miscellaneous me

Occupy Andy's Room

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:13:00 -0500

The movement is taking hold everywhere.

(not sure where the image is from…but thanks Tanya for forwarding)

"I am __" - A really lovely short film by Steven Nicholas Smith

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:37:37 -0500

I'm easily amused.

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:12:54 -0500

(click da pic)

Just for fun.

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:41:17 -0500

Just for fun.

It took a lot of coordination, along with a sincere lack of...

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:43:00 -0500

It took a lot of coordination, along with a sincere lack of embarrassment, to get hundreds of half-naked subway riders to execute the “No Pants Subway Ride 2009.” And it was probably no easy task to get 80 people with Royal Blue polos and khakis to do the same in the “Best Buy escapade (not to mention 111 shirtless men that descended upon “Abercrombie & Fitch”). Truth is, the folks at Improv Everywhere are simply the best at putting these together. Sometimes though, it’s the simplest ones that bring the biggest smiles. Here’s one of those.

Shorpy translates to "Geez, what time is it? Have I been on this same site for two hours?"

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:08:00 -0500

Shorpy, by its own definition, is “an online archive of thousands of high-resolution photos from the 1850s to 1950s.” However, it’s so much more than that. It’s a way to appreciate some fantastic photography, a way to connect with a past that’s becoming way too easy to forget, and a way to kill a whole lotta time without paying attention…so be warned.

Here’s a sample picture from Kansas City found on the site:

May 1941. “Diamaxion [Dymaxion] house, metal, adapted corn bin, built by Butler Brothers, Kansas City. Designed and promoted by R. Buckminister Fuller.” Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott.

Enjoy!

Remix Parts 1-3

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:13:00 -0500

I’m not the first one to see these nor the first to spread them around. But they’re awfully compelling and I thought I’d share them with you if you haven’t seen them yet.

Apparently, this is a four-part series, with the final chapter still to be produced. If you’d like to learn more, the filmmaker who did these, Kirby Ferguson, has an accompanying Website at everythingisaremix.info. Enjoy.

Truly imaginative music video.

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:51:00 -0500

This is a truly great new music video from Steve Shane. He made 3 different versions of his music video and then filmed them again on 3 iPhones. On top of this, to engage his fans even further, he’s put all 3 videos online so fans can download them and recreate/remix them themselves,

Take a look.

The Genius of Tim Minchin

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:34:00 -0500

I am convinced that not enough people know about Tim Minchin, the British-born musician/comedian/actor…and I would like that to stop right now. I bring this up today because I just saw that his “9 minute beat poem” entitled “Storm” was recently animated…and it is fantastic. So, here is “Storm,” written and performed by Tim Minchin, directed and animated by DC Turner and produced by Tracy King, along with three of my other Tim Minchin favorites. Enjoy.

Prejudice

Lullaby

Some People have It Worse Than I

From Georgia to Maine in Four Minutes

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 21:34:00 -0500

Kevin “Fester” Gallagher took six months to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Each day, he took 24 photos of successive steps. Here is his film, Green Tunnel.

This is an absolutely beautiful way to spend 4 minutes.

Enjoy.

Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

A TED Presentation of Epic Proportions

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 21:33:00 -0500

Over the years, I have watched, what seems like, every video from the TED conference. From Jamie Oliver’s presentation on kids’ lunches to Emily Oster’s impassioned presentation on AIDS, Africa and prejudice. Huge fan. However, at TED 2010, they finally featured a guest that breaks new, substantive ground. Enjoy.

Where all my time goes

Mon, 23 May 2011 21:31:00 -0500

It was supposed to be a three hour tour…

(This pic is by artist Fuchsia Macaree)

Knock Knock

Fri, 20 May 2011 21:30:00 -0500

I recently ran across a design by the artist Nathan Pyle on a T-Shirt at Threadless. Which, in turn, led me to his other works…which are very fun and creative. Here’s four of them (with more over at his site). Enjoy.

Knock Knock

Pillows Are Creeps

Where Cursors Come From

An Unfortunate Genetic Inheritance

Unbelieveably good logo.

Fri, 06 May 2011 21:30:00 -0500

Just incredible.

Man...Glee Club was never like this.

Tue, 03 May 2011 21:29:00 -0500

Despite having been a choir-geek from high school through college, I have not seen an episode of Glee yet. I did, however, run across this clip of the University of Oregon Men’s a capella group - On the Rocks - doing Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’.

OK...NOW I'm ready to go.

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:29:00 -0500

This is the body of David Morales Colón. Instead of a standard viewing coffin/wake scenario, his family, apparently, opted for the lifestyle burial option. I think it’s funny that he’s STILL not wearing a helmet. I mean, c’mon…what kind of message does this send the kids?

You know, for years now I have always believed in cremation. But this is a game changer. I’m now thinking me and naked Herzogovenian female aerialists, a barrel full of monkeys (NOT the kids game) and this song playing in a loop.

Sadly, I know people with closets bigger than this.

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:28:00 -0500

I love architecture.

I especially love “green” architecture.

This guy really has it going on.

Would You Like Fries With That?

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:27:00 -0500

So…exactly how hard is it to even earn minimum wage as a recording artist? Really hard.

London-based information artist/data journalist David McCandless knows…and it ain’t pretty.

(originally seen on Mashable)

The Pale Blue Dot

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:19:00 -0500

Everyone who knows me knows that it takes very little to make me all teary-eyed. I get swept up easily. The James Earl Jones speech about baseball from Field of Dreams (“…The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again…”) and that humans-reunited-with-lion-they-raised-from-a-cub video with all of that Whitney Houston music and……

But there’s an audio clip I’ve listened to a dozen times or more that continues to choke me up. This morning, a friend of mine sent me this clip - which he knew I liked - re-edited into a video/image montage. Please enjoy the clip…but listen to the words (I’ve included them in their entirety below). Here’s the incomparable Carl Sagan (by the way, it’s from his book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” available here, at Amazon).

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

(P.S. - Dan, thanks for sending the clip along. I hadn’t watched for awhile.)

Effective car safety ads.

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:18:00 -0500

I’m sure that many of you have already seem both of these. So pardon me if I’m being repetitive. I recently stumbled upon them again and thought they needed a re-post…

- - -

First, the beautiful…

and the shocking…

Special mention needs to go to the Victoria (Australia) Transport Accident Commission. For 20+ years, they’ve been producing shockingly realistic, real-life road safety ads. In that time, the number of accidents has been reduced by more than 50%. Here’s one of them:

Here’s where you can see the rest:
http://www.youtube.com/TACVictoria