Speaking of Kottke …
He has a great post up about John Tyler’s grandsons still being alive, which is insane to think about seeing as how Tyler was the 10th President of the US and was born in 1790.
He suggests coining a term for someone or something that bridges a huge span of time, in this case almost two hundred years of history.
There’s also this 1956 game show appearance of a Lincoln assassination eyewitness and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) shaking hands during his lifetime with both John Quincy Adams (b 1767) and John F Kennedy (d 1963), one man spanning 200 years of American history.
Jason suggests “history bridges”. I suggested “minding the history gap“. His is more of a noun, I suppose mine is more of a verb — as in John Tyler’s grandson is minding the history gap. Neither really hits the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak. But doesn’t there need to be a coined phrase for this sort of phenomenon.
Old Masters and Young Geniuses
I was writing a post on David Galenson myself but Jason has done it so well I’ll send you to his post.
Glenn Brown, Polichinelle
Vengeance and Kubrick
Two great posts from kottke.org. One on vengeance in Papua New Guinea and one on Pablo Ferro, the man who did the trailer for Dr. Strangelove. The posts are completely unrelated, content-wise, but are good examples of the investigative blogging Jason’s been doing more of lately.
clusterflock interviews: Jason Kottke
The second in a series of clusterflock interviews, Jason Kottke, of course, runs kottke.org and has been instrumental in shaping contemporary blog culture. I had the pleasure of guest blogging at kottke.org a few weeks ago, and the experience prompted me to want to know more about the person behind the site, the process of creating what kottke.org has become, and the pressures associated with running it. The interview was conducted by instant message and edited from there.
I wanted to start by finding out how you got to this point, what the process of creating kottke.org was.
Well, I’d been putting stuff online since early 1995. First, a personal site, then a site called 0sil8, which was a series of experiments in design, writing, etc. Pushing the limits of HTML. kottke.org started as an online diary for me because I wanted something I could update continually, not just once a month or every two months. I drew my initial inspiration for the site from the online diaries of the time…not so much from other weblogs. The process was very gradual. No planning, really. I almost never plan anything out…I just head towards things that hold my interest.
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short video as a contemporary equivalent of the photograph
Last night Jason was kind enough to point out that Photojojo picked up on my post about short video being a contemporary equivalent of a photograph. He also mentioned this video of a sleeping David Beckham, which reminded me of the video portraits on the front page of the Hillman Curtis web site. Today, Jason pointed to an article arguing that short looping videos are the real long photographs. I think that pretty much covers it.
infographics
Charles Joseph Minard may get all the accolades for his graphic of Napolean’s march to Moscow, but for me, the above chart is the most beautiful ever created.
two articles on transgender
Thailand has banned castration as a means to an inexpensive alternative to gender reassignment surgery.
However, senior health official Tara Chinakarn admitted that policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret.
And Jason pointed to this article and photographs of the incredible skill and artfulness involved in one person’s transformation from a man to a woman.
I don’t know which methods were used in the creation of this particular neovagina, but surely this is art of the highest caliber. Sculpture in flesh tissue and nerve bundles.
Steve Nash directs his own commercial
(via kottke)
More on the economics of space
I posted about the implications of trading with aliens and Paul Krugman on interstellar trade. Here’s more on the economies of space:
Money has no value in space. When seven astronauts are living together in a cramped atmosphere the psychology of small isolated groups kicks in. Whoever has squirreled away the most M&Ms, tortillas or coffee has the most bargaining power. Those are items that are most prized at the end of a mission if someone runs short in their own stash. Astronauts’ meals are color coded on shuttle missions — and reliable sources tell ABC News some astronauts aren’t above switching the colored dots on their dehydrated meals if they have run out of say, lasagna, on day six and have way too much creamed spinach left.
kottke.org is ten years old today
Three cities, two serious relationships, one child, 200,000 frequent flier miles, at least seven jobs, 14,500 posts, six designs, and ten years ago, I started “writing things down” and never stopped. That makes kottke.org one of a handful of the longest continually updated weblogs on the web…something to be proud of, I guess. The only thing I’ve done longer than kottke.org is sported this haircut. (Perhaps not something to be proud of…the hair-in-stasis, I mean.)
Congratulations!
we are the world web, we are the children helping sell thousands of copies of Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah
File this one under holy crap!
It starts with clapclap, goes by way of waxy, has a via clusterflock, on to Kottke (who has a guest blogger, no less), then designing god Michael Beirut puts it in Design Observer's column, bloggies like this one join suit….and…voila: "Hallelujah" is the number one song on iTunes. Awesome.
Jason responds:
I just checked, and sure enough, Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah is the #1 single on iTunes right now. Not sure it’s an exact cause and effect, but cool nonetheless.
Update: Jon writes:
I noticed the same thing and blogged a very similar post earlier today, but my guess is that the itunes ranking has more to do with the song being sung by the contestant on american idol this week and the judges subsequently mentioning their love for the buckley version — thus driving the american idol traffic to itunes. not that we aren’t the web of course but . . . .
cluster on the deck
It’s officially unofficial.
As you may have noticed, we are now running a series of ads on the side of each page populated by The Deck. For those not familiar with The Deck, the Coudal page will do a better job of explaining it than I can.
Suffice it to say that I am very proud and pleased to be part of the program. We are on a trial run for the first three months, after which we will reconvene to formalize things.
All this makes me feel like the Tappet brothers on Click and Clack when they say “and even though Mara Liasson cringes every time we say it, this is NPR”.
Anyway, a quick thank you to Jim, at Coudal Partners, and to Jason, the patron saint of clusterflockTM.
I feel like a proud poppa tonight.
And, as always, a special thanks to Chris, Andrew, and Patrick. These guys are champions. Without their effort we’d still be picking bugs out of our teeth.
Not that we aren’t.
Or won’t.
Oh, fuck it.
And finally, an all encompassing thank you to those who participate on this site. clusterflock is nothing without us.
