Street Art: Joshua Allen Harris’ Inflatable Bag Monsters
August 24, 2010
This video is from New York Magazine, July 22, 2008. Joshua Allen Harris creates moving sculptures on the streets of NYC using garbage bags, tape, a matt knife and, crucially, subway exhaust. Video by Jonah Green.
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Naughty Tomatoes – File Under “Strange Snacks”
August 16, 2010
Naughty Tomatoes, a spicy, tomato-flavored snack that looks like thin, orange-red Cheetos, purchased in Jackson Heights, Queens, August 7, 2010. The packaging shows a tomato with the product itself as ‘devil’ horns and a full-lipped cartoon mouth. Would like to have been present at the marketing meeting for this product.
From the back of the package:
Upload your tedha photos, videos and voice recordings on www.kurkure.co.in to showcase your tedhapan!
Kurkure Mast Taatar Sev
Fry mustard seeds & jeera in 4 tsp. oil. Add 3 crushed cloves & 1/2 tsp. tumeric powder. Ass 4 tomatoes cut in the shape of flowers. Add 1 cup water. Add dhaniya, jeera powder, sugar & salt to taste. When the water starts boiling, add thick ratiami sev. Cook for 1 min. In a separate bowl, take small pieces of Kurkure Naughty Tomatoes, coriander leaves & green chillies. Mix well. Add as filing to the tomatoes. Serve with tea. Recipe courtesy Gada Family.
Clarity on Copyright: The Purpose of Copyright Law – It’s Not What You Think
August 16, 2010
In the digital age with the almost frictionless ability to reproduce audio, video and text the issue of copyright has entered the mainstream in a big way. No longer the rarified domain of intellectual property attorneys, copyright issues make the news with the regularity of the latest RIAA lawsuit over the unauthorized sharing of music files and the current sturm and drang over Wikileaks posting of the Afghan War Diary.
It seems people only remember the first half of Stewart Brand’s famous pronouncement in 1987, “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive . . .That tension will not go away.” In 1984 at the first Hackers Conference, Brand put it in a more nuanced way:
“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”
Thanks to the good folks at TechDirt for linking to this excellent article by attorney and associate professor Lydia Pallas Lorn of Northwestern’s School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, The Purpose of Copyright Law.
Copyright and patent law derives from a clause in the US constitution and “the primary purpose of copyright is not, as many people believe, to protect authors against those who would steal the fruits of their labor,” according to the author. The purpose of copyright is “to promote the progress of knowledge and learning.”
Pallas Loren traces the origin of this concept from English common law and the early publishing industry to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and beyond. I believe this is essential reading for anyone who creates content today – from the lowly blog scribe all the way up to Lady Gaga. Understanding copyright is necessary and Lydia Pallas Loren lays it all out clearly and definitively, in my opinion.
I wish the web contained more writing of this quality and thoughtfulness and less gossip, opinions, trivia and noise about disposable celebrities and manufactured scandals. ” ‘Tis of no importance what bats and oxen think.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Pekar Project at Smith Magazine Online
July 22, 2010
Cleveland, and the world, lost a great curmudgeon recently when Harvey Pekar passed away. But we can console ourselves with the fact that there’s more new, collaborative work from Harvey (and the artists who illustrate his writing) in the pipeline.
One place to find this material is at the Pekar Project online at Smith, an online magazine that is new to me. (Looks pretty interesting, tho).
I’ve been following Harvey’s work since the first issue of American Splendor back in the bicentennial year of 1976. Although I must admit it was the Robert Crumb artwork that initially drew me to this independent comic, sold in what were called head shops: dingy store front operations that retailed smoking paraphernalia not intended for tobacco, T-shirts, head bands, incense and underground comics.
If you’ve never read one of Harvey’s comics, or only know of him through the 2003 film (American Splendor) starring Paul Giamatti you’re in for a treat. Harvey’s was a unique voice and he will be sorely missed. The compensating factor for his passing is that he’s left behind such a substantial body of work for all of his fans to treasure. If you’re not already one of them, I urge you to check him out with my highest possible recommendation.
How Does My Prius Work, Really?
June 23, 2010
I’ve been driving a Toyota Prius for 5 years now and have had nothing done other than scheduled maintenance and the replacement of one headlight bulb. So I’m a satisfied customer and feel sorry about all the bad press the company has gotten this year.
The only unintended acceleration I’ve experienced has been the result of my own lead-foot driving. I experimented once and found that simply by observing the posted speed limit in my town I was able to achieve 59 MPG! Though, of course, I could never drive like that in real life.
But when asked to explain precisely how my car works I’ve mumbled around a few general principles and jargon, like “regenerative braking.” Now I’ve found where to direct people who are genuinely interested in this topic, a series of linked articles on the How Stuff Works? web site. For specific info on the Prius, go here.
