Sarah Palin!?
It’s like he is not even trying.
Update: See, also VPilf.
How Many of Me?
There are 14 people in the United States named Cindy Scroggins.
Of course, I’m the best one.
Beck – Clementine
For Cindy, tongue-in-cheekily
Below the fold is my pastel based on a painting by Frith.
Read more
stuff worth more than its weight in gold
Platinum $20,679
Fifty Dollar Bills $22,680
Cocaine $22,680
Hundred Dollar Bills $45,359
Rhodium $77,292
Good-quality, one-carat diamonds $11.4 M
LSD $55 M
Antimatter $26 Quadrillion
The full article. (via marginal revolution)
what is your dream book?
Tyler Cowen asks a great question.
I want you to tell me. It’s a book that doesn’t currently exist. It is a work of non-fiction. The author must be living. It must be a work the author could plausibly write. It doesn’t have to be a close cousin of a book the author has already written.
So you could request “Jared Diamond on sexual selection” but not “Joseph Stiglitz on the early history of Ghenghis Khan.”
I don’t want to steal his thunder and turn this into a dear clusterflock. Perhaps we should answer this over there?
thoughts on last night’s speech
From Kevin Drum:
Tonight Obama made a start on a campaign that’s based not just on talking points (though there will be plenty of those), but on a sustained assault on modern conservatism and a sustained defense of modern liberalism.
But it was only a start. He needs to keep pressing both halves of that game plan, even if it means occasionally saying some hard things. If he takes a few chances and does that, though, he’ll not only win, he’ll win with a public behind him that’s actively sold on a genuinely liberal agenda. This is why conservatives have so far been apoplectic about his speech tonight: if he continues down this road, and wins, they know that he’ll leave movement conservatism in tatters. He is, at least potentially, the most dangerous politician they’ve ever faced.
for Cindy
dear clusterflock,
What’s worth fighting for?
tonight at Norma’s
waitress: get the chicken tetrazzini, it’s got cheese on it.
customer: I don’t like chicken.
waitress: well chicken don’t like you either. now order something — I got customers to tend to.
gobsmacked
How breathtaking to hear the former Vice President acknowledge the shame of the United States’ policy on torture. Breathtaking both for the simple acknowledgment and the silence surrounding our shame. We are burdened by eight years of bankruptcy. Gore’s simple acknowledgment underscores the magnitude of our immorality. Any thoughtful person has the responsibility to articulate the importance of this election. We are eight years too late.
Y’all
My alma mater is spending money to send a 700 pound stone to Rome and back. They better never ask me for money again.
North Korean Propaganda Posters
Click the picture for more (via kottke)
Mr. Goodbye
Mr. Goodbye is “a live avant-garde art performance techo pop music with puppets, mask, and crowd participation.” One of the fellows is a friend of mine and I have, on an earlier occasion, participated in this circus.
Today at Lunch in the Hospital Cafeteria
At the table to my left, a woman was going on at length to her companion about her diabetes. I glanced over–her lunch consisted of two corn dogs and a huge basket of onion rings.
A slender woman of about 60 took the table across from me. Her lunch consisted of a piece of chocolate cake and a small tub of vanilla ice cream. She ate it very slowly. I wanted to think of it as a treat, as something happy, but I know that it was not.
To my right, three Latino hospital workers ate pizza and spoke to each other in Spanish. One of them referred to his boss as a pinche culero (which roughly translates to fucking asshole). They all nodded earnestly.
Regarding the Dude.
Rolling Stone discusses why Lewbowski was such a hit, but lacks any real substantive answer. Still, there are a few gems:
Early in Lebowski, the narrator (a cowboy named the Stranger, played by Sam Elliott) intones, “Sometimes there’s a man, who, well, he’s the man for his time ‘n place.” The odd truth is this man — the Dude — may have been a decade ahead of his time. Today, as technology increasingly handcuffs us to schedules and appointments — in the time it takes you to read this, you’ve missed three e-mails — there’s something comforting about a fortysomething character who will blow an evening lying in the bathtub, getting high and listening to an audiotape of whale songs. He’s not a 21st-century man. Nor is he Iron Man — and he’s certainly not Batman. The Dude doesn’t care about a job, a salary, a 401(k), and definitely not an iPhone. The Dude just is, and he’s happy.
