clusterflock blogger update
Andrew, Lauren, and Kelsey are all either traveling or on vacation now. So, if you are missing some of your favorite bloggers, that’s why.
What I imagine the values of clusterflock to be
Yesterday I asked a serious question about something I’m very interested in: how would we describe the culture of clusterflock? The post didn’t get much traction, at least for the question itself. That’s no big deal–as Cindy said in channeling Bad Santa, “they can’t all be winners”.
That said, though, I’m still pretty curious. If culture comprises values and norms, what might those be? To satisfy my curiosity (this may be technical onanism, by the way), I started scribbling out what I thought some of the values might be, on the assumption that the norms would probably match up to them. Here’s what I came up with for what I imagine some of the values of clusterflock to be:
- Participation
- Honesty
- Inclusion
- Integrity
- Creativity
- Humor
- Respect
- Sense of intelligence (walt)
- Sense of curiosity (walt)
- Seeking (CeCe)
- Mutual affection despite differences (CeCe and Sheila)
- Collaboration (fuz)
- Love for language (Luke)
- Loyalty (Daryl)
- Maturity (Cindy)
- Thoughtfulness (Cindy)
What do you think? Hits? Misses?
UPDATE: This is a fascinating list for me given that it communicates so much about who we are and who we think we are. Once they’re back, I’d be interested in what the travelers think.
from the comments
Here’s Randy Taylor’s haiku:
Tennis in England.
Six hundred pound a pussies.
Pass me the sausage.
NYC Polaroid Photo Auction Catalogue
Chuck Close, 9 Part Self Portrait
Yesterday, in comments, Phil linked to the Sotheby’s catalogue for the recent Polaroid Collection auction. For those interested in some of the big names of 20th century photography working with Polaroids, the pdf is worth a download.
Jesus Bees
Over the course of the fair, 40 000 worker bees were released into the case to complete a wax honeycomb structure over the figure of a martyred christ rising out of the chaos, his weight seeming to be upheld by the mass strength of the swarm. the figure within the vitrine is made of a laser sintered framework in which the industrious bees created a honeycomb skin overbefore filling each cell with the honey they produce. then bees worked to remove the honey from the cells and return it to the beehive, cleaning the figure back to the wax cells they originally created.
‘Unbearable Lightness‘ by Dutch designer Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny.
(via marginal revolution)
from the spam
Does your building roof is leaking?
UNISignal, traffic lights for the colorblind
I have red-green colorblindness. This could help.
Quote that is chilling me to the bone
“To have a child is to give fate a hostage.”
- JFK
curious
Did anyone get an iPhone yesterday?
don’t miss #46
Have you heard of the University of Chicago Scav Hunt? It is incredible. Below is a fairly random sampling of items and the points they were worth from their 2010 competition.*
- Pop a balloon inside another balloon. Both balloons must have taut surfaces. Do not violate the topological integrity of the outer balloon. [18 points]
- A pair of wearable, edible, vegan, assless chaps. [15 points]
- Falsely shout “THEATRE!” in a firehouse. [2 points]
- Butter that can cut through a hot knife. [11 points]
- The MacGyver Challenge: Using nothing other than $10 worth of unlikely goods from a local dollar store and your Swiss Army knife, create a device that will (1) create a 15-45 second delayed guard distraction, (2) serve as a pH meter (+/- 1 unit accuracy), (3) double as quick-setting epoxy, or (4) emit or jam an AM or FM radio signal. [(20 − X) points, where X is the cost of the materials in your device as confirmed by receipt]
- A ship in a bottle. Must be Imperial class or better. [19 BBY points]
- James Cameron’s Avatar in thrilling 1-D! (Make a video of no more than 2 minutes) [7 points]
- An Etch-a-Sketch drawing of an Etch-a-Sketch. What’s being drawn on that Etch-a-Sketch? Another Etch-a-Sketch, of course! [[[1.5x points for x identifiable iterations]]]
- Deliver a message to the Judges stating just how much you love them using a computer program compiled from fewer than 100 lines of obfuscated FORTRAN. Blank source code will be awarded with blank points. [10102 points]
- Unboil an egg. [One dozen points]
- An illustrated Canadian Kama Sutra. One act per province. But nothing from the territories, you pervert. [18 points]
- Studies have estimated that every human body contains two to five pounds of bacteria. We want just one pound, pure. [16 points]
- A tampon that looks like Lady Gaga. [4 points]
And, finally, item #46 seems to have been made just for Clusterflock.
- If your goat’s erection lasts longer than six hours, please contact an arsonist. [10 points. 100 bonus points if Nicolas Cage is inside at the time]
Here’s a video that better explains the true nature of that last one.
Dan Meyer did something similar to this with some high school students, which is how I heard about it. I think that’s very cool.
*Note: these are just from the 2010 Scav Hunt. This page has archives going all the way back to 1987. Enjoy.
