deblogatory

The Wall of Death

2010-04-03T13:06:00.002-04:00

A video of a Wall of Death attraction in India, where life is probably still cheap enough to make this possible. This is probably more dangerous for the spectators than some realize...

This is a follow up from my post 1.25 years ago, but I still think it is cooler with the lion.

Old Spice Commercial

2010-03-05T23:03:00.000-05:00

Srsly, WTF?!

Bright College Days

2010-03-05T13:27:00.001-05:00

Tom Lehrer's funny Bright College Days song:

Bright college days, O carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let’s drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus ur-igit.

Here’s to parties we tossed,
To the games that we lost,
We shall claim that we won them some day.

To the girls young and sweet,
To the spacious back seat
Of our roommate’s beat up Chevrolet.

To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be pals with us all.

To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall.

To the tables down at Mory’s (wherever that may be)
Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.
We will sleep through all the lectures,
And cheat on the exams,
And we’ll pass, and be forgotten with the rest.

Oh, soon we’ll be out amid the cold world’s strife.
Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life.

Ready?

But as we go our sordid sep’rate ways,
We shall ne’er forget thee, thou golden college days.

Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.

Capoeira

2010-03-04T10:49:00.001-05:00

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, music, and dance. It was created in Brazil by slaves brought from Africa, especially from present day Angola, sometime after the sixteenth century.

Participants form a roda, or circle, and take turns either playing musical instruments, singing, or ritually sparring in pairs in the center of the circle. The sparring is marked by fluid acrobatic play, feints, and extensive use of sweeps, kicks, and headbutts.

(Information via WIkipedia)

Some Cool Handpainting...

2010-02-10T20:45:00.001-05:00

An excerpt from Damn Cool Pics:

Body painting is a type of art in which paint is applied to a part of skin. It is considered one of the ancient types of art. Unlike tattoos, body painting is temporary. Lasting for just few hours or ion some cases a few weeks. Hand painting art is the application of make-up or paint on to the hands to look like any object or mostly to depict animals.

Following art is created by Mario Mariotti (1936-1997), an Italian artist from Florence, famous for his amazing hand painting art.

Artist Guido Daniele who has specialized in body artwork. His hand painting which he dubs as ‘Handimals‘ is appreciated around the world.

For your enjoyment, we have a collection of Guido’s hand painting art, check out his amazing creations which look like real animals.

What has our Society (Part Deux)

2010-01-11T15:45:00.001-05:00

Waterskiing with a backhoe. O.k. So this isn't as bad as the guy taking a dump in a public plant, but there is something... I dunno about this after you stop laughing at it...

What our society has come to...

2010-01-11T15:37:00.001-05:00

Taking a poop in a plant?! RLY?! The lack of common decency (not to mention hygiene) here is amazing...

Given the zooming of the camera, it seems to me that the feed was being monitored so it also surprises me that they security folk didn't do something about this.

Bystander WIN

2010-01-03T20:06:00.001-05:00

A bicyclist helps nab the bad guys...

via Failblog.

Site Lets Investors See and Copy Experts’ Trades

2009-12-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

From a NY Times article.

The trouble with mutual funds is that investors can feel as though they have put their money in a black box. The 90 million Americans with money in funds know little about fees, what securities their money is invested in and who is in charge.

Daniel Carroll, who started investing when he was 15, thinks he has a way to let average investors learn about investing while experts manage the money. In 2008, he started KaChing, a Web site where 400,000 amateur and professional investors manage virtual portfolios. Others have logged on to see what the investors on the site are doing and make the same trades in their own real portfolios.

On Monday, KaChing is to add a new twist. Customers can set up brokerage accounts that automatically mirror the trades of a money manager, some of them professionals.

“The idea of an asset manager showing all his research, his holdings — it’s unheard-of,” said Mr. Carroll, now 27 and the vice president for business development at KaChing. “In the financial industry, the idea is that information is currency; they protect it with their lives.”

Individuals are desperate for advice and transparency from people who help them manage their money, and mutual funds do not provide enough, said Andy Rachleff, KaChing’s chief executive and a longtime venture capitalist who co-founded Benchmark Capital.

“The mutual fund industry is a $10 trillion industry that has seen no innovation for 25 years. The Internet has had no impact,” Mr. Rachleff said.

KaChing has attracted a roster of prominent early investors from Silicon Valley who have financed the company with $3 million. They include Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape; Kevin Compton of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and Jeffrey Jordan, chief executive of OpenTable, the online reservation service.

The angel investors have also been investing their own money through KaChing during the pilot period. “The concept is great — the ability to tap into not just the wisdom of the crowd, but to be able to identify and invest with the particular geniuses in the crowd that stand out,” said Mr. Andreessen, who has invested $100,000 using the site.

Customers will be able to open a brokerage account with Interactive Brokers and link their account with their choice of investors on KaChing. KaChing charges customers a single management fee of 0.25 percent to 3 percent, set by each investor. KaChing keeps a quarter of the fee, and the investors get the rest.

Each time the investors make a trade, KaChing will automatically make the same trades for the customer. Customers can log on whenever they want to check their portfolio’s performance. They can send the investor private messages and receive alerts if the investor does something unusual. With the click of a mouse, customers can stop mirroring an investor.

KaChing rates investors on the site by giving them a score the company calls Investing IQ. The formula is modeled after one used by managers of Ivy League endowments, Mr. Rachleff said, and considers risk-adjusted returns, whether investors stick to their strategies and the quality of the research they provide to explain their ideas.

So-called genius investors are those with high scores that have at least a yearlong record on KaChing. The genius investors sign regulatory documents that they will not break the law, including “front-running” stocks, which is the illegal practice of buying or selling a security for their own account with the advance knowledge of pending orders.

KaChing monitors trades in the personal brokerage accounts of each of its model investors and their families. The site is also a registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Only a dozen people have qualified as genius investors so far. They include a retired lawyer in Omaha, a student at Chapman University and the founder of a Bay Area investment firm.

For investors, KaChing is a way to make some money on the side or expand their existing business. Andrew F. Mathieson, founder of the investment firm Fairview Capital in Greenbrae, Calif., said he hoped to use KaChing to cater to people who did not meet the firm’s million-dollar minimum.

“Most investment products are sold rather than bought,” he said. “Our vision of this is it’s a product that will be bought by investors on the basis of the information we’re putting on the site.”
Recommend More Articles in Technology » A version of this article appeared in print on October 19, 2009, on page B4 of the New York edition.

Toyota Midnight Rider Tundra Tailgater

2009-12-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

Sweet party truck!

Normally when we feature a cool car we like to tell you about the engine power, but in the case of the Toyota Midnight Rider Tundra Tailgater by Brooks & Dunn we're stuck on the accessories. This flatbed packs a 42 inch HDTV and Kicker sound system, a BBQ grill, beer tap and ice chest. Designed with Brooks & Dunn's truck/country music fans in mind we suddenly feel the urge to follow the band on their 2010 farewell tour in one of these bad boys.

Check It Out

Now imagine you're prey

2009-12-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Experiencing the Void

2009-12-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

A proposal for the Guggenheim Museum's Rotunda which is part of the 50th Anniversary celebration from Julien de Smedt. Unfortunately, this is only a 2D project, and there are no plans that I know of for making this real.

Hermes' Tokyo Window Display

2009-12-17T11:29:00.002-05:00

An eye catching and artistic yet wonderfully simple store window display.

View from the Top

2009-12-06T19:36:00.001-05:00

The Burj Dubai's spire lets one person see the world. Luckily that person has a video cam so we can all share. Burj Dubai is currently the world's tallest building, in a country sitting on the some of the world most serious debt right now...

Movie Trailers

2009-12-06T19:33:00.001-05:00

Mashup trailers for modern movies in the style of movies from the 40s and 50s:

I can't imagine how much work and time went into these! Pretty cool...

Camouflage artist Liu Bolin

2009-12-03T14:25:00.000-05:00

These are photos not photoshops... More of his work here: http://www.ekfineart.com/html/artistresults.asp?artist=82&testing=true

Learning His Body, Learning to Dance

2009-11-25T09:57:00.001-05:00

A dancer with Cerebral Palsy teams up with a choreographer that significantly changes his adaptations to his disabilities that doctors and other professionals have been unable to help him with. This article was particularly interesting to me in the way it represents how we limit ourselves based on the preconceptions that others have, and how there is so much information out in the world that has not been crossbred and allowed to germinate.

An interesting read: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/arts/dance/25palsy.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

Police Take Notice

2009-11-21T00:08:00.002-05:00

I saw a sign today that said "Bank of America business only. No Soliciting or Trespassing. Police Take Notice."