Men can “laugh women into bed” according to new research
June 15, 2010
I’ve known this to be true for a long time, based on personal experience. I was not blessed with rugged good looks, a hefty bank account nor did I ever drive a ‘cool’ car. I wasn’t on any athletic team and would’ve been safely placed in the geek-freak category by most people who knew me in adolescence. Yet I had a very active social life during the dating phase of my life (high school, college and post-college).
Part of this was certainly due to the time period, the 1970s and the pre-AIDS, pre-political correctness ethos of that time. Just as a young person coming of age in the 1920s would have a very different experience than someone coming of age in the 1930s. Still it remains a cliché of all those dating/mating sites, and their print precursors, that women value and seek men with a “good sense of humor.” Now a British study reported in the UK Telegraph shows that what women are actually seeking is intelligence, which they believe is correlated with that GSOH.
The opposite appears to be untrue however. Men are generally not attracted to funny ladies. Sarah Silverman may be the exception that proves this rule. I can’t think of any other genuinely funny (sorry, Chelsea Handler) female stand-up who’s appeared in Maxim or Playboy.
‘Tip of the Tongue’ Experiences Explained
June 3, 2010
I first read about the research on ‘Tip of the Tongue’ experiences back in the 1980s in The Psychology of Anomalous Experience: A Cognitive Approach by Graham F. Reed.
The fascinating aspect to me was that clearly one part of our brain knew the correct answer because we’re almost always able to reject the incorrect suggestions. When we try and remember the name of that great Southern food restaurant on Great Jones Street we may be certain that it’s one word and starts with an “A” but we’ll know that Alias, Arno, Abbott’s, Apache, etc. are not correct. (The answer is Acme).
So it’s clear that our brain can store information that is (temporarily) unavailable to us and be able to tell us when we guess wrong. New research on this phenomenon is described in this article the LiveScience site where it’s been found that people who use American Sign Language experience a similar ‘tip of the fingers’ effect. Go here to read about this latest study.
Tim Berners-Lee, Linked Open Data and a Bag of Potato Chips
May 28, 2010
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web while working at CERN, is someone we should listen to when he talks about the future development of the Internet.
What he’s hot on right now is something called Linked Open Data, something he believes will be the next evolutionary step for web development. He uses the information on a bag of potato chips to illustrate this concept:
The outside of the bag contains different sets of information, each using a different vocabulary and coming from a different source, Berners-Lee explained.
The front of the package displays the name of the brand and the company’s own marketing claim that the chips are crunchy. The back of the package has nutritional information, such as calories and vitamins, defined by terms generated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Finally, there is a Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code on the bottom of the package, which is not understood by humans at all but rather is recognized by scanning machines globally as the moniker for the item.
In other words, this single package of information actually is a collection of data and attributes that have been developed by multiple parties, not just Utz.
For the rest of the article, go here at IT World.
Chuck Klosterman on Fame, from “Eating the Dinosaur”
May 24, 2010
“I do not know how much money Britney Spears earned last year. However, I do know that it’s not enough for me to want her life, were I given the option to have it. Everyday random people use Britney’s existence as currency; they talk about her public failures and her lack of talent as a way to fill the emptiness of their own normalcy. She — along with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all those androids from The Hills — are the unifying entities within this meta era. In splintered society, they are the means through which people devoid of creativity communicate with each other. They allow Americans to understand who they are and who they are not; they allow Americans to unilaterally agree on something they never needed to consciously consider.”
“A person like Britney Spears surrenders her privacy and her integrity and the rights to her own persona, and in exchange we give her huge sums of money. But she still doesn’t earn a fraction of what she warrants in a free-trade cultural economy. If Britney Spears were paid $1 every time a self-loathing stranger used her as a surrogate for his own failure, she would out earn Warren Buffet in three months. This is why entertainers (and athletes) make so much revenue but still are wildly underpaid: We use them for things that are worth more than money. It’s anew kind of dehumanizing slavery — not as awful as they literal variety, but dehumanizing nonetheless.”
— Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur
Buy the book here on Amazon
This is the first collection of Chuck Klosterman’s work that I’ve read though it won’t be the last. I think he’s really nailed something important about how fame, celebrity and media work today in the excerpt above. Especially when he writes, “We use them for things that are worth more than money.” Scary. But true, I think.
Josh Woodward – “Chainsaw”
May 17, 2010
I first heard this darkly comic folk song by Josh Woodward on the Radio Free Oz podcast hosted by one-half of the legendary Firesign Theatre, Peter Bergman and David Ossman. The sweet beauty of Woodward’s guitar makes a sharp contrast with the twisted lyrics. You can download 150 free MP3s as well as purchase his CDs here. Support this talented singer-songwriter, you won’t regret it.