Menu Mind Games

"In his new book, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), author William Poundstone dissects the marketing tricks built into menus—for example, how something as simple as typography can drive you toward or away from that $39 steak."

Read more: Author William Poundstone Dissects the Marketing Tricks Built Into Balthazar's Menu -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/62498/#ixzz0bzT6uVIq

Flying High

"Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punsihment of the innocent?"

Article here.

Merry Christmas

"There's always someone somewhere with a big nose who knows..."

This applicable-on-so-many-levels excerpt is taken from an article by Jonathon Lethrem in which he diagnoses the appropriation, conscious or unconscious, of ideas from literature, music, or art by and for the works of other writers, musicians, and artists.

Active reading is an impertinent raid on the literary preserve. Readers are like nomads, poaching their way across fields they do not own—artists are no more able to control the imaginations of their audiences than the culture industry is able to control second uses of its artifacts. In the children's classic The Velveteen Rabbit, the old Skin Horse offers the Rabbit a lecture on the practice of textual poaching. The value of a new toy lies not it its material qualities (not “having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle”), the Skin Horse explains, but rather in how the toy is used. “Real isn't how you are made. . . . It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” The Rabbit is fearful, recognizing that consumer goods don't become “real” without being actively reworked: “Does it hurt?” Reassuring him, the Skin Horse says: “It doesn't happen all at once. . . . You become. It takes a long time. . . . Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.” Seen from the perspective of the toymaker, the Velveteen Rabbit's loose joints and missing eyes represent vandalism, signs of misuse and rough treatment; for others, these are marks of its loving use.

Read The ecstasy of influence: A Plagiarism by Jonathon Lethem

“35. I.e., presumably, ‘of-George-Cantor,’ Cantor being the 1900s-era set theorist (German also) and more or less founder of transfinite mathematics, the man who proved some infinities were bigger than other infinities, and whose 1905-ish Diagonal Proof demonstrated that there can be an infinity of things between any two things no matter how close together the two things are, which D. Proof deeply informed Dr. J. Incandenza’s sense of the transstatistical aesthetics of serious tennis.”
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 994.

“…that there can be an infinity of things between any two things no matter how close together the two things are.” So, it’s been transfinite mathematics all along and not just boiler plate interpersonal distrust that has impressed itself upon me over the years. Deprecating joking aside, the philosophical implications of Cantorian infinities, even on the most rudimentary levels that a mathematical clod like me can envision, are thought –provoking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

I pulled out this album for the first time in a long time the other night and came across this video for the first time. There is a peculiar quality about the puppet that saves the video from being mere gratuitous artistic creepiness, though there is an element of that, or abstraction--the incongruity of a detached yet confused puppet singing to the backdrop of an unfolding tragedy--and rather elicits an investment on some level in the video while you're watching it, which is a lot more than most videos do. Doesn’t hurt that the song is good too.

Walter Inglis Anderson

Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Walter Anderson

Dan St. Paul: The First Baseball Game

To the road
Through the broken roads, trusty road
I was headed for the road
The road that runs that way

"Brasilia Crossed with Trenton," Workbook, Bob Mould

10 Weirdest Animal Friendships

saturday night stanza

The Black Chair

Sit in the black chair like a space monkey,
The terminal twinkle of whose eye hints:
Logic has not failed you. You have failed you.
And you bind your primate digits in splints,
Strangling, entangling prospect like kudzu,
And listen for the steps of the turnkey

While the sparrow’s darting need
Until now a hopeful prayer,
Is spare in the fluttering bright glare.
Consider its refrain:
The rustling strain.
Tamely there, but in singular care
Endeavoring to prepare—
Moderate, while you exceed.

B.M.F.
11.21.09

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."

"In truth, Fitzgerald never mastered the craft of the screenwriting, and in the tense, sink or swim factory atmosphere in which studio screenwriters labored, the master novelist’s confidence level was further undermined. Most authors idealize themselves as romantic artists. But the best, most productive screenwriters—then as now—understand that they are well-paid craftsmen working in collaboration with scores of highly talented people. Sadly, Fitzgerald never came to grips with the rigid studio system, established by Irving G. Thalberg, in which the producer was the final authority."

More here.

