TwttrPoop
For all poop related twitter activity needs.
how to keep your wallet
Psychologist Richard Wiseman planted 240 wallets on the streets of Edinburgh last year. Each wallet contained either a picture of a smiling baby, a puppy, a family, or an elderly couple.
When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hard-hearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.
iQ font
Two font designers, one race driver, interactive software, and a teeny-weeny car.
92 dogs, mostly chihuahuas, found in Michigan home
The man’s sister told officials that she believed he initially had two dogs in the home and that they may have reproduced.
Perhaps.
Graphics and Web Design Based on Edward Tufte’s Principles
Why you should care (via Lone Gunman):
- Its Importance: Printed and graphical information is now the driving force behind all of our lives. It no longer is confined to specialized workers in selected fields but impacts nearly all people through the widespread use of computing and the Internet. Rapid and accurate transfers of information can be a life and death matter for many people (an example being the Challenger disaster). The extent to which symbols and graphics affect our lives can be seen by the dramatic increase in IQ scores in all cultures which have acquired information technology: in the United States there has been an average increase of 3 IQ points per decade over the last 60 years, for a total of an 18 IQ point increase. There is no known biological explanation for this increase and the most likely cause is widespread exposure to text, symbols, and graphics that accompany modern life. As mentioned above, this increase has been seen in all cultures exposed to information technology.
Presidential Approval Index
This is sort of like tracking the Stock Market Indexes daily which basically means that a lot of people are going to make a big deal out of nothing.
Dear Clusterflock: Do you have your own personal Ismay, MT?
In the same vein as What is your favourite city? But I hope sufficiently different. Rather than ask the question I will tell my story and so the question will be asked.
Back in the late 90s I read Bad Land by Jonathan Raban. A social history dealing with the homesteading movement in eastern Montana in the first third of the 20th Century. I loved the book, but from it came the tale of Ismay, Montana. And its failed attempt to revive a dying community by re-naming itself Joe, Montana. I know at the time the San Francisco 49ers were doing rather well, so I guess they thought it would lure football fans!
Anyway, I have been mildly obsessed with the place ever since – I am always cruising Google maps in the hope there is a street view, I have browsed census reports, etc. I have a mental picture of the street layout, I check the weather on a weekly basis. In the 2000 census it had a population of 26. In 2003 I almost made it there. I was in northern Wyoming, so a spit away, but didn’t make it.
I’m not sure if I should ever go there really. Should its reality be as in my head, or should I go and risk disappointment by seeing the real Ismay? My head says go.
So, there you have it. Do you have your own personal Ismay? What’s your story?
Taylor’s Landing
Bing!
Meet The Flockers: Derrick Mosley
To obtain the relevant biographical information:
1. Take the Metra South Shore Electric Line from the so-called Millennium Station to the 55th-56th-57th Street Station, on a snowy day in late January, between 9:00 and 11:00 in the morning. Be certain to dress warmly, as the weather will be extremely cold. When you arrive at the platform, begin walking toward the stairs that lead to the 57th Street underpass, while looking to the west, away from the wind. Stop at Istria to have a coffee, if you wish. If you look across the street and slightly to your right, you will notice a curious three-story red-brick building with an incongruous Richardsonian-Romanesque limestone base. Cross the street toward this building after checking for traffic; flex your fingers in your mittens to keep them warm. Exhale, and watch the plume of breath form a tiny cumulus. Watch the curb on the other side, as it’s really quite high, for some reason. Once you’re on the sidewalk, begin walking west.
2. The next building you notice on your left will be a depressing single-story structure made of plate glass, cinnamon-colored brick and either limestone or concrete, with a rounded corner, and a green-and-yellow sign reading Powell’s Books Bought & Sold. Take a moment to look up into the white sky, notice the negative color of the falling flakes, the non-sound of the morning, the leafless tops of trees.
3. You also notice a window-unit air-conditioner above the door.
4. Is it after 11:00? Walk in immediately, shaking from the cold. If not, go back to Istria, wait until 11:00 over more coffee, while reading your copy of Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting. Don’t worry about seeming to read it ostentatiously, as if you have something to prove. After all, everybody does. The sunburst in the seafoam green cover reminds you of summer seen through the lens of November. Suddenly, you feel as if you’re about to cry, but try to keep your composure. There. Eleven? Back to Powell’s.
5. Proceed to the left, and walk to the south-east corner of the store, where you will find a window, and the yellow Springer-Verlag spines of the Mathematics section. If you’re lucky, you will be able to find a complete edition of the Principia Mathematica, by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, the 1927 edition in blue cloth. Volume IV consists of the biography of Derrick Mosley in symbolic form, but, due to its numerous antimonies, it never really sold.
Our boy Phil
is getting some more much deserved attention.
2-D lovers
As Andy put it, “it’s okay to love cartoons, as long as you don’t love cartoons”
Most 2-D lovers prefer a different kind of self-help. The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?
Ireland’s new blasphemy law makes me want to sodomise Jesus.
Ireland got a new blasphemy law today. Before our new blasphemy bill was signed into law, I hadn’t ever actually even for a moment considered sodomising Jesus. So who knows, perhaps the Russians were right. A little oppression makes people think creatively. Great ideas may come out of this. Or we might all just lie awake in our beds at night, contemplating sodomising Jesus.