“There’s a freedom to The Big Lebowski,” theorizes Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Brandt, the wealthy Lebowski’s obsequious personal assistant. “The Dude abides, and I think that’s something people really yearn for, to be able to live their life like that. You can see why young people would enjoy that.”
Interview with Karl Kerschl
Mike Schramm interviews Karl Kerschl, the creator of the comic The Abominable Charles Christopher. This comic, if you didn’t bother to notice the first time I told you, is clearly one of the best I have seen on the web. I particularly love his creative process:
The process of actually producing the strip is much the same as the process of the character’s creation. I just don’t think about it. I wake up on Wednesday morning knowing that I have to do a comic before the end of the day, then I make some coffee and sit around until an idea comes to mind. Sometimes this is immediate, but usually I have to wait a couple of hours for inspiration. A shower always helps. And music. Very often I’ll know what tone I’d like the strip to have, emotionally, and I’ll put on some music that matches that tone and just allow ideas to come to me. As soon as something occurs to me that feels right, I flesh it out in my head into a mini-story.
Then the drawing starts. I rough in the sequence of panels with a blue Col-Erase pencil, and whenever I have an idea about specific dialogue I jot it down in the page margin. That’s as much ‘writing’ as I ever do. When I’m happy with the drawing (usually an hour of work) I go over it all with black ink. I use a combination of tech pens and brush pens to get the organic look I want, and this part of the process is the most time-consuming because a lot of the finished drawing takes place here. I scan the strip into Photoshop (still using my old G4 Powerbook and a Wacom tablet) and then colour it with a very limited palette.
And then I post it. And stare at it for a while hoping that it works.
stained glass windows as air purifiers
Gold nanoparticles in medieval stained glass windows serve as air purifiers.
“For centuries people appreciated only the beautiful works of art, and long life of the colors, but little did they realize that these works of art are also, in modern language, photocatalytic air purifier with nanostructured gold catalyst,” said Zhu Huai Yong, a material scientist at the Queensland University of Technology.
When energized by the sun, tiny gold particles can destroy certain airborne pollutants. These pollutants, called volatile organic compounds, create the “new” smell often detected in new furniture, carpets and paint in good condition. Even in small amounts, these compounds, like methanol and carbon monoxide, are not good for your health.
An electromagnetic field generated by sunlight couples with the gold electrons’ oscillations to create a resonance, said Zhu. The magnetic field of the gold nanoparticles can expand up to hundred times, breaking apart the pollutant molecules.
contemporary renovation in Austin
The most recent issue of dwell has an article on Austin artist Blake Dollahite’s renovated home. It struck a chord with me as we are wrapping up a little renovation project of our own. In 2003, Blake, just out of college, bought a small, decrepit property in a good neighborhood in north Austin. He transformed the bungalow into a beautiful mix of traditional space and contemporary design. Everywhere you see the attention to detail that makes life worth living, creating beauty in the patterns around us. The online version of the article has the same text, but is limited in pictures. If you have access to the magazine, it’s well worth checking out.
Trident Iceni
The Trident Iceni is a biodiesel-powered supercar.
Now powered by a Duramax turbo diesel engine with 550 horsepower at 3800 rpm and a gut-wrenching 950 ft-lbs. of torque at just 1800 rpm, the Iceni is reportedly capable of achieving well over 200 miles per hour. No need to go that fast? That’s alright, the Iceni is quite the quarter mile king too, launching itself to sixty in just 3.7 seconds and surely tripping the lights at an equally astronomical figure. Fuel mileage is about 57 miles per gallon U.S.
Internet Overrun by Whiny Commenters
Consuming massive bandwidth every time they upload crudely Photoshopped images of Britney Spears spanking Miley Cyrus, and bantering with like-minded trolls while taking breaks from surfing explicit Internet porn, Web bullies loaf along in the passing lane of the information superhighway.
Lessig on McCain on Technology
If this video begins to tickle your fancy, I would suggest going to Lessig’s blog for a larger and better quality video.
Guess what somebody has been watching recently
I’m Not Crying – Flight of the Conchords
Dear Clusterflock
Nobody lays it out like Bill Clinton.
Update: Where was this John Kerry four years ago?
Dear Clusterflock
Why do you live where you do?
What brought you there? What holds you?
What’s driving you away, or calling from afar?
Why here, and not there?