"This is not at all a matter of the usual stupid refusal of the FBI and other security services to understand an early warning even when they have detected one. It is a direct challenge to the unity and integrity of the armed services, which have been one of our society's principal organs and engines of ethnic and religious integration. A U.S. soldier who wonders about the reliability of his, let alone her, Muslim colleague is not being "Islamophobic." (A phobia is an irrational or uncontrollable fear.) If Maj. Hasan has made this understandable worry in the ranks more widespread, he has done his fanatical preacher friend the greatest possible service. But that's his fault for doing what he did, and his superiors' fault for letting him openly rehearse it for so long, not mine for pointing it out."

Continue reading here.

...and that reminded me of this song..

The Lyre Bird

The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock

Read more at Overthinking It.

Interview with Cormac McCarthy

Read the interview here.

If you've not read Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West (and you should,) you can sample it here. The ancient Greeks believed the gates of Hades lay in the west, (which is why one faces west when renouncing Satan in the Orthodox Church,) and McCarthy ushers us to those gates to glimpse inside them.

Bug Wears Armor Made of Poo

I should like to have mandibles to cut through the daily fecal matter.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33857935/ns/technology_and_science-science/

"We all hug together and see where we come out," [Reid] answered.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102602782_2.html?nav=hcmodule&sid=ST2009102603450

Harry Reid wears magic underwear too. Probably.

Race To Divisiveness

“What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshiped “false gods.” He did not need to know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtoreth, and the like; probably the less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah; he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods.”
--George Orwell, 1984

Whether you like, despise or are impartial to Rush Limbaugh, the latest effort, headed by the two leading blacksploitation flimflammers, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, to excoriate and crucify Limbaugh as a racist based on things he did not say is troubling. Like the Party member in the above quote from George Orwell’s 1984, Sharpton, Jackson and their ilk need no longer be bothered with facts or consideration of other points of view. Their personal orthodoxy trumps fact. And perhaps more importantly, their ravings get ratings.


If the Sharptons and Jacksons were marginalized by rational and civil society, like the KKK is for example, their fallacious rabble-rousing could be, if not silenced, dismissed as the ranting of malcontents. But, bafflingly, they are not marginalized. They run for the office of the President of the United States. They are sought after as honest pundits and their contaminated opinions are given credence by the media. They host Saturday Night Live. They yuck it up on the talk show circuit. They counsel the President of the United States.


The New York Times on Al Sharpton:


Mr. Sharpton is best-known for the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which he insisted that a 15-year-old black girl had been abducted and raped by a band of white men practicing Irish Republican Army rituals. In fact she had made up the story to protect herself from her violent stepfather.


But at Freddy's, Mr. Sharpton was even more malevolent. He turned a landlord-tenant dispute between the Jewish owner of Freddy's and a black subtenant into a theater of hatred. Picketers from Mr. Sharpton's National Action Network, sometimes joined by "the Rev." himself, marched daily outside the store, screaming about "bloodsucking Jews" and "Jew bastards" and threatening to burn the building down.


After weeks of increasingly violent rhetoric, one of the protesters, Roland Smith, took Mr. Sharpton's words about ousting the "white interloper" to heart. He ran into the store shouting, "It's on!" He shot and wounded three whites and a Pakistani, whom he apparently mistook for a Jew. Then he set the fire, which killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and one African-American--a security guard whom protesters had taunted as a "cracker lover." Smith then fatally shot himself.


Eight people died, and so evidently did the conscience of liberal Democrats. It was Al Sharpton who had the honor of asking the first question at last week's debate, held within hailing distance of the Freddy's massacre.


And he has the audacity to speak of a “moral victory for America?” This sweat-suited standing joke makes it to the podium of a Presidential debate with the privilege of asking the first question with hardly any reproach from the media? In this case of attacking Rush Limbaugh based on fabricated comments, his continued influence on public discourse and opinion is outrageous and says something very bad about where this country, supposedly in the post-racial era of Obama, is on the matter of race.


Writing about the Tawana Brawley controversy, a Daily Kos writer recalled “one professor earnestly telling me that even if Tawana’s story was false, it was still a crime because it represented the “mythic” truth of what had been done to African American women in America.” How does one begin to debate such a ridiculous position? And I hear arguments approaching this sort of senselessness made all the time on news programs, talk shows, and in print. Worse, such views are usually validated by virtue of a squirming accommodation or complacency.


Organizer of the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Jackson referred to the current POTUS as a “n____” and said he wanted to cut his “nuts off.” He has said that “Zionism is a kind of poisonous weed that is choking Judaism” and that he is “sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust.” In an interview with a Washington Post reporter, the mumbling, identity politics self-promoter Jackson called Jews “Hymies” and referred to New York City as “Hymietown.”



