Daydreaming is important business (13)
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Jonah Lerher on daydreaming and the human brain's default network. Creativity, especially with regard to children, might be stifled by too little daydreaming and too much television. After monitoring the daily schedule of the children for several months, Belton came to the conclusion that their lack of imagination was, at least in part, caused by the absence of "empty time," or periods without any activity or sensory stimulation. She noticed that as soon as these ...
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Alana said:
Check the "about me" section on my FB profile, heh ;)
Ebert, how to read movies (8)
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Roger Ebert talks about how to read a movie. This all began for me in about 1969, when I started teaching a film class in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts program. I knew a Chicago film critic, teacher and booker named John West, who lived in a wondrous apartment filled with film prints, projectors, books, posters and stills. "You know how football coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to study game films?" he asked ...
Great arts videos (8)
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A list of fifty great arts video available on YouTube, including Joy Division playing on Grenada Television in 1978, Jack Kerouac reads On the Road in 1959, and Jackson Pollock making one of his drip paintings in 1951. (link)
Word Clock (2)
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NYC's eccentric vegetable peeler salesman (3)
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If you've spent any time at all walking around Manhattan, you've likely run across Joe Ades, the English gent hawking vegetable peelers at the top of his lungs on a bit of sidewalk. An occasional part of his current routine is a laminated copy of a profile of him that Vanity Fair published in May 2006. No surprise: Ades is a character. Mayhew and the patterers might have been surprised at just how far Joe ...
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Alana said:
I just walked by this guy peeling carrots in Union Square this morning! Jason, were you there too? Cool!
Unlikely action heroes (4)
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Who would have thought ten years ago that Hollywood's biggest action stars would be Tobey Mcguire (Spider-Man), Matt Damon (Bourne), Elijah Wood (LoTR), Christian Bale (Batman), Johnny Depp (Pirates), and maybe even Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man)? No Stallones, Schwarzeneggers, or Van Dammes in that group. (link)
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Frank said:
Cue the inevitable David Brooks piece on the end of "real" masculinity in the 21st century.
All-maleness strikes again (3)
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1 day, 7 hours
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William Drenttel opines on the all-white-male jury of an Adbusters design competition: Nearly a decade into a new century, I believe it is unacceptable for a design organization, foundation, board of directors, magazine or other enterprise, to mount an initiative with an all male panel of judges -- or, put another way, "white, native English-speaking men from the U.S., British Isles or Australia." Such behavior is no longer acceptable and should not be tolerated by ...
The color of bruises (2)
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1 day, 9 hours
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COLOURlovers, the site that takes inspiration from colors in the real world to make design palettes, today has a collection of palettes inspired by some wickedly vibrant bruises. (link)
Star Wars influence chart (8)
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1 day, 23 hours
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A chart from Wired in 2005 shows how Star Wars influenced the later development of movies, games, TV programs, and the like. The Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and video games (LucasArts). Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors. The Flash ...
● The Walls of China (7)
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2 days, 3 hours
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Name: The Great Wall of China Date of construction: 6th century B.C. through 16th century Built to keep out: Invaders from the north Status: Tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage Site Little known fact: You actually can't see it from space. Name: The Green Wall of China Date of construction: 2002 through ~2050 Built to keep out: The Gobi Desert Status: Mixed Little known fact: Prior to the Wall's erection, the Gobi was advancing south ...
How to be a con man (11)
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I could read about con men and tricksters all day. "I could sell shit at an anti-scat party," he says, "you have to figure out someone's wants and needs and convince them what you have will fill their emotional void." A con man is essentially a salesman -- a remarkably good one -- who excels at making people feel special and understood. A con man validates the victim's desire to believe he has an edge ...
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Rick Umali said:
Totally fascinating. Whenever I watch con-men movie ("Matchstick Men", "Grifters"), I always wonder two things: 1) "are these people real?", and 2) "could I be conned?" (From this article, it would seem that the answers to both are yes.)
Predicting free throw success (3)
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2 days, 5 hours
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Basketball players are more skilled than even keen observers of the game (sportswriters and coaches) when predicting whether a shot will go in the basket or not. Not surprisingly, the players were significantly better at predicting whether or not the shot would go in. While they got it right more than two-thirds of the time, the non-playing experts (i.e., the coaches and writers) only got it right 44 percent of the time. It's thought that ...
Las Manitas closed forever (1)
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How a Wired article comes to be (2)
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2 days, 9 hours
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Wired is keeping a blog that details the process of writing an upcoming story on, appropriately, writer/director Charlie Kaufman. An almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature. You can see more about the design process on Wired creative director Scott Dadich's SPD blog, The Process. This is a one-time experiment, tied solely to the Charlie Kaufman profile scheduled to run in our November 08 issue.We will post internal ...
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SWVL said:
this is a terrible, terrible idea
Swing dancing in Washington Square Park (5)
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2 days, 21 hours
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Shot this video of some swing dancing in Washington Square Park while out and about the other day. You know, typical New York stroll in the park. (link)
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Daniel said:
Hey hey! Jag gick där för exakt 5 dagar sedan! Men då var det ett annat band som spelade.
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Alana said:
Ummm... it's called college kids goofing off at NYU.
Tumbrel remarks (15)
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Christopher Hitchens is an expert on the tumbrel remark. A tumbrel remark is an unguarded comment by an uncontrollably rich person, of such crass insensitivity that it makes the workers and peasants think of lampposts and guillotines. I can give you a few for flavor. The late queen mother, being driven in a Rolls-Royce through a stricken district of Manchester, England, said as she winced at the view, "I see no point at all in ...
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vasta said:
Oh, that's just delicious. I need to find more tumbrels.
24-hour trip to NYC (6)
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Relatively rich (22)
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3 days, 3 hours
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Social scientist Dalton Conley on how rich people are now working longer hours than poor people in America. This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn't have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).In other ...
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Jeff said:
Interesting, though I'm not comfortable with Jason's statement that the middle and upper middle classes are working harder...
2008 NFL TV maps (11)
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3 days, 4 hours
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New for the 2008 NFL season: the NFL TV distribution maps that tell you which football games are going to be broadcast is which parts of the country. They're using zoomable Google Maps this year...here's what a typical coverage map looks like: During football season in a TV market like NYC, which is dominated by coverage of two local teams (Giants and Jets), this is an essential tool for determining if you're actually gonna get ...
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Dan N. said:
I don't find myself in a market where this is frequently in doubt, but this is for all the Packer fans who watch Fox / CBS in Minneapolis.
Alec Baldwin, an appreciation (10)
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3 days, 6 hours
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A profile of Alec Baldwin by Ian Parker for the New Yorker. He recalled a day, a few years ago, when he was driving through L.A., saw a car run a red light, smash into another car, and keep moving. Baldwin gave chase and, eventually, blocked the culprit in a cul-de-sac. Before the police arrived, the driver got out of his car -- "Typical drug-addict, alcoholic, fuckhead look on his face. He was, 'O.K., what? ...
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Rick Umali said:
The excerpted paragraph is awesome!
