Archive for 2009

« Older Entries | Newer Entries »

Berlin Wall 20th Anniversary: A Bittersweet Celebration

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 7, 2009 by admin in Politics

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Sure, the Berlin Wall is gone, but Germans still have to endure David Hasselhoff.


The new Berlin Wall not only gets a test
run, it was created by the youth of the
city instead of crusty post war commies.

Sometimes I miss the Berlin Wall. As a mildly rebellious youngster in the 80′s, it represented a lot of what I thought about the world, having been raised on the doom and gloom of the cold war’s prediction of nuclear apocalypse. It was a central symbol of everything punk, and the actual wall was a great photo backdrop for the likes of Iggy Pop, David Bowie, or any globetrotting rebel that felt compelled to make the punk rock pilgrimage. I want to express a special thanks to the band U2 for helping clarify the zeitgeist as we approach the 20th anniversary of the wall being torn down. Back in the 80′s, the wall was between two superpowers. In 2009, U2 graciously highlighted the fact that the wall today is between haves and have-nots. It’s going to take the unemployed and broke people that comprise America’s red vs. blue polarity a while to figure it out, but the real dividing line of our times is the one between the entitled elite and the working class stiff. The anniversary of the wall coming down is also a good time to take note of the fact that although Ronald Reagan is often credited with the wall’s eventual demise because of his “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” line, nothing could be farther from the truth. He was just a witty actor delivering a line with impeccable timing. Even he said “How can a president not be an actor?“. Regardless of who brought the original wall down, U2 aren’t the only ones building new walls in Berlin; the youth of the city have created a wall of “dominoes” as part of Kulturprojekte’s Das Dominobuch (page is in German), which was created to keep kids thinking about the significance of the history of the wall. They’ll be knocking the wall down to kick off the festivities of the Festival of Freedom on November 9. And while this is indeed a time of celebration for Germans, we must show some sympathy as well. Although the wall is gone, they still have David Hasselhoff to deal with. Read the rest of this entry »

Bassist Tal Wilkenfeld Joins My Imaginary Ultimate Chick Band

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 6, 2009 by admin in Music

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Australian Tal Wilkenfeld started playing bass at 17, and at 23 is performing with jazz legends like Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter.


Tal Starts Intimidating Jeff Beck Around 1:16

My imaginary ultimate chick band is now nearly complete: Zoe Keating on cello, Kaki King on guitar, and now Tal Wilkenfeld on bass. If you haven’t heard this little punk from Australia play, get out some real speakers and check out her bass solo (playing live with Jeff Beck) in the clip at left. Her solo starts around 1:16. Even if you don’t like her playing, watching Jeff Beck bow and surrender repeatedly to a 23 year old bass player makes it all worth it. Unfortunately, Wilkenfeld’s been too busy playing with the likes of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter to release a CD since 2007′s Transformation, which was recorded in just two days. Apparently this kind of accelerated activity is typical for her; she started playing guitar at 14, switched to bass at 17, and at 18 moved to the states and started the career that has her playing with jazz legends at 23. I can’t wait to hear how her career shapes up; for now the best way to keep up with what she’s sounding like is to peruse YouTube and catch clips of her live appearances. Her official site is here, but seems a little underdeveloped. Hopefully this is a side  effect of the fact that she’s too busy defining who she is herself to get mis-packaged, as so often happens with female talent in the music industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Magic Mirrors, Pixelated Pics, And A Point & Punch Camera

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 5, 2009 by admin in Technology

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Some fun and interesting technology for creating unusual pixelated images.