Why is this bigot and adulterer given the platform and air time to lecture the rest of us on race and morality?


So. Free speech is a right for black activists, scholars, and any and all minorities but not white radio show hosts (Don Imus, Limbaugh) or the rest of us? And this is not an isolated incident. Like ambulance chasers looking for a rainmaker, Jackson and Sharpton have a history of rushing to prove racism even where there isn’t any, like the Duke Rape Case. It’s good for business and a week’s worth of TV appearances, which only further legitimize the two provocateurs in the public realm.


Political correctness, identity politics, multiculturalism, and relativism—with a dash of white guilt or the fear of being labeled a racist—have bullied otherwise rational people into timid reticence. They know that even bringing up the hypocrisy in modern race relations is likely to end with a browbeating of accusations by the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, or maybe a college hipster just out of a women’s or black studies course. Because no matter your intention or context (or whether you even said anything at all as in the case of Limbaugh,) you can find yourself a “white interloper” in a second then made to defend yourself against a mere accusation. It’s a pretty sweet deal Jackson and Sharpton have worked out for themselves: exploit or attack whatever, whoever, whenever and if questioned in any way, which is rare, cry “racist!” Unfortunately, this witch hunting tactic is now main stream. This tactic has seeped into our schools, board rooms, sports, beauty pageants, play grounds, and so on and so forth.


I believe everyone is prejudiced to some degree, however slight. I don’t believe this implies racism. Most people like and get along with most people, regardless of race, most of the time but Jackson and Sharpton don’t promote but undermine the decent civility that exists in most Americans’ day to day interactions. Their hypocrisy is not “honest dialogue.” It’s petrifying—it hardens natural civility into cold suspicion and needlessly foments defensiveness.


Their newsworthiness is perhaps more disturbing.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm
http://slate.msn.com/id/2087557
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004192
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/24/14519/262/634/641103

ACT 1's The Mikado was listed as the "Best Community Theater Production" in The Nashville Scene's Best of Nashville 2009

"Best Community Theater Production:
ACT 1's The Mikado
This one came as somewhat of a surprise. In truth, in the comparative history of Gilbert & Sullivan, the ACT 1 production was fairly lo-tech in all respects. But director Bob Fish made strong casting choices with the likes of James Rudolph, Daniel Sadler and Whitney Rose Cone. Meanwhile, the show was infused with a wry spirit and benefited from a giddy ensemble feel that evinced consistent warmth and laughter. MARTIN BRADY"

http://www.nashvillescene.com/2009-10-15/news/best-of-nashville-2009-arts-and-entertainment/4

I'm proud to have been a part of this!

Chelsea Said To Put This In My Ear

I did and I do and I like it.

Ladyhawk: "I Don't Always Know What You're Saying." Shots.

(Thanks Chelsea. And this makes up for kidnapping and holding my mixer for ransom.)

Funny Roller Coaster Photos

10 Most Fascinating Dogs

By way of Atlas Obscura.

International Philosophy Germany vs. Greece

A Few Favorites from the Georgia O'keeffe and Her Times Exhibit

Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Times

American Modernism from the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

October 2, 2009–January 31, 2010

Showing at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts

Walter Tandy Murch

Lock

From the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

(probably my favorite of the exhibition)

Hyman Bloom

Female Corpse, Back View

From the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

(While not remotely doing the painting justice, this picture, the only color copy I could find on cursory search of the web, gives the sense of it.)

Marsden Hartley

The Hill

From the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Sociopath Dr. Daniel E. McBrayer

As disturbing as the road rage incident is (the back story is that a mother with her children in the car stopping for a yellow light provoked this psychopath’s road rage,) even more disturbing is the relative slap on the wrist he received from the Georgia State Board of Medical Examiners office for performing illegal second-trimester abortions and failing to file certificates of abortions as required by Georgia law. After this and the multiple medical violations, his medical license should be aborted. Sounds like the kind of preferential treatment the average Joe wouldn't get.

(full story here.)

The Road to the Nobel Peace Prize is Paved with Good Intentions

Just when I think it can't get any crazier and arbitrary, the topsy-turvy absurdist quality of not only the U.S. but world politics continues to astound me.