Does that mean that police notice you trespassing (highly unlikely since this was inside an office building) or does that mean police please take notice of people who may trespass here? It is a choice between a sign that is unlikely to be effective and poor grammar...

A 1936 Stainless Steel Ford Coupe

2009-11-18T13:29:00.001-05:00

A handsome polished, stainless steel 1936 Ford Coupe, one of only 6 made, that was made as a collaboration between Ford and The Allegheny Ludlum Steel. Excerpted from The New York Times.

Photo by Richard S. Chang for the NY TImes.

One of the standouts was a 1936 Ford coupe that was made out of stainless steel and looked like an apparition on the lush green field. Its owner, Leo Gephart of Scottsdale, Ariz., stood proudly at its front bumper fielding questions from the crowd.

“They only made six of them,” he said. “Ford did it as a publicity deal for Allegheny Ludlum Steel. They were going to use the cars for promotion. They were going to make 10. Henry Ford ran six, and the seventh ruined the dies.”

Mr. Gephart said only one of the stainless steel Fords was delivered to a private owner, a dentist who had introduced stainless steel in dentistry.

Mr. Gephart first came across the car 40 years ago. “I told the owner to give me a call if he ever wanted to sell it,” he said. “He gave it to his son. Twenty years later, it was at a restoration shop. The guy at the shop was dressed up. He was going to a cruise. He told me he was going to give it to his grandson. I bought it from the grandson 20 years later.”

A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’

2009-11-18T11:07:00.001-05:00

An examination of repatriating antiquities to their place of origin, a growing trend that is affecting great museums around the world. While I can understand a culture wanting its treasures back (I think immediately of how much richer a visit to The Forbidden City might be, for example), I also would feel much poorer if The Metropolitain Museum became a place to hold only American items, for example. From the New York Times.

Herbert Knosowski/Associated Press
A bust of Nefertiti that Egypt wants from a Berlin museum.

Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The British Museum does not agree — at least not yet. But never underestimate Dr. Hawass when it comes to this sort of custody dispute. He has prevailed so often in getting pieces returned to what he calls their “motherland” that museum curators are scrambling to appease him.

Last month, after Dr. Hawass suspended the Louvre’s excavation in Egypt, the museum promptly returned the ancient fresco fragments he sought. Then the Metropolitan Museum of Art made a pre-emptive display of its “appreciation” and “deep respect” by buying a piece of a shrine from a private collector so that it could be donated to Egypt.

Now an official from the Neues Museum in Berlin is headed to Egypt to discuss Dr. Hawass’s demand for its star attraction, a bust of Nefertiti.

These gestures may make immediate pragmatic sense for museum curators worried about getting excavation permits and avoiding legal problems. But is this trend ultimately good for archaeology?

Scientists and curators have generally supported the laws passed in recent decades giving countries ownership of ancient “cultural property” discovered within their borders. But these laws rest on a couple of highly debatable assumptions: that artifacts should remain in whatever country they were found, and that the best way to protect archaeological sites is to restrict the international trade in antiquities.

In some cases, it makes aesthetic or archaeological sense to keep artifacts grouped together where they were found, but it can also be risky to leave everything in one place, particularly if the country is in turmoil or can’t afford to excavate or guard all its treasures. After the Metropolitan Museum was pressured to hand over a collection called the Lydian Hoard, one of the most valuable pieces was stolen several years ago from its new home in Turkey.

Restricting the export of artifacts hasn’t ended their theft and looting any more than the war on drugs has ended narcotics smuggling. Instead, the restrictions promote the black market and discourage the kind of open research that would benefit everyone except criminals.

Legitimate dealers, museums and private collectors have a financial incentive to pay for expert excavation and analysis of artifacts, because that kind of documentation makes the objects more valuable. A nation could maintain a public registry of discoveries and require collectors to give scholars access to the artifacts, but that can be accomplished without making everything the property of the national government.

The timing of Dr. Hawass’s current offensive, as my colleague Michael Kimmelman reported, makes it look like retribution against the Westerners who helped prevent an Egyptian from becoming the leader of Unesco, the United Nation’s cultural agency. But whatever the particular motivation, there is no doubt that the cultural-property laws have turned archeological discoveries into political weapons.

In his book “Who Owns Antiquity?”, James Cuno argues that scholars have betrayed their principles by acquiescing to politicians who have exploited antiquities to legitimize themselves and their governments. Saddam Hussein was the most blatant, turning Iraqi archeology museums into propaganda for himself as the modern Nebuchadnezzar, but other leaders have been just as cynical in using antiquities to bolster their claims of sovereignty.

Dr. Cuno advocates the revival of partage, the traditional system in which archeologists digging in foreign countries would give some of their discoveries to the host country and take others home. That way both sides benefit, and both sides have incentives to recover antiquities before looters beat them to it. (To debate this idea, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

As the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, Dr. Cuno has his own obvious motives for acquiring foreign antiquities, and he makes no apology for wanting to display Middle Eastern statues to Midwesterners.

“It is in the nature of our species to connect and exchange,” Dr. Cuno writes. “And the result is a common culture in which we all have a stake. It is not, and can never be, the property of one modern nation or another.”

Some of the most culturally protectionist nations today, like Egypt, Italy and Turkey, are trying to hoard treasures that couldn’t have been created without the inspiration provided by imported works of art. (Imagine the Renaissance without the influence of “looted” Greek antiquities.) And the current political rulers of those countries often have little in common culturally with the creators of the artifacts they claim to own.

Dr. Hawass may consider the Rosetta Stone to be the property of his government agency, but the modern state of Egypt didn’t even exist when it was discovered in 1799 (much less when it was inscribed in 196 B.C., during the Hellenistic era). The land was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and the local historians were most interested in studying their Islamic heritage.

The inscribed stone fragment, which had been used as construction material at a fort, didn’t acquire any significance until it was noticed by Napoleon’s soldiers and examined by the scholars on the expedition.

When the French lost the war, they made a copy of the inscriptions before surrendering the stone to the English victors, who returned it to the British Museum. Eventually, two scholars, working separately in Britain and in France, deciphered the hieroglyphics.

This all happened, of course, long before today’s nationalistic retention laws and the United Nations’ Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. But what if the Rosetta Stone were unearthed in modern times?

Were the Rosetta Stone to appear on the artmarket without the proper export permits and documented provenance, Dr. Cuno says, a museum curator who acquired it would risk international censure and possible criminal charges. Scholars would shun it because policies at the leading archeological journals would forbid the publication of its text.

“Not being acquired or published, the Rosetta Stone would be a mere curiosity,” Dr. Cuno writes. “Egyptology as we know it would not exist, and modern Egyptians would not know to claim it as theirs.”

The Supreme Council of Antiquities wouldn’t even know what it was missing.

Books: The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation by Paul Spencer Byard

2009-10-25T10:06:00.000-04:00

Books: The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation by Paul Spencer Byard

Lookout Tower by Avanto Architects | CoolBoom

2009-10-07T08:52:00.000-04:00

Lookout Tower by Avanto Architects | CoolBoom

New Scientist Invention blog

2009-10-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

New Scientist Invention blog

interesting elevators « deputydog

2009-10-03T11:19:00.000-04:00

interesting elevators « deputydog

fake window from blind

2009-09-30T22:36:00.000-04:00

http://pipeline.gnr8.biz/index.php?task=home&id=92

Portfolio of Jesse van Dijk

2009-09-28T13:05:00.000-04:00

Portfolio of Jesse van Dijk

How to add a USB port to your Alarm clock as a Power outlet

2009-09-27T11:43:00.000-04:00

From Engadget.com is an article on How to Add USB power to your alarm clock, so that you can attach USB powered devices such as lights, etc. McGyver, eat yer heart out!

Movie Trailers

2009-09-27T00:30:00.001-04:00

Mashup trailers for modern movies in the style of movies from the 40s and 50s:

I can't imagine how much work and time went into these! Pretty cool...

Fascinating Ice and Snow Sculptures

2009-09-27T00:26:00.001-04:00

Some cool snow and ice Sculptures over at Odee.com

Helmet Cam of Being Buried in an Avalanche

2009-09-25T15:06:00.001-04:00

A skier with a helmet cam gets caught in an avalanche.

Avalanche Skier POV Helmet Cam Burial & Rescue in Haines, Alaska from Chappy on Vimeo.

Read the story here.

How to Cross the Ocean on a Freighter Ship

2009-09-25T14:01:00.001-04:00

The romantic idea of crossing the ocean in a freighter ship, explained, from The Art of Manliness blog post.

At the Port of Long Beach, California, I boarded a freighter named the Punjab Senator. Twenty-two days later I got off the ship in Singapore after a winter crossing of the Pacific. This trip wasn’t for everyone, but it was definitely an adventure I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

If you’re tired of ho-hum traveling by plane and want to experience a trip aboard a freighter ship, here’s what you need to know to get started.

