spam name
Daniell Junko
A Few Paintings
Reading Daryl’s post today about writing has me wanting to post a few photos of my work. I loved the discussion of the nuts and bolts of the artistic process of writing and I found myself wanting to add to the discussion, but all my responses were in painter speak. I could try to translate it, but writing is really not my creative forté. Instead I thought I’d just show y’all some paintings. So in the spirit of “better to beg forgiveness….”
– Pam
Brave but foolish, he was soaked by the explosion of water
James May from Top Gear rides in a U-2 spy plane
Another Devour find.
Advice About Writing Advice, Please
I’m always trying to update a general advice sheet I hand out in my fiction workshops. If you have things you think I should add or take out or clarify, please let me know. Thanks.
P.S. I’m open to sarcasm too.
Gen X Slackers
It’s strange to read a NYT article that sums up my last ten years (I turned 30 in January):
It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.
photo out of context
Dear Clusterflock
Number of email addresses and twitter accounts you are personally responsible for, and are in current use. Bonus question: do you use an RSS reader, and if so, which one?
Don’t Shoot the Barista, 2
Recalling our earlier barista dicussion, I was amused when this lady finally had enough (via):
Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson — make that barista — for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain’s rules.
people who live in stone houses …
Portal 2 in-game footage
quote out of context
Although the paper does not discuss Gehrig specifically, its authors in interviews acknowledged the clear implication: Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease.
philosophical smelling salts
An old college friend has a few choice remarks about Herzog’s view of nature:
Herzog presents, in extreme form, the sorts of objection we must directly confront and answer if we are to break out of the rut of our current unconsidered, untethered and often contradictory assumptions [of nature]. Our minds are clouded on these matters. We need to wake up from our stupor, and Herzog provides the needed philosophical smelling salts. His comments serve as an opening question to which modern society assumes the answer. Upon reflection, however, we will find hidden contradiction and muddled confusion at every turn as we unpack that answer. And this is exactly why we are in desperate need of taking just this sort of radical objection to modern presuppositions seriously if we are to begin to jump start real dialectic about the universe and and our relation to it (i.e., philosophy properly understood). We need to be shown our desperate need by having someone peal back the layers of accepted ideas and question the unquestioned cultural assumptions about nature to which we have grown accustomed.
Sejnowski says he agrees with Kurzweil’s assessment that about a million lines of code may be enough to simulate the human brain
Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, thinks we are twenty years away from reverse-engineering the brain.
“The singular criticism of the singularity is that brain is too complicated, too magical and there’s something about its properties we can’t emulate,” Kurzweil told attendees at the Singularity Summit over the weekend. “But the exponential growth in technology is being applied to reverse-engineer the brain, arguably the most important project in history.”
dear clusterflock
From The Economist:
The tone has shifted more recently, though, as café owners are both turning off the signal and banning the use of computers and mobile devices entirely. Nick Bilton, the New York Times’ Bits blog editor, was banned from reading a book on his Kindle at one establishment a few day ago, despite protesting that he was, well, reading a book. The Actual Café in Oakland opened last year with laptop-free weekends. The owner, Sal Bednarz, wrote in an email, “I think it’s fascinating that we’ve allowed technology to creep into so much of our lives that it can feel like an affront when someone (like me) asks us to step away from it for a short while.” The Los Angeles Times last weekend filed a thoughtful entry on the same topic, looking at California coffeeshops that pulled all the plugs. Dan Drozdenko, the owner of the Downbeat Café in Los Angeles, says, “People come here because we don’t offer it. They know they can get their work done and not get distracted.” Now, that’s something new.
Is it important that we have tech free zones? How do you unplug?
fragment
I remember as a kid how much trouble I had with the afternoon and always worried that when I became an adult, and the afternoon part of my life had commenced, how difficult it would be to get through it, how boring and monotonous.
The Choi+Shine submission for the Icelandic High-Voltage Electrical Pylon International Design Competition
Choi+Shine added: “Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these 150-foot-tall modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”
things I hadn’t posted
3 war vets, 1 good leg: Amputees climb Kilimanjaro
100-year-old Scotch pulled from frozen crate
Argentine lake may offer clues to life on Mars
At the Death Camps, Muslim Leaders Grapple With Jews’ Pain
Fossils of Earliest Animal Life Possibly Discovered
Hidden in Wis. national forest: marijuana megafarm
John Lennon’s letter to British singer arrives 34 years late
from the spam
First, we were promised girl-on-girl between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Then, we were told no Natalie boobs. Then we saw some freaky pics. And now we have video of the stars kissing and touching one another’s naughty bits. This marks the first time I’ve ever been turned on by somethi
The Copenhagen Wheel
I love it that ingenuity is being turned to the creation of such fine things.
from someone else’s comments
I heard Quasimodo was the result of Adam Lambert & Lady GaGa going doggie style with Adam receiving.
We All Get It in the End
I wanted to put this comment on Deron’s original post. Danny and I just watched Shortbus for the first time, tonight.
*sweet jesus!*
UMA
Hymn to Undiscovered Land
Large Art
at no added cost.
sannah kvist
sannah kvist’s photostream is fantastic.