Obama:

1. ,like it or not, is a war President. He’s sent 17,000 troops to Afghanistan so far and is contemplating sending another 40,000. Lives continue to be lost in Iraq, a confrontation with Iran looms.
2. He didn’t close Guantanamo Bay (a good move in my estimation) like he promised he would.
3. He hasn’t resolved, much less ameliorated, the Mid-East dispute, or for that matter, any other territorial disputes throughout the world.
4. As SNL cautiously pointed out what should be obvious to most, he really has done….nothing.

Guess it’s not really surprising when the likes of Arafat can win. The road to the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed paved with good intentions.

Code Pink Rethinks Call For U.S. Troops To Withdraw From Afghanistan

The cantankerous Russian Tolstoy advised "to regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness and avoid it as much as possible," advice I don't wholly agree with, except in the case of the frivolous coven of yelping, hysterical protesters, Code Pink.

Full article at the Los Angeles Times.

And a perfect excuse to re-post one of my favorites:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Marines in Berkeley
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

I'm Keen To Find Out What This Is

Evolving 2010 New Year's Resolutions:

1. Quit smoking again.
2. Discover nature of the Smoke Monster.

Southern Festival of Books

The Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word is a three-day literary Festival celebrated each year during the second full weekend of October. It is free and open to the public. No advance registration or tickets are required. All seating is on a first-come basis.

The Festival annually welcomes more than 200 authors from throughout the nation and in every genre for readings, panel discussions and book signings. Book lovers have the opportunity to hear from and meet some of America's foremost writers in fiction, history, mystery, food, biography, travel, poetry and children's literature among others.

(Read more here.)

Looking forward to a great weekend of fall weather and attending some good lectures!

Another Lurch Towards the Lowest Common Denominator

My misanthropy just glowed a little brighter.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/10/07/2009-10-07_levi_johnston_is_working_out_six_days_a_week_to_prepare_for_playgirl_shoot.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/06/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5366392.shtml

No doubt this low talent douche will have is own TV show in no time but we'll have to hear about him to our ears bleed until then.

Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Adams and a lot of other pointy-headed philosophers (I tend to like pointy-headed philosophers) predicted an "engulfing mediocrity" that would emerge out of the democratic notion of equality, that the lowest common denominator, armed with equality, would slowly drag down society to its bootless, unimaginative level of stupefaction in which half-wits are celebritized to sell us nuts.

Obama Appointee Lauded NAMBLA Figure

Okay. So it's understandable that a President cannot vet every appointee that is made in his White House, but..come on! This is an Assistant Deputy Secretary position.

Why is an orginization like NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) even in existence? Oh right...because of activist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, who will rush to protect NAMBLA but fight things like this.

Real Plastic People

Perhaps I have a weaker constitution than I like to imagine, but in the first few moments of entering Bodies: The Exhibition, which I visited last weekend, I had to fight a growing unease and slight nausea as I gazed upon the actual smooth and striated muscles and ligaments and guts and connective tissue and circulatory system of a formerly living man. There was no instinctive reflex to recoil yet a deep notion, however subtle, that I had turned a corner to find some act of desecration in progress had to be suppressed at first. And so it was and rather quickly too as the fascination with seeing the intricacies of a human body, in all its detail, began to take over, with each new display even more fascinating than the last. The exposed central nervous system and the displays on the upper and lower body circulatory systems were marvelous equally in the delicate detail of their functionality and the precise chemical and manual disassembly of something as complex and compacted as the seemingly innumerable portions of the human body.

Literally face to face with such a succession of remarkable dissection, one, at least I did, tends to neglect the fact that one is, for intellectual pleasure, casually examining a corpse who once had similar sensations, aspiration, anxieties, etc. that many of us touring the exhibition might have today. For me, this contemplation came not during the tour but afterwards.

There was among scholars and philosophers in the period of the Industrial Revolution and burgeoning scientific discoveries a precautionary belief in “the catastrophic influence science would exert upon the twentieth-century mind and society.” That a value-free science would ultimately diminish the human spirit even while it ostensibly improved, not taking into account its negative applications, such as militarized ones, our overall quality of life. And while the educational experience of Bodies: The Exhibition is undeniably illuminating and thought provoking, there persists for me a nagging, muted impression that perhaps, in this age of DNA manipulation and cloning potential and the like, value-free science is tinkering with fundamental mysteries that are better left undisturbed, or that at the very least should be respected in relation to scientific progress, if that's even possible. That there exists a slow corruption of the higher planes of human spirituality at the hands of a science so now mingled with materialism and commercialism is debatable, but the plastination, so to speak, of our society is in many regards a foregone conclusion, and we obscure the human element, such as maybe knowing a bit about these people who consigned their bodies to research and ultimately our amusement, if not at our peril, our diminishment.