It is now time to insert the birth control device
I was looking for a Michael Smith song called “The Wonderful World of Sex,” but I found this instead.
Dear Clusterflock
What year did you first get internet service?
Matt Harvey, Wimbledon’s official poet laureate
In commemoration of the longest recorded tennis match in history, Matt Harvey, Wimbledon’s official poet laureate — what? — penned this haiku:
High performance play.
All day and yet no climax.
It’s tantric tennis.
(thanks, Amy)
quote out of context
What she’s actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby.
a catalogue of fear, 14
Why would her father have invited me to go hunting with them, then, as he handed me the gun, say he wanted to spend time with his daughter?
I watched them go their way, and I went mine.
Ask Swearengen
Dear Al,
My boss just fired me because I said some stupid things about him in a magazine. Was I over the line?
General Disarray
—
General,
Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder must have gotten you many punches in the face. You want a donkey’s attention, you bring a fucking pole down between his ears. Enjoy retirement.
Al
Ask clusterflock
In my work, we discuss “culture” as comprising the values and norms of an organization. How would you describe the culture of clusterflock?
Peeps Expert
The trial, at which my friend, Andrew, is serving as an expert witness on the subject of Peeps, is drawing to an end.
headline of the day
Woman at Dallas Wal-Mart says Peeping Tom had camera in shoe
Update: Apparently, I was premature.
(thanks, Amy! thanks, Ashley!)
Update:
A California couple faces child endangerment charges after police say they tried to sell their 6-month-old baby for $25 outside a Walmart store.
The Proliferation of Technology
I’ve been wondering lately about the acceleration of the adoption of new technologies and how that will affect the maturation of the arts within those mediums. For instance, high definition television has only been predominant within the US for the last eight years or so. I already find myself looking at scheduled nature documentaries to see if they were filmed in high definition — if not, I am less likely to watch them. With the advent of 3D devices — if that technology takes off — we could be faced with a situation in the next few years in which the dominant technology, high definition, is replaced relatively quickly. If this happens, and as this cycle accelerates, how does content keep up? How do people looking to make something, to contribute, mature within a technological landscape that immediately changes? How, then, does anything develop?
I can’t do everything wrong
DIY Playground
Aaron has just sent me a link to God’s own playhouse. They had me at Fastening & Joining.
The Englishwoman’s Address
I examine it now and then, the address written in my grandmother’s Bible more than half a century ago.
It was placed there several years before my father approached my pretty mother on a Tennessee bus, removing his hat in a smooth sweep, asking, “Mam, is this seat taken?” Mother, dressed up, perfectly coiffed, a presentation tempered by the sadness just visible in her face.
They were married within a year. A couple of years later, living in Texas, he gave her a letter forwarded by his mother. It was a letter from the Englishwoman. “What do you want me to do with it?” she asked. “I’ll let you decide,” he said.
The Englishwoman was in New York, on a visit. She had kept up a correspondence with his mother. The woman he loved in between WWII bomber runs was hoping to see him. Mother threw the letter away, unread.
My mother lost her fiance during that war. Her childhood sweetheart drowned in the English Channel after his plane ditched. The war also took her brother, who died in Asia. Then she met my father after he got back from the war.
I don’t know why he left without the Englishwoman.
When I was a girl, I played very simple classical pieces on the piano in my room. My father would come in and sit on the bed or a chair. He told me music like that had soothed him during the war, helped him forget the rattling gun he fired in the turret, the friend who came to him before a mission, extending a trembling hand saying, “This is goodbye. I won’t make it.” The fact the man’s words came true.
Within minutes, while I played, my father would ease into stillness and quiet. His blue eyes would cloud over. And once, when I turned around, I saw, for the first time those eyes brimming with tears.
Now there’s just a name and an address. But it’s summer and since the man on the left in the photo died in July, 19 years ago now, I can’t stop the call in my head until I go ahead and study each dip and curve and flow.
I wonder what happened to her. I wonder what the letter said. I wonder why he left without her and why he married the woman on the bus. Even though, as Mother said, his own mother “preferred” the Englishwoman, had grown to love her through her letters.
That’s the wonder and the strangeness of it, to be born from so many layers of loss.
it’s over
John Isner has won the longest tennis match on record by beating Nicolas Mahut 70-68 in the final set at Wimbledon.
NYC Polaroid photo auction
A sale of more than 1,000 prints of 20th-century photography fetched over $12 million in New York, with the highest individual price going to Ansel Adams’ “Clearing Winter Storm”.
Adams’ “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park,” a moody black-and-white mural-size print of the park’s rugged, rocky terrain, sold for $722,500 on Monday. It shattered the previous auction record of $609,600 for his “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” from 1941, set in 2006.
“Clearing Winter Storm” had been estimated to sell for $300,000 to $500,000.