First Things First: Common Misconceptions About Freighter Travel

1. Freighter travel is a cheap alternative to flying on a plane. The popular old-school romantic notion of showing up penniless at a dock with a rucksack and then “earning” your passage by swabbing the decks will have to remain in Robert Louis Stevenson novels. Traveling on a freighter requires advanced booking and it is generally more expensive than flying. A fifteen day cruise from Oakland to Shanghai will cost about $2000 (US). When traveling on a freighter ship you are essentially paying for many days and nights of food and accommodation in addition to the transportation.

2. Freighter travel is similar to being on a cruise. The purpose of a cruise ship is to provide a relaxing and enjoyable time for everyone on board. The purpose of a freighter is to get cargo from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Cruise ships troll around tranquil seas, with stabilizers so that you barely know you are moving. Freighters haul at a breakneck pace across the open ocean, often through storms. A cruise will be populated with thousands of people, whereas a freighter is often a larger vessel with only 20 or so people on it. While a cruise ship has restaurants, spas, gymnasiums, and tons of activities, a freighter will have a TV with a DVD player, a radio, and if you’re lucky, an old Nautilus machine for working out.

3. You can ride a freighter from anywhere to anywhere. Most freighter ships follow well defined shipping routes and make stops at the large port cities (Long Beach, Oakland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, etc.) But if your dream is to catch a freighter from the Jersey shore to Isla Mujeres, Mexico….it’s not going to happen.

Now that we’ve gone over the negatives, here’s how you can get started. There are several companies that book freighter cruises – just google freighter travel. I used www.freighterworld.com and I was extremely happy with them. If you browse the site you can get a good idea of the duration, cost, and ports that you can travel to and from. Their FAQ section contains a wealth of information. As a further affront to your Kerouac dreams of spontaneous adventure, you will have to book your passage at least a month in advance and proof of insurance is also necessary.

If you decide to go for it, here are some tips:

1. Bring Seabands. I had spent a significant amount of time on fishing boats, cruise ships, and sailboats without ever getting seasick. However, when the Punjab Senator cruised out of the Port of Oakland into the open Pacific, I felt my stomach turn. I used sea bands which are little wrist bands that exert pressure on your wrist to alleviate the effects of nausea. I am unsure if the seasickness was psychosomatic or real – the idea of trudging straight into the Pacific during winter was slightly unsettling – but the seabands definitely made me feel better when I was wearing them. During a storm, our ship hit a roll of 20 degrees, which is a tremendous amount of motion. The good news is that by the end of the trip I was able to sleep through motion that left my belongings scattered about my room.

2. Bring books. I am not a fast reader, but during this trip I completed some monster works by Dostoyevsky, Ayn Rand, Solzhenitsyn, and John Steinbeck. The ship had a good library, but many of the works were in German since the crew was mostly German. On a typical day I worked out twice, watched a DVD or two, wrote extensively, took two naps, ate three meals, and still had enough down time to finish four novels.

3. Understand that you must entertain yourself. On my ship the officers consisted of 7 Germans and 4 Russians, and the remainder of the crew consisted of 10 Kiribati. English is the language of the sea, but no one else on the boat was a native English speaker. Additionally, in spite of the friends I made on the ship, the seamen are there to work, and there were many times when everyone was too busy to hang out. At the majority of the ports we stopped at, I went to the shore alone because the entire crew was busy supervising the loading and unloading of cargo.

4. Special diets are not accommodated. The hardest part about freighter traveling (for me) was the food. As a passenger you eat with the officers-on my boat they were German and Russian. They ate a meat intensive, diet and I am a vegetarian. On land, it is never a problem for me to find acceptable cuisine anywhere, but in the galley you can’t simply choose somewhere else to eat. For me, that meant many weeks of eating cheese sandwiches. Thank goodness I brought a tub of peanut butter.

5. Know where your ship is. Some of the ports are HUGE, as in miles across…a seemingly endless maze of containers stacked four stories high. If you go onshore alone, it is much easier to get out of the port than it is to come back to the port to re-board. There are often several exits for a port and not knowing where to go can be extremely frustrating. I was lost in the port of Singapore for a significant amount of time trying to find my way back to my ship.

6. Freighter room etiquette. In general, the setting is informal and the rules are similar to college dorm room etiquette. If someone’s door is open, you are welcome to go in. If someone’s door is shut, they are either not there or they would like privacy.

In this article, I tended to focus on some of the negative aspects of freighter travel. To be best prepared, you should know about the difficulties. You don’t need instructions on how to drink gin and tonics while celebrating an International Date Line crossing. Overall, I really enjoyed the unique experience of freighter travel. I have an understanding and appreciation of the ocean I would not have otherwise. The informal atmosphere that allowed you to sit in the bridge while the first mate navigated was matchless. Finally, freighter travel gives some adventure street-cred that is tough to get. When you’re drinking a beer in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia and some backpacker asks you where you flew into, it feels pretty manly to look up and say, “I didn’t.”

The World of Yet Also

2009-09-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Never land.

(First published on Click Opera March 13th, 2005.)

One of the reasons the Michael Jackson trial is so unfortunate is that the world of Either-Or will pass judgment on a creature of Yet-Also. The world of clear, unambiguous categories will pass judgment on someone who flies Peter-Pan-like over the binaries that confine and define the rest of us.

When we look at Michael Jackson, I believe we're looking at the future of our species. Michael is a creature from a future in which we've all become more feminine, more consumerist, more postmodern, more artificial, more self-constructed and self-mediating, more playful, caring and talented than we are today. But it's hard to use those adjectives, because they're Either-Or adjectives and he's from the world of Yet-Also, a world I believe we will all come to live in if we're lucky, a world where there is no more authenticity-by-default-through-brute-necessity and no more "human nature". A world of pure synthesis, pure self-creation.

Jackson is what all humans will become if we develop further in the direction of postmodernism and self-mediation. He is what we'll become if we get both more Wildean and more Nietzschean. He's what we'll become only if we're lucky and avoid a new brutality based on overpopulation and competition for dwindling resources. By attacking Jackson and what he stands for -- the effete, the artificial, the ambiguous -- we make a certain kind of relatively benign future mapped out for ourselves into a Neverland, something forbidden, discredited, derided. When we should be deriding what passes for our normalcy -- war, waste, and the things we do en masse are the things that threaten us -- we end up deriding dandyism and deviance. And Jackson is the ultimate dandy and the ultimate deviant. He can fly across our Either-Or binaries, and never land. It's debateable whether he's the king of pop, but he's undoubtedly the king of Yet-Also.

Consider all the extraordinary ways in which Michael Jackson is Yet-Also. He's black yet also white. He's adult yet also a child. He's male yet also female. He's gay yet also straight. He has children, yet he's also never fucked their mothers. He's wearing a mask, yet he's also showing his real self. He's walking yet also sliding. He's guilty yet also innocent. He's American yet also global. He's sexual yet also sexless. He's immensely rich yet also bankrupt. He's Judy Garland yet also Andy Warhol. He's real yet also synthetic. He's crazy yet also sane, human yet also robot, from the present yet also from the future. He declares his songs heavensent, and yet he also constructs them himself. He's the luckiest man in the world yet the unluckiest. His work is play. He's bad, yet also good. He's blessed yet also cursed. He's alive, but only in theory.

There's one way in which Michael Jackson is not Yet-Also though. He's not famous yet also ordinary. Almost all the other stars in the world, the stars of Either-Or world, anyway, make an exception to Either-Or's categorical thinking in this one instance: given the choice between being either famous or ordinary, they all insist they're both. It's the one instance in which hardline Either-Ors will accept a Yet-Also answer. It's an answer they like because it fills the positions of talent with the representatives of the untalented. It affirms them as they currently are rather than challenging them to become something else. They want affirmation, not aspiration. They don't want their artists and celebrities to embody the values of worlds they don't understand. Ambiguous worlds, future worlds. They want to walk, not moonwalk, and they want their stars to walk too.

And so our creature of Never-Land will be judged by the creatures of Never-Fly. They will almost certainly throw him into jail. Their desire to see him as grounded, categorised and unfree as they themselves are is overwhelming. The grounded, situated, unfree creatures of Either-Or are baying for the clipping of fairy wings. Knives, hatchets and scissors glint in Neverland. There's an assembly of torch-bearing witchfinders. Peter Pan must be ushered back from fiction to reality, from the air to the ground. Back into a race, back into a gender, back into a confined clarity. Assuming he doesn't commit suicide, as he threatens in Martin Bashir's documentary, by jumping from a balcony, Jackson will be ushered away from the fuzzy subtle flicker states of our future, back to the solid states of our past and present. Either-Or will have its triumph over Yet-Also. Yet it will also, unknowingly, "triumph" over its own better future.

