Voices from the New American Schoolhouse (trailer)
Voices from the New American Schoolhouse explores life outside the usual educational box. Narrated exclusively by students, the film chronicles life and learning at the Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, MD which practices an undiluted form of freedom and democracy that turns mainstream education theory on its head. Filmmaker Danny Mydlack enjoyed unrestricted access over a two-year period to produce this candid and unblinking encounter with kid-powered learning.
Juice glasses with sol
BTC Elements is an amazing online retailer featuring recycled and sustainably produced goods from ethically managed companies. These glasses are from 100% reclaimed Sol beer bottles.
The producers of this glassware take ordinary glass bottles, headed for the landfill and transform them into stylish, unique goblets and tumblers. The metamorphosis of these bottles turns them into useful, recycled glassware. The top of the bottle is flared, narrowed, twisted, and then separated from the bottom of the bottle. Using this procedure, the upper portion is transformed into an elegant goblet, while the remaining lower portion is a sturdy and faithful tumbler. The frosting detail is achieved from environmentally friendly sandblasting rather than acid etching. The company began production in South Africa, and due to international demand, now operates a facility in the USA.
Art Brut
I’m just calling it “Affordable Europe”. It’s not a staged photograph. In any event, I didn’t stage it, but you might argue that my cat Lena did. The slippers and the newspaper lay as you see them. Lena deposited the dead shrew as you see it.
No mistake, that cat has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon
This guy was lucky enough to smoke dope with Pynchon in the sixties.
Dance Theory
I believe that my theory is strong. I shall make some predictions, all of them testable.
There will be no society anywhere on Earth where all dancing is done in secret. Dancing will be a public phenomenon everywhere. Whereas a man or woman might practice alone, the end product will always involve witnesses.
There will be no society on Earth where all the dancing done by men is away from the eyes of women.
Women, far more than men, will find the skill with which a potential mate can dance far more of a factor which influences their choices of mate. This will be true of all societies.
Women will get the most pleasure from dancing (except perhaps when taking the contraceptive pill) when they are at the fertile peak of their menstrual cycle.
The Last Hurrah (4.27.06)
I always wondered why Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown decided to visit Israel and hang out with Ariel Sharon. Tonight, while eating Country Fried Kalebone™ at phATLanta’s Soul Vegetarian restaurant on N. Highland Avenue, I finally found the answer.
Code Breakers
Her Majesty’s Court’s Justice Peter Smith has buried a code in his ruling (click in link for .pdf file) in the plagiarism case against DaVinci Code author, Dan Brown. I, myself spent about an hour trying to decode the message in the ruling. Nightline revealed the coded message, but I can’t remember it- so yes, I’ll be up until 3am working on it.
99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story
The Third Coast Festival, in collaboration with cartoonist Matt Madden (99 Ways to Tell a Story), proudly announces 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story – an experiment in documentary radio style and execution inspired by the French literary group Oulipo.
The TCF invites producers of all artistic backgrounds and experience levels to submit a finished, short (2:30) audio piece for 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story. In the Oulipo tradition of imposing constraint on the creative process, each submission must exhibit a distinct production style and include a specific first sentence and three particular sounds, which have been pre-selected by the Third Coast Festival and Madden.
Details may be found on the TCF website.
Red Rain Over Kerala
Scientists at Cardiff University say they have confirmed that DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, did exist in the mysterious red rain which fell over India in 2001 after an explosion of what might be a small comet high over the Kerala State.This may be a key to learning about possible lifeforms in outer space.
Notional Moles
He talked about “notional moles” in the article. And the notional mole — according to Rosenbaum — is that you make the other side believe that you’ve planted a mole in their midst without ever having actually planted a mole. This is very much an Adam Curtis idea. You drive them insane.
The Last Hurrah (4.26.06)
5:48 am. Philadelphia. Actually -– Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Specifically, Cherry Hill Shopping Mall. More specifically — the parking lot. And lastly – inside my sleeping bag, in the back of the yellow Penske. That’s right, I’m camping out at the mall.