Ireland is in a tricky position: our constitution enshrines respect for religion, and so we have to either respect this idea, or update it by damning it all to Jesussodomy hell via a referendum (expensive things). The current government has decided that now that our economy is dribbling away down the toilet of jesuspoo, this – THIS – is the time for us to copperfasten the concept of blasphemy into law. Our Taoiseach says that we just can’t afford to change the constitution in this economic climate. Indeed. But we’re having a referendum to vote FOR THE SECOND TIME on the Lisbon Treaty in October, after having embarrassingly voted ‘no’ the last time. Of course, as Padraig Reidy points out,
Wouldn’t it have been sensible to hold both the Lisbon referendum and a referendum on the abolition of the concept of blasphemy from the constitution on the same day, cutting down on costs? Wouldn’t it, minister?
Of course he doesn’t want to do that, because he doesn’t want any other debate happening at the time that the Lisbon brainwashing show goes on the road. If ever there was an opportunity for a protest vote to the blasphemy law, October is it. And you know, that’s how Ireland works. That would be a pity, because something as important as Lisbon really needs to be handled with integrity but what the hell, we voted on that one already.
Meanwhile, I am hoping this tweet becomes viral. Feel fwee to weetweet.
Julius Shulman, 98.8 years young.
Julius Shulman dies at 98; celebrated photographer of modernist architecture. His mission was to use his photography to build the reputation of architects who were bringing innovative design to the West. His clients included Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf M. Schindler.
Recursion
I Am The Anonymous Model
A good, longish article on the state of the modeling industry.
This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy modeling. In point of fact, what kept me in the industry for so long was the constant contact with lovely women, smart women, talented women, hard-working women, inspiring women, women of the sort I wanted to grow up to be. (I met some nice men, too, but, in this industry, there are just fewer of them — fashion is a powerful global business that has the quirk of being thoroughly gendered.) In fact, fashion is the world’s largest employer of women; it’s an industry of women, by women, for women. I felt like I was always meeting the best of them: Foodie art directors who advised me on which East Village deli secretly sells the best $3 goat tacos East of the Mississippi. Prop stylists who went to RISD, emerged only with an ingrained loathing of the art world old boys’ club, and decided to fuck it and paint hay bales odd colors and source antique books for editorial spreads. I remember walking 20 minutes from a train station to get to a photographer’s apartment, and then talking for an hour about Tess Of The D’Urbervilles and Cindy Sherman, over tea, while she intermittently remembered to take my picture. (She drove me home, and we worked 12 hours together that weekend.) It took me a very long time to reconcile the apparent disconnect between the consistent wonderfulness of the many people I was working with, and the persistent awfulness of the position of abject and total disempowerment that I, like any non-super model, occupied — to realize that the problems of the modeling industry are not in fact personal, but structural.
(via marginal revolution)
quote out of context
There’s a story that if the person for whom he had arranged to come by and take them down was late, Milton would complain that he needed to be “milked.”
Morse-It
If you connected Morse-It to the twitter api, then it would be one hell of an interesting iPhone app.
What if Raylana was behind us and nobody knew?
Best in show
Dear clusterflock,
Dog breeds? Or has this been asked before?
valleys and ridges
Tyler Perron of MIT has figured out an equation that accurately predicts and shows why many valleys and ridges are equally spaced.
It was like disassembling a complicated machine, only to discover that it’s controlled by a single knob!
As in everything, squirrels are involved.
Research shows that while rock is weathered by precipitation and chemical breakdown to create soil, the soil itself is moved downslope in many landscapes primarily by the activity of small animals, such as gophers and squirrels, Perron said. Exceptions include landscapes with little vegetation, some high-elevation and high-latitude sites, and deserts, where wind transports sand.
This Old Clown
Swine Flu
clusterflock interviews clusterflock, #2 UPDATED #2
Q: Andrew, I just finished watching Dogville, the second time. You spoke of “shaking for days,” after seeing it. If you can recall, what shook you?
(I ask because I’m shaking again, or at least, I’m haunted.)
A. [http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1004.MP3] Download*
*Pardon my p’s**, the pop filter is still in the mail, and the quiet hum of the enormous A/C unit outside my window.
**That is the proper way to punctuate the plural of the letter “p,” right?
Q. The judgement is the thing for me. I might see myself, in the townfolk, as one who might have joined them in their abuse of Grace. For me, it was less about them and more about me, as victim. I more strongly identified with Grace. Where would I stand in judgement upon them? Would I forgive? Or opt for revenge? The thing that shakes me is I’d be hard-pressed in the decision. I think I’d be more inclined to let them have it. So a more satisfying ending for me watching the film. Yet less satisfying for me, morally.
So, the question. What have you carried with you, since viewing the film? Have you changed in some elemental way? Were you changed in your day-to-day living for having viewed it?
Would it surprise you if you knew (if you didn’t already), Von Trier’s vision is an indictment of America?
Any who look, you will have to scroll down to the Dogville entry.
Lolita on the Lam
Cam-phone photo. LG VX11000. July 18, 2009.
Rereading a book I first read when I was seventeen — and missing my old hardbound volume.
For unknown adventures I was leaving the livid house where I had rented a room only ten weeks before. The shades — thrifty, practical bamboo shades — were already down. On porches or in the house their rich textures lend modern drama. The house of heaven must seem pretty bare after that.
