Douglas Coupland, you may remember, wrote Generation X. Funny how he snubs Facebook and MySpace on his website's homepage, yet puts his Twitter link right next to it.
Design Boom recently featured this simple but incredibly powerful installation by Brooklyn-based artist Sebastian Errazuriz. Using the wall outside his studio, he's created a simple tally of some sobering numbers: military combat deaths in Iraq in 2009, and military suicides in 2009.
From Design Boom:
'When I first found the overall statistics that summed the 304 suicides by US soldiers during 2009, I was shocked. I tried to find a number to compare that statistic. To my surprise the suicide statistic doubled the total of 149 US soldiers that had died in the Iraq war during 2009 and equaled the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.'
Errazuriz's first instinct was to post the statistic on facebook—dumbfounded by the lack of response and interest, he bought can of black paint and decided to 'post' the news in the real world on his own wall outside his studio in Brooklyn. Equipped with a ladder, he marked a black strip for every dead soldier, until both the suicide rates and war rates occupied the entire wall and were registered as a single image.
We've probably all seen the sprawling flag or cross installations—one marker for every fallen soldier—that occasionally pop up in parks, beaches, and along highways. We've also all looked at online infographics or charts that show similar numbers.
Errazuriz's approach is far simpler, but brings the message home in a way that's disarming and heartbreaking. You can see more photos and read the rest of the interview here.
(Via)
Letter from Steven Spielberg to Georgie Porgie to congratulate him for surpassing Jaws at the box office. From RetroStarWars.
[gallery]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hIcwvrkXDo]
Martha Argerich (born June 5, 1941) is an Argentine concert pianist. She hates being in the limelight, but is still widely recognized as one of the greatest modern-day pianists. The first hit headlines in 1965 when, ahed 24, she won the seventh International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw with a defiantly confident reading of Chopin's Etude in C major (Op. 10, No. 1). At the time, besides being already a master pianist, she also conveyed an aura of a nouvelle vague actress, wearing conspicuous mini-skirts and continuously smoking cigarettes. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcsRl_LIJHA]
As critic Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker: "Argerich brings to bear qualities that are seldom contained in one person: she is a pianist of brain-teasing technical agility; she is a charismatic woman with an enigmatic reputation; she is an unaffected interpreter whose native language is music. This last may be the quality that sets her apart. A lot of pianists play huge double octaves; a lot of pianists photograph well. But few have the unerring naturalness of phrasing that allows them to embody the music rather than interpret it."
Smell like a monster:Old Spice Man was the biggest viral marketing hit of the year, and now he's even worked his way into Sesame Street. In a new clip, Grover the furry blue monster tells viewers the advantages of smelling like a monster and knowing the word "on." Isaiah Mustafa doesn't make an appearance, but Grover makes a pretty good stand-in.
The spoof is spot on. Grover sports a towel and does the "look at yourself, now back to me" bit, the "two tickets to that thing you love" bit, and of course, "I'm on a horse."
Controversy definitely scores YouTube views, but Old Spice Grover's humor and cuteness are more likely to win over the target Sesame Street audience. (via)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkd5dJIVjgM]
True Mud Sesame Street pushed the envelope a bit more with a parody of HBO's True Blood, a show with its fair share of nudity, death and gore. The kids' version is called "True Mud," and instead of being a secret vampire, the main character is a secret Grouch, looking for some mud for his mud bath.
It's a fun rhyming lesson, but is Sesame Street just looking for attention by capitalizing on a current hit show that's very much for grown-ups only? I don't know. Sesame Street has parodied plenty of movies that kids wouldn't be allowed to see. The only difference is that those movies probably weren't on the cover of Rolling Stone at the time.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAZ1-nF3VI]
I think on balance, though, that the Old Spice one has the edge.
https://docs.google.com/present/embed?id=df7rw7vz_338cz6ngnd6&size=m Warning: this will make you procrastinate
...it's gonna be bigger than the WWF. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSggEhvfi9U&feature=player_embedded]
Actually it's a scene from Gummo.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo] Of course, this isn't the first time the show has taken a swipe at Fox: the cartoon has parodied Fox News, while the network's owner, Rupert Murdoch, has appeared in the show as a "billionaire tyrant".
It is the first time an artist has been involved in the opening credits of the show, credited with being the most successful television brand of all time. Al Jean, The Simpsons executive producer, joked: "This is what you get when you outsource."
Banksy is said to have been inspired by reports that Simpsons characters are animated in Seoul, South Korea.
The sequence is said to have been one of the most closely guarded secrets in US television – comparable to the concealment of Banksy's own identity.
The episode, MoneyBart, will be shown in the UK on 21 October.