Show Caves of the Nouveau Riche

2009-09-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

I came across the words of the title of this post in a post at i09.com but it really didn't satisfy my want to see show caves. I have long been interested in grottoes and hidden gardens of the rich.

The Wieliczka Salt Mines http://www.cyf-kr.edu.pl/krakow_i_okolice/?a=wieliczka
http://www.forestiere-historicalcenter.com/
http://www.bacchuscaves.com/Portfolio_mod-1.asp
http://io9.com/367910/show-caves-of-the-nouveau-riche

WorldNetDaily: 25 years murder-free in 'Gun Town USA'

2009-09-22T14:24:00.000-04:00

WorldNetDaily: 25 years murder-free in 'Gun Town USA'

1900 Predictions

2009-09-22T14:21:00.000-04:00

1900 Predictions

The Paper Architect

2009-09-13T18:25:00.001-04:00

A pretty amazing set of structures made out of cutting paper by the artist Ingrid Siliakus.

via the Daily Icon blog.

Chalk Stomp

2009-09-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

Imagine the performers from Stomp were murdered and turned into chalk outlines, then animated with music from one of their performances. What you you get? This: http://uploads.ungrounded.net/221000/221483_Play.swf

Really Small Guns

2009-09-04T15:18:00.001-04:00

Faster Evacuation? Put an obstacle at the exit.

2009-09-02T11:13:00.001-04:00

It seems that wide open exits cause slower evacuations than an exit that is partially blocked according to an article in Scientific American:

If you find yourself in a crowded building during an emergency, perhaps the last thing you want to see is an obstructed exit. But a new study by a group of Japanese researchers shows that wide-open exits are not always the most efficient at speeding pedestrians through. A judiciously placed obstacle, such as a column, can actually reduce bottlenecking and evacuation times.

Daichi Yanagisawa, a graduate student in the School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues examined various ways of reducing conflicts—friction, essentially—between individuals as they try to squeeze through an exit.

In research set to appear in the journal Physical Review E, Yanagisawa and his co-authors tested various theories using a model incorporating both the friction of conflicting pedestrians and the slowing effects of obstacles that they must circumnavigate. The researchers also ran evacuation drills with 50 human subjects working toward a narrow exit.

The research team found that the problem with wide-open spaces in front of exits is that evacuees can approach from all sides, allowing the maximum number of pedestrians to enter into conflict at the exit. Reducing exit access with an obstacle can pare down the severity of those conflicts. "When a proper obstacle is set up at an appropriate position in front of the exit," Yanagisawa says, "it blocks a pedestrian moving to the exit and decreases the number of pedestrians moving to the exit at the same time."

Not just any old obstacle will do, of course. Yanagisawa notes that its size, shape and orientation has to be tailored to the space and to the width of the exit itself. In general, however, off-center obstacles are more effective than those placed directly in front of an exit. "When an obstacle is set up at the center of the exit," Yanagisawa says, "it makes pedestrians detour and slows down the evacuation." An obstacle placed to one side, on the other hand, "decreases the probability and the impact of conflicts without making pedestrians detour a lot," he explains.

Andreas Schadschneider, a professor at the University of Cologne's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Germany who has studied pedestrian and traffic flows, says that the obstacle effect has popped up occasionally in the literature for several years. But the new work is, to his knowledge, the first time it has been empirically tested. "So, it no longer remains a vague theoretical prediction, but should be considered a serious effect that might be used for substantial increase in the safety of sports arenas and other large public buildings," Schadschneider says.

He adds that even empirical tests with human subjects cannot fully replicate the conditions of an evacuation, however. For one thing, real-world evacuees might be discouraged by the appearance of an obstacle and retreat toward a different exit, which could negate the obstacle's benefits. Real evacuation simulations are extremely difficult to carry out and can be extremely dangerous, Schadschneider says, pointing to a 2006 test of Airbus's A-380 aircraft in which one subject suffered a broken leg and dozens of others sustained lesser injuries.

The researchers also note that their model does not yet compensate for the intelligence of real-life pedestrians, and Yanagisawa cautions that the new results do not imply that building managers should start blockading fire exits. The findings, he says, merely suggest that researchers should start to "consider installing obstacles as one option which holds potential to shorten a total evacuation time."

Spaceship Size comparison

2009-09-01T19:33:00.001-04:00

comparison.gif (GIF Image, 2000x2000 pixels)

http://io9.com/5290455/the-evolution-of-space-cruiser-design-a-gallery

FunMansion - Buddhist Sand Art

2009-09-01T18:55:00.000-04:00

FunMansion - Buddhist Sand Art

Enomatic: wine serving systems

2009-09-01T17:53:00.000-04:00

Enomatic: wine serving systems

electro^plankton: Kung Fu Kids

2009-09-01T16:53:00.000-04:00

electro^plankton: Kung Fu Kids

electro^plankton: Drill an Egg

2009-09-01T16:39:00.000-04:00

electro^plankton: Drill an Egg

Hand Shadow Puppets

2009-09-01T16:23:00.000-04:00

Мир теней (17 фото) в картинках на FUNLOG.RU

electro^plankton: Andre Stubbe's Robotic Eyes

2009-09-01T16:21:00.001-04:00

electro^plankton: Andre Stubbe's Robotic Eyes

electro^plankton: Bone Rings

2009-09-01T16:21:00.000-04:00

electro^plankton: Bone Rings

Swing Fail

2009-09-01T14:04:00.001-04:00

If you are going to yell like Tarzan you better be ready to swing through the trees like Tarzan...

A Stunning Shrimp Video

2009-08-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

A species of shrimp stuns its prey using shock waves created by it's claw.

Wow!

Two Fails Worth Sharing

2009-08-11T11:41:00.001-04:00

Two funny though unrelated pictures from Failblog.com

A Birthday Lesson

2009-08-09T20:58:00.001-04:00

A guy becomes a human candle:

Maybe it was a subtle hint from his loved ones... ouch! (Either that or his family was a big fan of Michael Jackson's Pepsi commercial)

Russian Dekotora

2009-08-01T10:00:00.002-04:00

Some one is afraid of the dark... from English Russia.

For sure the owner of this highly modded Russian car would light his way up the Russian roads with so much additional stuff installed on the vehicle.

Why is this post called Russian Dekotora? You'll have to wait to see a post down the road I have planned!

A surprise ending...

2009-07-31T12:49:00.001-04:00

Start watching at around 03:00 in, and then read the article.

See-Through, Light-Transmitting Concrete

2009-07-31T10:00:00.000-04:00

A pretty cool article about concrete embedded with optic fiber that allows light to be transmitted through it all. From dornob.com:

Concrete has a sometimes-bad reputation as a harsh, rigid, cold-to-the-touch and straight-edged material. Litracon is doing a great deal to change that image of concrete through a score of creative and sustainable applications for their patented light-transmitting concrete.

Filled with optical fibers that run from one end of a poured piece of concrete to the other, these prefabricated blocks and panels effectively transmit light from one side to the other. Colors and light remain remarkably consistent from end to end, but with a natural variation from the pouring process that actually softens the effects considerably.

The fibers can transmit light to over 50 feet and, as they occupy only a small percentage of the total concrete block or panel, they do not significantly effect the structural capabilities of the poured pieces.

One could imagine all kinds of artistic as well as functional applications for this new-and-improved form of concrete. Daylighting possibilities abound and all with potentially much lower heat loss and cost and with greater durability.

Perhaps best of all it puts another broad-ranging, highly versatile material choice in an architect’s or builder’s structural tool kit – what designers do with this solid-but-see-through substance ultimately will probably surprise us all.

The Ultimate Convertible

2009-07-30T12:00:00.000-04:00

A Russian pilot flying a jet without a glass canopy for a film (I wonder which one!). CRAZY! From English Russia:

Those photos are real and were made during the filming of the Russian movie involving jet fighter stunts. In one episode they had to film the jet without a canopy, so rather to film it on the ground they decided to hire a high-class pilot to make a real flight without that glass thing. He had to take off a few times on such plane in order to film enough material to be included in the final footage.

“The maximum speed I achieved on the jet plane without a canopy glass was around two times greater than speed of sound. While on this speed I even managed to pull out my fingers in glove for an inch or two outside - it became heated very fast because of immense friction force plane undergoes with the air.“, writes the pilot.

