Lazy Saturday Links: Make “Hella” an official SI unit!
March 5, 2010 – 4:34 pm
That's a big number.
That would require hella signatures
This is the kind of shit the internet is made for. Boing Boing reports that a buncha people are launching a useless and doomed-to-failure hopefully successful campaign to make the prefix for 1027 “hella.”
For instance: ‘the sun (mass of 2.2 hellatons) would release energy at 0.3 hellawatts.’ It would also come in handy for eventually measuring Internet traffic and US national debt.
My rough calculations suggest that there are 110 hellamolecules (hover for calculation) comprising No Doubt’s “Rock Steady” album, which contained the song Hella Good. For those who complain that “wicked” is not being considered or that this is “imperialist” or “anglo-centric,” I ask you to have a happy Saturday on another blog.
Who's that stud?
Youtube auto captioning
Youtube is rolling out automatic captioning on videos! It’s far from perfect, but props to Google for doing something to make their mountains of data accessible to those unable to hear.
My best guess on this is that Google will begin to allow users to suggest and tweak their captioning engine until it gets them much closer to perfect. If you think of the YouTube video library as the world’s biggest collection of natural speech, this could be Google’s ticket to leapfrogging any competitors in natural-language text-to-speech. You might see them allowing users to record and index phone and in-person conversation, a practice that would fall in their typical space of both creepy and awesome.
The happiest house
Secret millionaire gives away $7 million dollars
Now that’s hella dollars! I love this story because it reminds us that money is a means to ends of shelter, experiences, travel, etc. but has no value in and of itself. The ideas that all of us must strive to earn more, that our worth is our economic worth, and that if we had more we would spend more, can quickly become sicknesses. We can’t forget that on a big enough scale, our net worth rounds down to zero.
From the Los Angeles Times:
“She enjoyed other people, and every friend she had was a friend for who she was. They weren’t friends for what she had.”
Groner was born in a small Illinois farming community, but by the time she was 12 both of her parents had died. She and her twin sister, Gladys, were taken in by George Anderson, a member of one of Lake Forest’s leading families.
The Andersons raised the girls and paid for them to attend Lake Forest College. After Groner graduated in 1931, she took a job at nearby Abbott Laboratories, where she worked as a secretary for 43 years.
In 1935 she bought three $60 shares of specially issued Abbott stock and never sold them. The shares split many times over the years, Marlatt said, and Groner reinvested the dividends. Long before she died, her initial outlay had become a fortune.
Pop stars care about you…
March 1, 2010 – 11:55 pm…if your YouTube video gets two million hits.
If the Jonas Brothers made you feel old, Justin Bieber–the most famous kid you’ve never heard of–certainly will. The fifteen-year-old tweenage heartthrob was discovered singing to his webcam and catapulted to the top, where he now has Usher on speed dial and practices artful product placement.
But even more terrifying than this musical Macaulay Culkin are his fans, including a three-year-old who only wishes that she has a spare set of panties to throw. And “because he cares,” he visited her!
Is it the same pesticides that cause early puberty in little girls, or is a more sinister force at work here? I don’t dare to imagine.
Fun in the snowpocalypse
March 1, 2010 – 11:15 am
Block
February 28, 2010 – 12:55 pmA man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
To me it is more than a blank computer screen staring at my eyes. It’s the blank canvas of choices and decisions, with one brain to guide them. A block is the failure to self actualize: thoughts running through my head that wither when I open my mouth or put fingers to keyboard. Vivid dreams, fierce insights, a deep and rich inner world that cannot coexist with the mundanity of its own expression.
The issue is not just writing–it pervades my life. The shred of divine within that sees deep mystery and understands human relationship has an energy blockage. The boundary between will and expression, thought and action, is stilted and rough, and sometimes it’s easier to keep thought inside than to hurl it into the world.
Questions of talent aside, there is a skill to be learned here as well. The discipline to sit in the fire and practice writing in patience, carefully collecting the gems and discarding the rest. The mastery of dialogue and metaphor, of anticipation and presentation. Writing a movie is nothing like editing a documentary film.
I never wanted to be a writer, I wanted to make movies and found writing as a possible entrée into that world. Upon sitting down to do so I realized how much I have to say, and how woefully unprepared I have been to say it. How incompatible a narrative screenplay is with a single flashing passionate thoughts-that those thoughts may take days or years or more lifetime than we have left to be crafted into a storyline.