Found
I believe in everything, but not very much. I like owls but I would be spooked by one if I saw it. I wouldn’t be a good falconer, cause even though I knew my bird was supposed to be coming to land on the glove thing, if I saw an owl flyig toward with his claws out like that, I’d probably duck, roll, cover my eyes and scream like a girl while flailing my arms frantically in the air. I guess I’m pretty normal.
Chernobyl’s Lost City
Pripyat was built as a town for workers at the Chernobyl power station, where the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred 20 years ago. The town was abandoned 36 hours after the explosion. Pripyat’s 49,000 inhabitants were evacuated in a hurry. They were told they would be back within days, and should take only necessary documents. Before long, many homes were looted.
Graffiti artists said to be from Germany and Belarus have gone round the town drawing silhouettes of the missing population.
The BBC News website Chernobyl: 20 Years On is worth a visit.
English — 1 billion words
A massive language research database responsible for bringing words such as “podcast” and “celebutante” to the pages of the Oxford dictionaries has officially hit a total of 1 billion words, researchers said Wednesday.
New World Astronomy
The Temple of the Fox, an ancient structure in the Chillon Valley that dates back to 2200 B.C., has recently been unearthed, containing sculptures of unprecedented artistic style. Robert Benefer of the University of Missouri-Columbia, has discovered the earliest astronomical alignments and sculptures one of which is designed to be viewed from many directions and angles. Archaeologists say it is an astounding discovery in the New World in Buena Vista, Peru.
Le faux et le vrai
Limpia, Wild Rose Pass. In: “United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. Report of William H. Emory ….” Washington. 1857. Volume I. P. 84. From Treasures of the NOAA Library Collection.
On Saturday we met at the Midland (Texas) International Airport and set off in a rental car. At Wild Rose Pass I made an uphill U-turn and slid the car into a turn-out where first we read the inscription on the Historical Marker, then crossed the highway for a better view of a big pink rose. Midway across I cried out, “A desert rose! Just like the ones John Wayne planted for Vera Miles in ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ ! ”
It was a fake — a big old fabric flower wired to a desert shrub.
Language of the Birds
There is an old legend that says birds speak; they have languages, and if the human ear is tuned or turned, we too can learn that language. We have only thought that this was mythic tale, but in a new study, one species of birds at least seem to be able to do just that–speak.
In the journal Nature, Timothy Genter of the University of Californiat San Diego says,
“We show that European starlings accurately recognize acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free grammar.”
Corn Cam
An image of a cornfield that is updated every 15 minutes.
Poetry magazine’s first issue
Click here and then drop down under the photo of the magazine to where it says you can see a “slideshow” of the first issue of Poetry. Click on the slideshow and page your way through the issue. It includes two [pretty terrible] poems by Ezra Pound and several forgotten non-entities. Interesting to see what was regarded as edgy and new 94 years ago. And get this–the magazine was sewn, not stapled or glued, together.
Richard Petty vs. Paul Rand
“the majority of people have potatoes for eyes.”
Sketches of Frank Gehry
Sydney Pollack has made a documentary of Frank Gehry. It will be released in May. The website has a short trailer that shows the chemistry between Pollack and Gehry — the synopis at the site says they have been friends for many years. I look forward to seeing it.
They’ve Been Reading Finnegans Wake for 10 Years
“The 10-year-old group, which meets weekly, is carefully making its way — word by word, line by line, and page by page — through James Joyce’s famously difficult final work. The book is 628 pages long, and they’re now on Page 251.”Read more here.
Hurricane Warming
“The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change and it’s no longer something we’ll see in the future, it’s happening now,” said Greg Holland, a division director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Jenny Boully’s One Love Affair
Jenny Boully’s new book is now available.
Flummoxed
Zoologists are delighted and, at the same time flummoxed by the birth of four rare Komodo dragons at the London Zoo. The question is, where did the new mother Sungai get her sperm? Paul de la Panouse says: “Either female komodo dragons are spermthecal, meaning that they have the ability to store sperm or fertilised eggs for long periods, in this case for two years, or they are parthogenetic, meaning that they are self-reproductive — they produce clones of themselves.”