Yanko Tsvetkov has produced a fantastic series of maps looking at the way we see stereotypes. You can see the full set and buy large prints on his website - but these are some of my favourites.
Where I Live
Map. Digital illustration. Editorial for Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 2009
Europe according to Germany
Map. Digital illustration.
Europe according to Italy
Map. Digital illustration.
Europe according to Britain
Map. Digital illustration.
Europe according to Gay Men
Map. Digital illustration.
(ps, thanks for the spot, Max)
Click image to view large (recommended). By XKCD.
(ps - thanks for the spot Max!)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHmO01iH5Fs] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S_lPBeMLL8]
As heard on La Musique de Paris Derniere (which you should totally buy).
The Duetto buffo di due gatti ("humorous duet for two cats") is a popular performance piece for sopranos. It is often performed as a concert encore. While the piece is typically attributed to Gioachino Rossini, it was not actually written by him, but is instead a compilation written in 1825 that draws principally on his 1816 opera, Otello. The compiler was likely the English composer Robert Lucas de Pearsall, who for this purpose used the pseudonym "G. Berthold"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d63jKihoYRg&feature=player_embedded]
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The music consists, in order of appearance, of: the "Katte-Cavatine" by the Danish composer C.E.F. Weyse[2] part of the duet for Otello and Iago in Act 2 of Otello part of the cabaletta to the aria "Ah, come mai non senti", sung by Rodrigo in the same act The lyrics are uncharacteristic, consisting entirely of the repeated word "miau" ("meow").
Hunting in Mongolia.
Embrace is a low-cost infant incubator for use in developing countries. About 20 million low-birth-weight and premature babies are born every year around the world. Four million die annually, and one of the biggest problems these babies face is staying warm, because they don’t have enough fat on their bodies to regulate their body temperature. As a result, many babies die or grow up with severe lifelong health problems. Temperature regulation is the primary function of a traditional incubator, but incubators can cost up to $20,000. They require a constant supply of electricity, they’re difficult to operate and you’re not going to find them in rural areas where many of these babies are dying.
Enter the Embrace Infant Warmer. It incorporates a phase change material — a wax-like substance — into a sleeping bag design. You heat this pouch of phase change material, and then once it’s melted, it’s able to maintain a constant temperature over the next 4 to 6 hours without the use of electricity. You place the pouch of phase change material in the sleeping bag, and it creates a warm microenvironment for the baby. They’ve gotten the cost down to less than one percent of the cost of a traditional incubator, and are currently in the process of testing the device. The whole team moved out to Bangalore about a year ago.
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(Totally pinched from YMFY)
| [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD7eagLl5c4] |
“Professor Fletcher’s invention of the CellScope, which is a Nokia device with a microscope attachment, was the inspiration for a teeny-tiny film created by Sumo Science at Aardman. It stars a 9mm girl called Dot as she struggles through a microscopic world. All the minuscule detail was shot using CellScope technology and a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics.” — Nokia
"My very worst injury ever, the one that almost killed me, actually occurred on a very routine stunt. I was shooting Armour of God in Yugoslavia, and was still recovering from the jet lag of flying twenty hours to get there. The stunt was simple-just jumping down from a castle wall to a tree below. The first time I tried it, the stunt went perfectly, but I wasn't satisfied with the take. I tried it again, and the second time, I somehow missed the branch I was trying to grab. Whish! I fell past the tree and onto the ground below. Actually, there was a cameraman down there trying to capture a low angle, and if he hadn't scrambled out of the way, I would have probably landed on him. We would both have been hurt, but not badly. Instead, I hit the rocky ground head first. A piece of my skull cracked and shot up into my brain, and blood poured from my ears. The production team quickly got on the phones to try to find the nearest hospital that could do emergency brain surgery, and eight hours later, I was going under the knife. The operation was successful, and I recovered quickly-even though there's a permanent hole in my head now, with a plastic plug there to keep my brains in"
"While I was shooting a fight scene in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, my arm was accidentally slashed by a sword that should have had a blunted edge. Blood went everywhere, and I fell down screaming ... and the camera kept rolling! That's real pain you see in the movie!"
"I broke my ankle while jumping onto a hovercraft in Rumble in the Bronx. After the bone was set and a cast was put on, I was told to stay off my feet until it healed. But I had a movie to finish! I went back to the set and put a sock on my broken foot, painted to look like a sneaker."
Outtakes from one of my favourite Jackie Chan fights, from Young Master: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pLhcsgLEM8&w=700]
Plus the last fight from Drunken Master: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWpQi3_v7Zc&w=700]
And the running commentary...genius. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wOe5taSiR0&w=700]
ps - Quotes came from HERE.