“Usually such tests were conducted in winter time, so it was deadly cold without a canopy and I was pretty glad when this heating began, counting minutes before the plane would reach enough speed/velocity so that the air around becomes hot enough. But it wasn’t the main problem for me. In my personal rating of the dangers connected with such tests one of the most bad sides was the extreme roar. Because of this extreme roaring you couldn’t hear the radio so you were flying in deaf mode, you were afraid to pull throttle harder just because going faster was meaning going louder.“, he continues.

Harry Potter in Russia

2009-07-30T10:00:00.001-04:00

Harry Potter's populartiy has sprung a lot of brazen imitators in Russia, as can be seen from this post from English Russia:

In Russia Harry Potter is popular too, in fact it was way too popular so some book publishing companies came up with their Harry Potter clones, trying to make it sound close to original even in naming the characters, so the most two popular ones were (and still are) the Porry Gatter with its first book “Porry Gatter and the Stoned Philosopher” - you can see it’s cover above, and the girlish series “Tanya Grotter” - like if Harry Potter was a girl (on the photo below).

Each series got a few sequels and got appreciated greatly by the readers.

Russian Helicopter Stunt

2009-07-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

If this is real footage, then the chopper pilot has real brass balls. Saw the original video at English Russia, but there aren't any other details there either.

Car Handstand Fail

2009-07-29T17:44:00.001-04:00

A guy tries to do a handstand on the trunk of his car after a running start.

Forrest Gump

2009-07-29T11:00:00.001-04:00

in one minute and in one take:

via Cynical-C.

Eccentricity

2009-07-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Someone at work called me "eccentric" the other day, so I guess this is what lies in my future.

The weird thing is -- I actually DO think this is kind of awesome, LOL.

Stephen Barnett’s Photographic Sculpture

2009-07-28T11:48:00.003-04:00

Stephen Barnett is showing his work at Papouli's (9 Hyatt Street) through until September 30, 2009. Stephen is an artist and a friend from Staten Island, so if you have some time, go show some love! Here is an example of his work, and the related press release:

25 Years: Photography and Sculpture Alike

Staten Island, New York: August 3, 2009 -Papouli’s, (9 Hyatt Street), is pleased to present Stephen Barnett’s quarter-century culminated thesis works of, Photographic Sculpture; which are manifestations of the symbiotic relationship between realism and formalism. These works play with the three-dimensional quality of a two-dimensional world. The exhibition will continue through until September 30, 2009.

This commemorative hallmark of Mr. Barnett’s work as an artist honors his perseverance in forging a new syntax into the language of visual art. These exhibited works represent his interpretation regarding, “the art of symbiosis; with nature and humanity both holding the familiarity that ultimately grounds the work,” said Mr. Barnett. “I begin with traditional Black and White film, processing, and printing of Silver-Gelatin Prints, which are the realist elements of the relationship. I then juxtapose the mounted and framed images with gestures of lattice-cut Poplar wood, then usually incorporate found objects, such as: rusted nails, bent wire, and hairpins. Occasionally, I will include a touch of color to draw a line or to highlight. These, ‘added materials,’ are the formalist elements, which spark a harmonized relationship between themselves and the traditional photographed images,” said Mr. Barnett. As a result, his work reminds us of the sentiment within the symbiotic relationship between Yin and Yang.

The project is made possible in part by a Staten Island Creative Communities Grant from the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island, and with public funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Some Tusk Art

2009-07-26T10:00:00.004-04:00

A collection of art carved from various types of tusks from an article in Magazine 13:

Great Creations Of Bento Food Art

2009-07-26T10:00:00.002-04:00

Pictures of Bento Boxes that have had their food more artistically arranged. From an article in Magazine 13:

Death of a Spider

2009-07-25T10:30:00.000-04:00

Opportunities for Art in Stalled Sites

2009-07-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

With many buildings slowed down or outright canceled by the economic downturn, there are a lot of vacant lots. Rather than leave these as scars in an urban context, some people have been proposing that they be used for interim art installations. One of these is a Sebastapol artist Ned Kahn who wants to turn an empty construction site at 535 Mission St. in San Francisco (one of the hardest hit markets for construction and development), now covered by gravel, into what he calls "Memory of Water" -- a lake bed of sorts, created by shimmering metal discs.

Kahn glimpsed the 535 Mission parcel, "the white field reminded me of Mono Lake ... what a cool opportunity to squander the better part of a city block on something useless but glimmering, for reasons of beauty and aesthetics."

This impulse translated into a scheme that would take the concave concrete seal on the excavated site and use it as the frame for what Kahn likens to "a trampoline for the wind, a soft and compliant surface."

Hooks along the perimeter of the cap would support a taut net of thin steel cables; that delicate grid in turn would brace a field of grainy metal discs that move independent of one another, the shimmer from a passing breeze likely to ripple across the rectangular lot.

The concept is distilled yet alive, one that if constructed would offer an ethereal counterpoint to the financial district swirl. And not just for pedestrians: "It'd be very entertaining for all the people in the buildings that look down" on the site, Kahn said. "There are a lot of eyes up there."

John Pugh's Trompe l'oeil Murals

2009-07-24T22:39:00.002-04:00

Some of these murals definitely fooled me! I particularly like the quote in the article that said firemen rushed to save the children from the wave before realizing it was a painting. That is verisimilitude! Taken from an article in The Daily Mail.
----------
At first glance, it looks as if some natural disaster has shaken away the walls of these buildings to reveal architecture hidden for thousands of years.
And at second and third glance, it looks like that too.
But these spectacular images are not the unexpected result of an earthquake.

Treasure trove: An Egyptian style mural adorns a wall in Los Gatos, California. Pugh paints people into the mural to heighten the 3D effect

Greek tragedy: But the Doric-style columns apparently exposed in this university hall are nothing but paint.

The incredibly lifelike scenes are actually huge works of art, painted on the side of perfectly intact buildings. Even that woman peering into the ruin above is not real.

The paintings, which have fooled many, were created by John Pugh, who specializes in trompe l'oeil - or 'trick of the eye' - art. He uses his skills to delude the viewer into seeing 3D scenes painted on flat surfaces. The Californian-born artist said: 'It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked.'

His works can been seen all over the world, including in the artist's home state. The 'earthquake' work shown here is located on Main Street in the town of Los Gatos and was created following a genuine earthquake in 1989. The temple-like interior apparently exposed features jaguar gods, regarded as the creators of earthquakes by the Mayans.

Wonder wave: John Pugh's Mana Nalu mural in Honolulu. Fire crews rushed to save the children from the mighty wave - before realizing it was an optical illusion

Blurring the lines: A mural entitled Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life, at the Cafe Trompe L'oeil, in San Jose, California

Another picture is of Taylor Hall at the California State University, Chico, where Pugh studied. The mural features Doric-style Greek columns behind the seemingly shattered wall and is called Academe.

Another work, featuring a colossal wave about to crash on to a pavement in Honolulu, Hawaii, took two months of studio work to plan and a further six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists. Queen Lili'uokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands with Duke Kahanamoku - the ultimate father of surf. The scene is so realistic that just as it was near completion, it attracted the attention of the fire brigade, which stopped its truck in the middle of traffic. Mr Pugh said: ''They jumped out to rescue the children in the mural. They got about 15 feet away and then doubled over laughing when they realized what it was.'

Having a cow: Valentine's Day, a mural unveiled during the Global Mural Conference in Twentynine Palms, California

Trick of the eye: John inserts a passer-by into the mural painted in Santa Cruz, California, entitled Bay in a Bottle, who is watching the ocean scene

Take a pew: This looks like a nice spot to rest your weary feet on a sidewalk in Sarasota County Health Center, Florida

Artist's impression: John Pugh hard at work. He is currently working on murals for a police station in California and a recreation centre in Calgary, Canada.

This is the desired effect and Pugh enjoys the community-bonding properties of his public works. He works on a large scale in public and residential areas and his paintings can be seen all over the world from New Zealand to Hawaii - with many telling a story of the area where they are positioned.

Pugh is used to people's amazed reactions when they pass his murals. He said: 'They say "wow did you see that. I thought that was real."

'Public art can link people together and stimulate a sense of pride within the community. These life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience. It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked.'

Pugh is currently working on a mural for a police station in California and also one for a recreation centre in Calgary, Canada.

Typography for Lawyers

2009-07-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

I have always enjoyed typography, and am a closet collector, and some times even a designer, of fonts. Typography for Lawyers is a great introduction to typography for those who have never really thought about how they construct their documents and how to improve relaying your message to your audience through something as simple as font choice and proper typography. It covers such ~~personal pet peeves~~ things as why no one should double space after periods anymore, why typing in all caps is bad and making that bold is worse, and many more. Highly recommended site for everyone, not just lawyers.

A Wedding Processional

2009-07-23T17:33:00.002-04:00

A video of a fun wedding processional (Chris and Jullie, take note!).