Jack Webb Schools Roman On His Penchant for "Young Women."

Thanks Andy.

Give It A Rest

David—

You are not this important. Please. Shut the f___ up. Or retire.

Other than maybe the initial titillation of schadenfreude, no one (well, except for Regina maybe) really cares who you did or didn’t do or how much patching up you have to do with the wife or what a hard row it is to hoe that you’ve made for yourself. I especially don’t care.

In recent years, you’ve become quite humorless and more of a self-righteous scold. I haven’t watched you steadily in years except to zip through a DVR recording to the catch the musical act for that night (you always had good alternative/indie/whatever-they’re-calling-it-now talent on. Thanks for that at least.)

What with you pining away indiscreetly on your bully pulpit of a nightly national show about your past indiscretions or political rants, usually wrong by the way, along with some other favorite artists of mine (Scorsese & the Coen Brothers for starters) having come to the defense of the indefensible Polanski, my pop culture landscape is thinning faster than a Yosemite timberline just before 1890.. But that’s been the case for a while as you guys increasingly forget that you’re first and foremost entertainers and not statesmen or ambassadors or political scientists or self-help gurus.

What I really want to say to you is that in the end people, if they’re brutally honest, don’t really care if you live or die, much less if you’re having marital and/or extortion problems—we’ve all got enough of our own problems to deal with. Your contrition is just a sensational diversion that will be forgotten the moment Brittany changes her hair color or Jon and Kate do whatever the hell it is they do that captivates so many semi-retarded, cow-eyed viewers . So cut to commercial, wipe away the tears and smug self-pity, grab your nut sack, remember what John Wayne said (“Never apologize and never explain.”) and do your show if you’re going to do it but quit whining, repenting, and moralizing. Save it for Barbara Walters or Oprah. Try being funny again instead. Asshole.

-B-

PS Please forward this letter along to the following Public Apologizers, Weepers, Sentimentalists, Sensationalists:

Governor Mark Sanford
Don Imus
Barbara Walters
Kanye West
Jimmy Swaggart
Obama
Oprah
President Clinton
Jim and Tammy Faye
Senator Trent Lott
Jimmy Carter
Kobe Bryant
Jesse Jackson
Hugh Grant
Senator John Edwards
And any others who were either badgered into unwarranted public apologies by the Thought Police or did so unnecessarily out of guilt or shame.

I'm a yearly participant in The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's yearly Neighborhood Drive, which provides important funds for life-saving research.

Today, thanks to all the donations, 87% of children with the most common form of leukemia will be cured. But leukemia and blood cancers continue to take countless lives--children and adults--every year. That's why we still need to do more.

In this economic climate, a lot of us are living thriftily, but if you can spare a donation of $5, $15, or even $25, your generosity will be much appreciated and go towards funding vital research.

You can give with confidence knowing that when you give to LLS that more than 74% of total donations go to patient services, research, and education.

Go here to donate. Thanks!

These Days

An old friend who sent a shared Lifes Rich Pageant favorite track earlier got me going down this road. Though my politics have changed since ’86—if, in fact, I can even say I had a well-informed political perspective then, it was being birthed, more reactionary and emotive rebelliousness than anything—and I don’t take long night drives with friends through the country with the windows down with beer or vodka and a fistful of favorite cassettes in Bill’s Rabbit or my Ford Falcon, and I haven’t really liked much of R.E.M’s since Green, and I’ve regrettably misplaced my huge Chronic Town poster that hung on my bedroom wall in high school in all my moves since college, and I sold my surf board a long time ago and don’t know the lyrics to every song of every album I buy like I used to, and I'm having to stop all the bad habits I started back then, this song still speaks to me at the gut-level and invokes a spirit of enthusiastic and untarnished individualism that fades, not lost but obscured, with age to come and reconstitute itself and turn the volume up.

Thanks for the afternoon memory of good times, Bill.



"These Days," from the album Lifes Rich Pageant by R.E.M.

Reassemble the Resistance

more: wiki and here.

A Re-Educating Anniversary?