I have a minor fetish for slick but slightly Rube Goldbergian technology that is utilized to achieve simple aims, which is why I love the idea of the punch camera, which captures an image, arranges little pins internally, and then lets the user punch the camera like a stapler to create a sort of dot-matrix/hole-punch rendition of the image. The camera is, alas, only a concept which was conceived by bay area design student Matty Martin. See the rest of Matty’s portfolio here. The punch camera concept reminded me of a sculptural design project by Daniel Bozen called Shiny Balls Mirror, which was one of a series of interactive sculptures which use a camera to capture whatever is in front of the sculpture to re-arrange objects to reflect the image back at the viewer in real time. I think Matty and Danny should talk to each other about an exhibit. See more of Danny’s sculptures here. And as is inevitably the case for search addicts like myself, while tracking down these links to share, I accidentally ran across this crazy Image Mosaic Generator, which lets you upload a photo, and then converts the image to a pixelated version with images that it automatically scours from the web. The results don’t look too impressive until you zoom in on the image, and realize how varied the images are, and how they were automatically snagged from the web and assembled into a single image. There’s an example below. Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood’s 3D Conspiracy

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 4, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

It’s actually pretty two-dimensional. They want your money. They want their profits back.

As I sat at a friend of a friend’s house the other evening watching a torrented “DVD rip” of the new Star Trek movie two weeks before its release date, it struck me that there’s a bit of irony in the fact that Disney is using a remake of “A Christmas Carol” to help roll out the film industy’s latest flailing attempt to save its way of life – the 3D movie. At a time in US history that teeters on the edge of being Dickensian, to take a story that is typically viewed as an indictment of nineteenth century industrial capitalism and use it as part of a platform that is meant to help Hollywood regain control of its media and its profits is either a master stroke or incredibly foolish. They’re going to have to do something though, I may have been watching a copy of a DVD release a couple of weeks early, but Star Trek was available as a torrent while the film was still in theaters. Hollywood’s been warming you up with 3D re-releases of Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the acid test will be James Cameron’s Avatar, set for release around the holidays, and touted as the spearhead of the new assault of 3D in theaters. If you haven’t pieced this all together yet, Hollywood’s idea is to offer something in theaters you won’t be able to take home later. Will it work? I personally don’t think so; I agree to some degree with the thinking of people like Chris Anderson, who’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price points up the fact that pop media has little value in itself, but is a great way to build customer engagement. I mean, a pop song is 99 cents on iTunes, and Star Trek is free at my friend’s house. Why would I pay even more to watch a movie in an already overpriced theater? I’m not alone in this thinking, this mom’s reaction highlights Hollywood’s ongoing disconnect. In my opinion, the greed will eventually kill them. They literally own our brains already by virtue of how media like Toy Story saturates our existence and generates ancillary sales, but it’s not enough. They still want cash up front. Sorry Hollywood, my life is already in 3D. That’s precisely why I go to a movie or play; to invest a little imagination and get away from things. Read the rest of this entry »

You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 3, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

It turns out all that rassa frassin’ potty mouthin’ is good for you.


Yosemite Sam Letting Off Some
Stress In The Workplace

I’ve received a little flak for the piece Thoughts On Tom DeLay: Are You F***ing Kidding Me?, which dropped an f-bomb in the headline. Oddly, all the feedback was about swearing; none of it was in defense of Tom DeLay. Probably the funniest message I received (why do people never just leave comments around here?) was from “Tom G” who said “No serious news source would use this kind of language in an article“. Well Tom, I’m glad you finally figured out that this is not a serious news source. And for the record, please note that if you search our site for the F word, out of 600+ articles, only two others use it, and both are quoting someone else. But never mind that, cussing is really okay, and there’s science that says so. British scientists (why are they always British?) did a study that found that swearing actually makes pain more tolerable. And if Tom DeLay isn’t a pain, I don’t know what is. Aside from pain relief, this Wikipedia entry points out that profanity can even be used as part of a term of endearment, as in “I love you, you dumb fuck“. And apparently a good round of F-bombs at work also boosts team spirit and moral. And yes. As always, it’s British scientists that say so. If you want to learn more about how cussin’ actually works, see this HowStuffWorks feature. I had no idea, for instance, that swear words were MAGIC, did you? And finally, if your swearing borders on being Tourettes-like, well what the fuck. Maybe you should think about quitting. There’s help, you know. Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries | Newer Entries »