And the Award for Best Opening Page of a Novel

2009-07-17T22:47:00.001-04:00

goes to:

via Cynical-C and The Best Article Every Day.

A Home Cooked Meal for the Family

2009-07-14T00:23:00.007-04:00

Until now, my blog hasn't shown much of my deep interest in cooking. Those who know me, know that I love to eat as well as cook, and I wanted to share the menu, and some pictures of the meal I made for my family this past Sunday. I hope also to post more of my eating and cooking adventures here in the future.

Having traveled widely, and being fortunate enough to live in New York, I have experienced a great deal of good food, and from that I became interested in cooking early on. A few times a year, though less frequently in the last few years because I haven't had the facilities to do so, I come up with a gourmet meal that pushes my abilities to cook, plate and serve a meal that aims to come as close to a high end restaurant meal as possible.

In the past, these meals have ranged from parties with as many as 16 diners with lots of "flair" (custom hand made invites and menus, floral arrangements, specialized place settings, etc.) to something far more intimate like the one this past Sunday with just my nuclear New York family where the other restaurant trappings are discarded and the focus is solely on the food.

We started off with three small dishes, really each an hors d’oeuvres / amuse bouche. The first was a variation of a dish created by José Andrés of Zaytinya in Washington, DC called "Pinchitos de tomate con sandia 'Ferran Adria'” or "Tomato and Watermelon Skewers 'Ferran Adria'."

As the name of the recipe states, the dish was itself inspired by Andrés' mentor, Ferran Adria, the chef at El Bulli in Spain and a pioneer in the world of molecular gastronomy. I put the dressing for these skewers in plastic pipettes, so that my diners could squeeze it into their mouths after first getting an uninterupted taste of the watermelon and tomato "filets" (the gelatinous seed packets that were bursting with tomato flavor).

The skewers were followed by Panko Crusted Meatballs Stuffed with Foie Gras.

These tasty mouthfuls were quite a crowd pleaser, though they did not quite meet my standards in terms of execution and presentation. in the future, I need to increase the heat during frying so that less of the foie gras dissolves before it is cooked, and I might consider dipping the meatball into a second coat of panko. I would also prefer these be served on a skewer for easier handling. For a first try though, they turned out well enough.

The last of the amuse bouche was a dish called Bacon and Eggs, which is a surprisingly simple dish from Thomas Keller's French Laundry.

The dish is a simple mouthful of just a soft poached quail egg, some bacon, and a little brunoise (a micro-dice of carrots, turnips and leeks) all arranged on a spoon, and yet the taste is quite magical.

Another celebrity chef in the world of molecular gastronomy is Grant Achatz of the Chicago restaurant Alinea. I had the good fortune of dining there a couple of years ago, and it is a truly amazing experience which challenges a diner's very concept of how and what to eat to the edge. A more luxurious version of this soup, called Hot Potato Cold Potato, is served at Alinea where they have the ability to make the soup with a base of black truffle stock, and serve with a bit of black truffle, all arranged and served on custom made serving pieces.

I was unable to find fresh black truffle at several of the gourmet stores I went to when shopping for this meal (it's the Great Recession, stupid!), so I substituted a fresh Morel mushroom from Oregon instead. What is not clear from the picture is that the cold soup, a truffled mushroom and potato cream, is served with a hunk of black truffle butter which is under the cube of Parmasean cheese at the center of the photo. The hot potato spheres provide a surprising contrast in temperature for the diner.

Somewhat unusually, I chose to stick fairly closely to published recipes for this meal rather than come up with original recipes, in part because I had a limited amount of time to come up with my menu. However, the next course was something that I put together myself after refining the recipe from a dinner for my mother's friends in St. Petersburg, FL. This dish, Diver scallops with caramelized banana, bacon, thyme, smoked sea salt and grapefruit, is seen here before the final presentation was put together.

I have had a healthy interest in smoking things over the last few years, and one of the new toys that I came across recently is called The Smoking Gun made by a company called PolyScience. The compact handheld unit allows you to create a good quantity of smoke to apply directly to foods. I used the unit to add a bit of extra smokiness to this dish as well as a good deal of drama and diner interaction by pumping smoke into a glass dome (a.k.a. an inverted wine glass) that covered the scallop before serving.

I like the fact that the diner is presented with a dish that is at first shielded from full view by the shroud of smoke under the glass, then is treated to a burst of smoke for the senses when the uncover the dish to reveal what is inside, and finally gets to taste the flavor of the smoke as a part of the dish. As a personal recipe, the dish still requires a good deal more refining, but it was definitely coming closer to what I wanted. My uncle mentioned that this was like a genie in a bottle, which is an interesting idea for a name for the dish.

The next course was a Roulade of Duck Breast with Creamed White Sweet Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce, another French Laundry recipe, which I very much enjoyed. The photo shows the dish just before it was finished with a glaze and some black Hawai'ian sea salt.

The dish was simple in its ingredients, pleasing to the eye, and tasted fantastic, with lots of good contrast in flavors.

For the next course, I made a small portion of Seared Salmon with Salmon Skin Chicharon that was based on something I had tried well over a decade or more ago from Chef Michael Trama.

At this point, dinner was to continue with the final course, Porcini Encrusted Lamb, but even with the far smaller portions that I had prepared compared to what I would prepare for other parties, my diners were already quite satiated, so I skipped this course (more for me over the next few days!). It is interesting to note that our family, a family known for its great appetites, has matured and continues to winnow down portion sizes as we all are increasingly conscious of our health.

No meal would be complete without a salad, but rather than the normal leafy greens, I wanted to use it as a palate cleanser between the main course and dessert.

To that end I presented my guests with this frozen salad of spinach, romaine lettuce, and arugula with a sherry and walnut vinaigrette. This tart entre'act definitely cleansed the palate quickly, but also challenges everything you know and expect from a salad from its ice cold temperature, to it crunchy crystal texture.

To bring the meal to a close I served a Chocolate meringue cake with Rose Cream andRose Granitas.

In terms of presentation, this was the dish I was least happy with. The flavors in the dessert were astounding, but to me the dish needs some serious revamping to make it as pleasing to the eye as it was to the palate. In making the dish however, I did gain quite a bit of knowledge about what is possible with and how to handle chocolate couveture.

In making dessert I also encountered an interesting thing: Heavy Cream that fails to whip into whipped cream. After searching around the internet a little, apparently this is something that happens. There seems to be no real idea why this occasionally happens, though some posit that it happens more with ultra-pasteurized heavy cream. I checked the carton yesterday, and sure enough it was ultra-pasteurized, though that is not enough to convince me that that is the issue. The brand, Tuscan, is one I haven't used before for heavy cream, but it didn't look like there should have been an issue.

My guests enjoyed the meal, both in terms of taste, and in terms of being entertained by the novelty of many of the dishes. Watching them be entertained by the final preparation of the dishes in the kitchen and then enjoying the results at the table was a great reward for me, and made all the hard work definitely worth the while!

Tallinn City Hall

2009-07-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

Some pictures and text from various sources of the winner of the competition for the City Hall of Tallinn, Estonia, which I think looks pretty fantastic.

These images are from the Architechnophilia blog:

The Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) came to the design through the principle of rationalized organization with a focus on maximizing natural lighting by breaking up the building function into small blocks allowing courtyards to be created at various levels as well opening up the ground floor as an extension of the city.

These images from the AMNP Blog:

The cluster of volumes houses different administrative offices which interconnect to form atria and courtyard spaces that connect to more public plazas surrounding the structure.

From BIG: The design emphasizes openness, and connections with the surrounding city. Located within the tower/spire shown, the city council looks out onto the city and outdoor public spaces - while at the same time, those outside can get a glimpse at the inner workings or the city’s government. To give those inside, and out, a better/more interesting view, the ceiling of the tower is to be tiled with a reflective surface - creating a kind of ‘periscope’ effect. This gives the city council a reflection of the city overhead - maybe a constant reminder of who/what they’re working for - and possibly gives the average citizen the ability to look in on meetings as they’re taking place, as if looking over the shoulders of their representatives.

The SKIRA yearbook of architecture blog:

Web Site Story

2009-07-08T12:34:00.002-04:00

Bugatti Stratos by Bruno Delussu

2009-07-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

This design is just an exercise, and has no real hope at ever getting made, and has no affiliation with Bugatti, but Bruno Delussu was inspired by the Bugatti Type 57 and came up with this rather nice looking design:

Via Yanko Design.

Pneumatic Alarm Clock

2009-07-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

Some days, you need a little bit of help getting up from bed. This kid has the solution...

Actually, It thought it would be enough to just have something that shakes the bed vigorously, rather than pulls a WWF move on you, but hey.

