. I like Poems on the Underground.
— From London.
On Belief.
Where I come from, God is not something you question. Although it must be said that no one spoke of faith with conviction. Except for the old guard - a grandfather who wouldn’t recognize a marriage unless it was blessed by a priest, a grandmother whose entire life was a prayer - religion was automatic. Rites were done mechanically. Does God exist? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares. God, in many...
“Having kids is a good opportunity to stretch yourself. You know, it’s a...”
– Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, after Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon’s called her to ask what to do about the fact that she doesn’t give a toss about astronomy, while her boys are obsessed...
The Importance of Satiety
Merlin discusses satiety, a notion that has been neglected to dire consequences.
How do you know when you’ve had “enough?”
Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start, finish, or simply maintain.
Unfortunately, foodbabies only appear after it’s too late. And, if your satiety’s gauged solely by whether the buffet’s still open, you’re screwed. Like the...
WatchAgnes Varda’s Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976)
They were intoxicated by the sweet harmony of Nature and Architecture, Body and Decor.
Two Iranian lovers wander through a beautiful mosque. Yes, domes and cupolas are like women’s breasts.
— Ubu we love you, from Melbourne.
Doctor offers diagnosis in Charles Darwin medical... →
The irony:
“Survival of the fittest” may have been the phrase adopted by Charles Darwin to dramatise his ideas, but the proponent of evolution was himself rarely a healthy man.
A Monash University professor John Hayman claims that Darwin suffered from a “cyclical vomiting syndrome” - an inherited disorder explaining the naturalist’s lifelong illness.
“His...
Earl Grey, composed by Jason and sent as a...
The Moon: "they just had to check it out."
Steve Sparshott writes about the “last great act undertaken by the United States out of a sense of optimism:”
As Eddie Izzard noted, we (Britain) couldn’t get a man in a tracksuit up a ladder (“Hello, Swindon? Come in, Swindon…”, ”Yes, hello astronaut…er, laddernaut…”). But over the pond, the kind of spirit which is now just hollow corporate rhetoric (Where do you want to go today?,...
Dogs are smarter than cats, the New Scientist...
While I’m an inveterate cat person, I am happy to recognize that they can be unbelievably stupid. I say this in spite of the fact that my favorite feline figured out, by simple observation, that you could open doors by jumping on the knob or get your bipedes to serve you water by staring longingly at the water filter.
The New Scientist attempts to put the old debate to rest by comparing...
"Douche" is French for "Shower."
So stop it.
— From London, lexicographically.
“Hollywood isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand and...”
– Dorothy Parker in an interview for The Paris Review (1956).
— From Melbourne.
Noises most likely to wake women and men →
According to Mindlab, this is the noise most likely to wake women:
a crying baby.
And the noise most likely to wake men:
a car alarm.
And for this, they blame evolution. Click through to see top ten noises for each gender.
— From London, not saying anything.
Come on, guys. Didn't you know the best way to get...
You and I are going to be such good friends, Damselesque.
— From London.
Americans Are, 'ow doo you seh, uh, "Socialistes?"
Bloomberg reports on a poll that shows Americans want their government to “spend for jobs” and “send the bill to the rich.”
Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless. They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.
In...
Ok, so I rollerblade on the foreshore...
I was at dinner with a friend and she asked me if I do any routine exercise.
Me: I skate several times a week from St Kilda to Port Melbourne and back.
Ket: Skate? Like on rollerskates?
Me: No, rollerblades. I just can’t bring myself to say ‘blade’ (I flick my hair in jest).
Ket: I’m just trying to imagine this. Do you wear short shorts to tan your legs at the same time?
Me (embarrassed by...
“It would be really cool if they started their own planet or something, but...”
– Thirteen-year-old Tavi, also know as the Style Rookie, gushes about Rodarte with Style.com after having worked with them for months on a video project about their spring 2010 collection.
Sharp as a tack and a great writer. I want one just like her.
— Endlessly grateful to Hematophobia, from...