Using an iconic American symbol to honor the regime of one of the world’s most egregious human rights violators who votes on average 84.5% against the U.S. in the United Nations and is unapolegetically institutionally anti-American? (Not that China is beholden to be anything other than what it wants to be; however, that doesn't mean we are required to celebrate it despite the pull of the multicultural and relativistic forces to do so.)

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18432

Does no one remember this? Or does our massive, ever-increasing indebtedness to China override principal? REEDIT: Dang it. I meant "principle"...I always do that.

Sunday Afternoon Soundtrack

It's been a while since I listend to this excellent album, so, I'll listen to it two times.

I always associated massage chair pads with sedentary Ignatius J. Reilly or Comic Book Guy types, but I made an impulse purchase Friday night and bought one of these and it kicks ass. Going to need to upgrade my Netflix subscription for more tv time now. Shiatsu blogging ain't bad.

A New Literary History of America

"In snapshots of a few thousand words each, the entries in "A New Literary History" put on display the exploring, tinkering and risk-taking that have contributed to the invention of America. Many of them capture formative literary moments: the poet Anne Bradstreet (1612-72) seeing the landscape of Massachusetts for the first time; Hawthorne and Melville talking shop in a cave after a storm interrupted their Berkshire trek; Ralph Ellison hearing a barroom story about a black man who could make himself invisible; the New York poet Frank O'Hara taking a job selling tickets at the Museum of Modern Art.

But nearly as many of the essays are about formative moments in a culture that you wouldn't usually think of as literary. Some of these episodes are as central to American history as Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address or Martin Luther King's stint in a Birmingham jail. But others are less obvious cultural waypoints: Alexander Graham Bell and his brother agreeing to communicate with each other after death; Henry Ford meeting the politically radical painter Diego Rivera; Bill W. joining an alcoholic proctologist and convening what amounted to the first AA meeting."

(continue reading here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574427212465532566.html )

Activism by Mr. Fish

Would ObamaCare Cover Sticker-Shock Treatment

Life-Size Mouse Trap Game at Maker Faire

This is awesome!



Make Magazine

Jimmy Carter, National Scold

The preposterous, unfounded proclamation by self-appointed National Scold and thorn-in-the-side of all subsequent administrations (research the acrimony between Clinton and Carter,) former President Carter, that any opposition to President Obama's policies is based in racism is so far beyond the pale it lies in bleak blackness. No reflected rays of reason there. Prove it, Jimmy. Worse, some Democrats support the abominable innuendo aimed, unfairly (and maliciously), at a defenseless "overwhelming portion" of America.

Great Ad. I want one of these crayola figurines. What a cool concept...

The Post-Racial World of Barack Obama?

Really???

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny (political correctness) sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”—C.S. Lewis

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.”—Thomas Jefferson



Microsoft apologized Tuesday for using photo editing techniques to change the race of a person depicted on the company’s Web site.

In a photo on the company’s U.S. Web site, three businesspeople–one black, one white and one Asian are shown as part of a pitch for Microsoft’s business productivity software. In the same photo on the site of Microsoft’s Polish subsidiary, a white head is placed over the black person’s body, although the hand is not changed.

The move sparked controversy after it was noticed, quickly making the rounds on Twitter and various Web sites.

“We are looking into the details of this situation,” a Microsoft representative told CNET News. “We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image” from the Polish site. Microsoft also apologized on its corporate Twitter feed.


Why apologize? Forget that the basic purpose of adverstising is to induce a particluar market and that advertising is often tailored to a specific market. It's their campagin to do with what they want.

A Round of Applause for Monkey-Jockey

(thanks Tobey)

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

(boingboing from bowloftoast)

Paracelsus' Alphabet of the Magi

The Alphabet of the Magi was invented by Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (also known as Paracelsus) in the 16th century. He used it to engrave the names of angels on talismans which he claimed could treat illnesses and provide protection. It was probably influenced by the various other magical alphabets that were around at the time and also by the Hebrew script.

Paracelsus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

(click to enlarge)

See more Mr. Fish here: http://www.harpers.org/subjects/MrFishCartoons

Fantasy Book Cover Elements

(click on image to enlarge)

From www.harpers.org

"Amusing Ourselves to Death."

Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell

(click on image to enlarge) or link here: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html

My husband and I were exploring Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park-Canada when we stopped for a timed picture of the two of us. We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intriqued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot! A once in a lifetime moment! We were laughing about this little guy for days!!

(from nationalgeographic.com)