Via Cynical-C.

Expansion of the Mosque at Mecca

2009-07-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

At the center of Mecca is the largest mosque in the world, Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, which is where the Kaaba (the most sacred site in Islam) resides and is the center of the Islamic world. This is the place that Muslims face to pray every day, and as a part of the core tenets of Islam, Muslims are required to visit this site at least once in their lives during the Hajj pilgrimage period. Because of this, the site sees up to 4 million people during the Hajj period every year, and is one of the largest annual gatherings of people in the world.

The continued growth of Islam creates a need for more space for increasing crowds, and this is the proposal for accomodating those crowds:

via Architechnophilia.

Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest

2009-07-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Hollywood Casino in Fountain Square district of Cincinnati held a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest with some stunning results.

Luckily, the judges were able to pick a winner who really did channel Marilyn's style:

From The Cincinnati Enquirer via Cynical-C.

Your House is Printing, Please Wait

2009-06-30T12:50:00.000-04:00

This is a picture of the Radiolaria pavilion, a complex, free-form structure produced using the world’s largest 3D printer. Measuring 3 x 3 x 3 metres, the structure is a scale model of a final 10-metre tall pavilion to be built in Pontedera, Italy, in 2010.

From Earth Architecture's blog post: The ultimate aim was to produce a geometry that could be self-supporting and demonstrate the capabilities of this innovative technology: being made of artificial sand-stone material and without any internal steel reinforcement the pavilion’s design and execution had to be intrinsically resilient to several static stresses.

The printing process takes place in a continuous work session: during the printing of each section a ‘structural ink’ is deposited by the printer’s nozzles on the sand. The solidification process takes 24 hours to complete. The new material (inorganic binder + sand or mineral dust) has been subjected to traction, compression and bending tests. The results have been extraordinary and the artificial sandstone features excellent resistance properties. Effectively this process returns any type of sand or mineral dust back to its original compact stone state. The binder transforms any kind of sand or marble dust into a stone-like material (i.e. a mineral with microcrystalline characteristics) with a resistance and traction superior to Portland cement, to a point where there is no need to use iron to reinforce the structure. This artificial stone is chemically one hundred percent environmentally friendly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So who knows, in a few years, you won't be living in a regular house, but one that is environmentally friendly, solid stone, printed to your specifications!

Don't be stupid with fireworks

2009-06-30T12:18:00.001-04:00

Happy Fourth of July everyone. Fireworks are illegal here in NYC, but I think that The Man has it wrong... instead of banning fireworks for people who can use them responsibly, it should be illegal to be stupid. It would prevent stuff like this:

FIREWORK NUTSHOT FAIL - Watch more Funny Videos

Facebook Manners

2009-06-30T10:30:00.000-04:00

An informative video on proper etiquette on Facebook:

Via SIREN.

Asagohan!

2009-06-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

A comical parody of Beethoven's iconic Fifth Symphony centered around Asagohan (breakfast):

The Portable Notebook BBQ Grill

2009-06-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

A super thin portable Barbecue grill:

From Coolest Gadget's review: Built like a folding chair, but with a handle like a briefcase, this Notebook grill is made of study metal and comes with a built in grill rack. Grillers simply unfold it, fill it with charcoal or wood, and light her up. And the Notebook grill if far better than those cheap temporary models made out of bakers aluminum which can be tossed away afterward, but are so fragile they bend out of shape - not to mention meat that sticks to the chicken wire style grill rack.

The Notebook Grill is a real grill that you can use over and over, and yet fold and put away in the back of the pickup truck. Cost is about $50 US from GadgetShop

With thanks to P. Reid.

Penn and Teller explain prestidigitation

2009-06-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

A great little video of the magicians Penn and Teller revealing how a sleight of hand works:

via Cynical C.

How to lose a customer

2009-06-26T17:47:00.001-04:00

Another in a series of poor customer service stories. This one is about Edible Blossoms in Saint John, New Brunswick.

I wanted to have one of those edible fruit arrangements that look like flowers sent to a friend who has been feeling unwell. Calling up the store, I found out that the person who was manning the store didn't know how to make the item advertised on their website that I was interested in, and that the person who did know wouldn't be in till Monday. Probing further, I found out that the person manning the store didn't even know that they had a website, and when I pressed on in the face of adversity by asking which arrangements they were able to do, the poor clerk said she was only trained in doing one arrangement and that she didn't know the name of it on the website so I would have no idea what I would be sending.

I would never, ever shop at that store ever and encourage everyone to stay away as well. This is not the clerk's fault, but the manager's. The idea that you would leave someone to man your business who is entirely incapable of fulfilling an order till three days later does not inspire any sort of confidence in the performance of your business. So, BOOOOOOO to Edible Arrangements in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

The King is Dead...

2009-06-26T11:56:00.001-04:00

Long live the King...

Music industry writer Bob Lefsetz on Michael Jackson (via Cynical-C and Boing Boing):

He missed his childhood and now he's gonna miss his old age. How fucked up is that? Michael Jackson never had a chance. He had to succeed for his family, his parents' dreams were dependent upon him. And a boy with that much pressure delivers. He works truly hard, so he will be loved. That's all Michael Jackson was looking for, love. He wanted to be accepted. Wanted to be so good that he couldn't be denied. But you can't change family history, and the public no longer treats you as human, as an equal, once you break through. People want to rip you off or tear you down, or shower you in faux love that's more about their unfulfilled desires than yours. It gets so confusing that you retreat.

-----

And if you have any doubt about the man's influence on culture, whether you like his music or not, whether you believe he was a pedophile or not, his death swamped Facebook, Twitter and other internet sites: "My Twitter search script sees roughly 15 percent of all posts on Twitter mentioning Michael Jackson. Never saw Iran or swine flu reach over 5 percent," observed Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Beckman Center for Internet & Society.

A MercuryNews.com report on Jackson's death soared near the top of Google News and brought four times the normal traffic to the site. Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin said user "status updates" on Facebook — typically a quick, short comment to a user's personal network of friends and acquaintances — were running at three times the usual pace in the hour after the news broke. Such updates "are still well above our usual numbers," she said after 5 p.m.

Michael Jackson's videos on his YouTube channel.

Resonant Frequencies in Action

2009-06-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

Resonance in helicopter testing is important, because it prevents this from happening in the air:

and from teh side:

The edited version of the Popular Science article by Michael Moyer explains what is happening:

Everything has a beat. A rhythm. A frequency at which it likes to shake. You can rock most objects off-beat for as long and hard as you like, and not much will happen but start to push and pull in time with the natural frequency—the “resonant” frequency—of the object in question, and it will quite literally start to fall apart.

Shaking things like bridges, skyscrapers or helicopters, at their resonant frequencies, and the back-and-forth motion spells trouble. Each push adds more and more energy to the object—energy that, if not dissipated, starts to wreak havoc. That’s what happens with our Chinook. The rotating blades begin to shake the airframe at its resonant frequency, and physics takes care of the rest: Because the blades are unable to dissipate the excess energy, the convulsions rend them from the fuselage.

Helicopters are prone to resonant effects, which is why the resonance ground testing (as seen in this video) is a standard part of chopper R&D. If both blades in a twin-rotor helicopter share the same heavy vibration and the engine mounts aren’t rock-solid, the energy generated can actually make the motors start moving around the engine mounts, and the next thing you know, that bird’s goose is cooked.

Thanks to P. Reid for forwarding this!

Under the Water at Hoover Dam

2009-06-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Pictures of the intake towers at Hoover Dam when they were building it. These towers are completely submerged now in Lake Meade. From the Deputydog article:

"Unfortunately most people don't realize just how tall and impressive these towers are due to the fact that they're always surrounded by deep water; water which has thankfully been held back in the reservoir and contained by the dam wall. The 4 towers are there to control the flow of water down and around the dam wall towards the powerhouse where that same water will eventually generate power. These towers are 395ft tall and in total 'contain 93,674 cubic yards of concrete and 15,299,604 pounds of steel'. Incredible statistics about a piece of the hoover dam which no-one is really able to appreciate."

As a side note (read "random thought"), the texture of the four towers here remind me a bit of the spires at Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia:

Y span bridge

2009-06-24T11:18:00.001-04:00

Also called a tridge, this is a bridge that has a fork in it, and connects three and masses instead of just two. From the Deputydog article:

The kikko bridge (亀甲橋, which I think translates as 'turtle bridge' but feel free to correct me), was built in 1991 and is a stress ribbon pedestrian bridge meaning there's no need for a support column beneath the middle point due to the decks being pulled taut by the three foundations. by the way, the building on the left in the first photo is the clubhouse at aoyama kohgen golf club and the bridge connects golfers to the holes on either side of the water.