There’s always the blog, where half-thoughts are welcome. And thankfully living gives opportunity to practice.
Discipline to sit, discipline to meditate, discipline to allow flow to happen. That’s what she said.
Love, on a loop
February 20, 2010 – 1:23 am
so it seemed...
This would make for a very funny video art installation:
A couple friends and I went to a swanky hotel bar tonight. We usually go to more mellow places (and did afterward,) but the peoplewatching is sometimes more fun in swankville.
Across the table from us was a man, who was quickly joined by a woman with two full drinks in martini glasses. They chatted occasionally but spent more time downing their drinks, looking around the bar, and staring into one another’s eyes. Two rounds of very alcoholic drinks, and they raised their eyebrows at each other and left for the elevator.
Within two minutes another couple sat down–the woman also to our left and the man to our right. He ordered two martinis and they downed them quickly. She stared at him, flitting her fingers back and forth across his shoulder. He ordered another two. They didn’t talk much. She sucked all three olives in her martini down at once, then the drink soon after. They quickly left.
We thought this was hilarious – a revolving door of precoitus boozing, we thought. And how strange that it happened in succession and with the woman sitting on the same side both times. It was like watching a video art installation.
And then–dear reader, this is not a joke–within two minutes a third couple sat down with mixed drinks. They looked into each others’ eyes but mostly gazed around the room, downing their drinks.
This labrador went to cotillion
February 18, 2010 – 12:35 amAmazing, impressive, funny, and creepy. Remember to chill out y’all and have a happy Thursday!
(thanks Aartik!)
Amazing buckle up PSA
February 16, 2010 – 2:17 pmStefan just sent me this PSA, which was called by some commenters the most beautiful PSA they had seen. Watch it.
Spreading joy in foreclosure
February 16, 2010 – 9:08 am
From the New York Times
Everywhere I go in New York I see closed-down stores. Whether they are foreclosed, in search of a tenant, or undergoing renovation I assume varies by the storefront. But I do know that the broken window theory holds here: papered-up windows or cleared-out stores spread bummer around the city, and I’d bet petty crime is not far behind.
So instead of paper why don’t we blow up artists’ paintings or allow artists to paint on rolls of paper that then gets hung in the windows? The artists then have a forum to display their work in prime locations appreciative passerby – it’s cheap, quick, and easy to set up. A nonprofit could supply paper with this art and compensate artists to the city and landlords for a nominal fee.
Okay–who knows someone who knows someone who could make this happen?
Flying across our country
February 14, 2010 – 7:11 pmSouthwest 1803
LAX -> JFK
I tried to capture my state of mind in that moment. It’s not supposed to be pleasant.
Influences
- Nina Paley, All Creative Work is Derivative
- Hyper Jean-Luc Goddard (suck it, Kuleshov)
Video contains:
- Engine sounds
- Delta’s In flight Safety Video
- Barack Obama 2008 acceptance speech
- FOX, attempted shoe bomb
- NBC, Tom Brokaw, 9/11/01
- Osama Bin Laden 2004 speech
- Brassed Off, sampled in Tubthumping by Chumbawumba: Truth is, I thought it mattered.
- CNN, first 5 minutes of 9/11 attack coverage
- John F. Kennedy: We choose to go to the moon.
- My family singing Maot Tzur to me over skype
- First Moon Landing
- Ted Hope receives Trailblazer Award at Woodstock
- Battlestar Galactica miniseries
- CNN, Ivan Eland on the Terror Alert System
Music (not where I got the audio from, I had most of the MP3s:)
- Fischerspooner, Emerge
- Vivaldi, Four Seasons – Spring I
- Andy Suzuki, California
- Eartha Kitt, Santa Baby
- Beatles, All You Need Is Love
- Beach Boys, California Girls
- Alicia Keys, Empire State of Mind
- Beatles, A Day In The Life
- Simon and Garfunkel, 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin Groovy)
- Kelly Clarkson, Star Spangled Banner
- John Lennon, Imagine
Whee!
The Evolution of Remix Culture
February 13, 2010 – 10:25 amI love this video. Let’s do a remake of it!