Breakout and Matrix Ping Pong

2009-06-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

I think the Japanese are fascinated by these recreations of games done with people like this simulation of Breakout done with a guy eating marshmallows:

BREAKOUT EN MARSHMALLOW
by Dragonzaur

That reminds me of the Matrix style Ping Pong game that another TV station did (this is old, but apparently I never posted it here... I still love it though!):

Faces in the Sand

2009-06-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

A bunch of pretty cool faces in the sand, from a Woman's Day article:

Some of them make you wonder how they even stay up! See more pictures of sand sculptures from my previous post on Russian Sand Sculptures.

More Toothpick Sculpture Goodness

2009-06-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

I never knew that matchstick sculptures were so popular as an art form until I posted about them previously. After telling you about those sculptures in previous posts, I just came upon this article from The San Francisco Chronicle about Scott Weaver who started gluing toothpicks together around 34 years ago and started rolling ping pong balls around the results. Eventually, that would become his toothpick sculpture of San Francisco that he has spent about 3,000 hours (which is the equivalent of about 375 work days) creating in his living room
.

While the sculpture may be more abstract than those previously featured, I think its no less impressive or grand.

For all of my Sneaker Freak Friends

2009-06-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

While you eat your burgers for Father's Day, I thought I would provide you with this tasty morsel:

Combine your sneaker fetish with your need for burgery goodness! Happy Father's Day everyone!

Toy Train on a Superconductive track

2009-06-20T18:03:00.003-04:00

Even though this is only a toy, the principle would be the same for a regular full size train. I would think it works just like a Mag-Lev train, just more efficiently. Still it is very cool to see this in action.

For some reason it looks like a lot of fun to me to have something you can pour liquid nitrogen into using a little ladle.

A question for the masses who read the blog: Why does the superconductor "memorize" the height above the rail at the time it becomes supercoductive?

The Music of Wing and of Florence Foster Jenkins

2009-06-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

In line with today's musical theme, I have given you an interesting video, and an interesting instrument. I now present for your, uh, enjoyment the total destruction of your musical sensibilities and ear drums. Be warned.

Click here if you dare: http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/listen.html

This is a bit old, but I have had it in my "to post" archive for years, and I think it still deserves a place here. Incidentally, this lady is not the first to have made a career out of a rather, ahem, "special voice": Florence Foster Jenkins was well known for her rendition of The Queen of Night Aria from Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute.

Jenkins was incredibly popular, and sang in private venues until finally giving in to popular demand and, at the age of 76, performed at Carnegie Hall in 1944. The performance that tickets for the event sold out weeks in advance.

Jenkins spawned an off Broadway musical, called Souvenir, that eventually played on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony award. Who knows? Maybe Wing will achieve that kind of infamy in the years to come.

Now that I have thoroughly damaged your ear drums, I leave you with a proper recording of The Queen of Night Aria:

Self Playing Violin

2009-06-18T10:30:00.000-04:00

The dream of a violin that can play itself has tantalized inventors for over a century. Now, modern technology has made the dream a reality – and without the use of digitally sampled sounds! Piano accompaniment can be derived from any midi source, but using Pianomation to play genuine acoustic accompaniment provides today’s ultimate listening experience in automatic music. The package includes Chili pianomation controller, Black display cabinet, and 40 watt Acoustic Research Speaker.

via http://blogofwishes.com/462/gulbransen-virtuoso-violin/

Wonderful Interactive Music Video

2009-06-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

An interactive music video from a Spanish group called Labuat that lets you control a calligraphic line as you wish through the video. The effect is very lyrical, and there are pre-programmed "events" along the way that add a lot of visual detail. The song is called “Soy Tu Aire” (“I’m Your Air”) and is in itself quite nice.

Via my friend Jeff Schwartz!

Sauron Searches for the Ring...

2009-06-17T10:30:00.000-04:00

Actually, just a pretty dang amazing picture by Larry Keller, featured on National Geographic's website.

Synchronized Jump Roping

2009-06-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

An awesome halftime show at a US Naval Academy game, performed by The Kings Firecrackers using skip rope. The video is a bit long, and the real action starts around 4:25, but worth watching all the way through:

Garden Visit

2009-06-16T10:36:00.002-04:00

GardenVisit.com is a nifty site that helps you locate and find gardens that are worth visiting.

Organic Homes

2009-06-15T11:06:00.000-04:00

Three reposts from Dornob.com about organic curves and natural materials in architecture.

Good things come to those who wait - particularly in a work of uniquely detailed and highly curved architecture. Nearly a decade in the making, this structure by Robert Harvey Oshatz is much like a tree house - lofted toward the top of the canopy around it - only bigger, grander, more complex and curved than most any tree house in the world.

The perimeter of the structure is pushed out into the forest around it, curving in and out to create views as well as a sense of intimacy with the coniferous and deciduous tree cover. The wood and metal detailing is incredible in its variety and customization - each piece designed to fit a particular form and function. Wood and stone carry naturalistic themes from the outside in and even the metal looks naturally rusted.

The curved, organic mix of materials continues to the interior of this elevated forest home - a conceptual play on the fluidity and complexity of music (the source of inspiration for the architect and client in the design). A sense of organic flow carries one from one interior space to the next.

Complexity and contradiction tefine this semi-abstract, semi-modern, semi-naturalistic house design - one form flows into the next, materials are used and reused in various parts and ways and structural and decorative elements continuously pass by and intersect one another, inside and out.

The second post, is about a curvaceous cabin:

Spooky does not quite cover this incredibly curved wooden house in the forest. The so-called “accordion house” is more than just an aesthetic marvel, it is an off-the-grid green building that is solar powered and sustainably designed. Not enough?

OK, it also has a piece that accordions out over an adjacent river.

What started out as a stream-side fishing shack could not be built out, according to local regulations, more than a few hundred square feet - hence the strange amorphous design and ability to extend itself. When they are away they can retract the room (on steel rails with ropes and pulleys) and keep within the restrictions placed on them.

The natural wood exterior will slowly fade to gray and blend even more with the urroundings. Aside from that, its lack of running water, external power or phone lines already makes it seem like a part of nature. All in all, it is an architecturally creative solution that takes into account all kinds of local, regional and global problems.

The last repost is about
Bart Prince, who has oragnic and curvaeous forms but a style the defies easy definitions and ranges wildy acropss aesthetics:

Bart Prince is a very hard architect to pin down - and he prefers it that way. While some contemporary all-star architectural designers like Frank Gehry are known for signature styles and materials, Prince prefers to be inspired to create unique solutions for each site and situation.

In discussion with Dornob, he noted that one of the highest forms of praise one can receive is when someone tells you they recognized something as your design because it looked unlike anything you have done to date. His inspirations include such ground-breaking architects as Antoni Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff - designers who diverged from the mainstream styles of their times.

Looking at just a few works by Bart Prince can easily be misleading. One might take a snapshot from his career and be tempted to say they have figured him out, that he is “about curves” or “into strange forms” but around each corner is another work that is unlike any other. Also, he is not just inspired by architects but by scientists (including Einstein) and artists (such as Pablo Picasso) as well.

Unlike some architects who experiment with extreme exterior forms, Bart Prince also carries his complex and fluid geometries to the interio designs of his structures. The buildings are at once varied and whole - they are complex objects and confluences of elements but also clearly a single, coherent design.

From his website: “Architecture comes about as a result of the synthesizing by the architect of creative responses to input from the client; data gathered from the site and the climate; and an understanding of structure, materials, space and light. Working from the inside-out, the architect guides the growth of an IDEA resulting from the combination of these responses to a completed design which is as much a portrait of the client as it may be of himself.”

A Unique Curved Modern House

2009-06-15T10:30:00.001-04:00

Following our architectural theme for the day, here is a repost from Dornob.com:

It is a rare building design that manages to appear at once contextual and completely alienated from its surroundings. The curves of this unique house by J. Mayer H. Architects bleed out from its edges and flow into the landscape around it, yet the division of artificial and natural remains quite clear save for the ambiguous boundary of the landscaped yard.

The attention to volume, curves and fluidity extends from the exterior of the house to its interior spaces that seem carved out of a single solid substance and morph from one room into the next like a series of caverns. The shell of the structure is pierced by likewise curved openings that frame incredible views of the adjacent and distant natural and residential areas.

moving back to the outside, it is clear that there is an overall logic and rhythm governing the structure as it relates to the land on which it sits - namely, that it pushes out in all directions and moves both with and against the hill it rests on. The real accomplishment of this house design lies not in its purely aesthetic qualities but in the complex ways in which it relates to its environment and seeks a balance between being on independent object building and part of its site and surroundings.