Video of the Day
May 29, 2007 | Arts & Culture
Sixteen seconds: Try That Bike Stunt
Both Sides Are Equally Human
May 14, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
The Storytellers: Why Are Most Artists Liberal?
Stories, by their nature, have some sort of conflict. Otherwise, they would be boring. Conflict, by its nature, has at least two sides. To be able to write these two sides well, the artist has to understand, deep inside, that both sides are equally human. The more he portrays the other side as human, the better the story. The less human the other side, the more flawed the story.
That puts artists on the humanistic side of most ideological battles throughout history: against racism (the other race is people, too), against slavery (slaves are people, too), for feminism (women are people, too), for the rights of children (children think and feel just like adults), against child labor, for gay rights (homosexuals are just as human), for the downtrodden, for the poor (they are just like us, only poor), against most wars (because the other side bleeds red, too, and mourns with the same pain), and against most religions (in particular, against the religions that claim its followers are ‘the chosen’ and those who are not will not get into heaven and/or are inferior in some way).
In conclusion, then, you don’t have to be a liberal to be a good storyteller. But the better your story is, the more of a liberal you are. (Unfortunately for aspiring writers, that does not work the other way round: you cannot aspire to be liberal and hope that will make you a better artist.)
A Big Inside Joke on Several Levels
May 12, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
No, silly, not the Bush administration – LOL!!
Better, David McRaney's fantastic article on Internet communication culture and sub-cultures, called A Special In-Depth Analysis L337 Katz0rz:
Still, a fusion of sorts between learned, direct language and rapid, practical digital missives takes place with Leetspeak and macros. Both relay a great deal of information in a small burst of code. Each depends on the receiver of the information having working knowledge of the culture and its references. In a sense, these serve as argots, and help identify both sides of the information transfer as belonging to the subculture where they appear. The in-joke is part of the communication. The separation of ingroup and outgroup helps drive the rapid evolution of both leetspeak and macros.
Someone uses lol, which turns into the spoken “l-o-l,” which then becomes “lol” but sounds like “lawl,” and at some point someone in a forum thread, in response to something funny, puts up an image of Lal, the name of Data’s daughter from a single, obscure “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode. It’s a big inside joke on several levels, and the creator gets golf claps for pulling together all these references into one simple understatement. Everyone who gets it belongs in the ingroup, and the behavioral cycle is encouraged and repeated.
That post is full of win. The comments are gr8, 2.
Programatic Palettes
May 12, 2007 | Software
It all started when I saw Running the Numbers. I really enjoyed the colors of the very last photo, Shipping Containers. I thought, "I wonder if that would make a good color palette?"
I fired up the Digital Color Meter, which ships in the Applications/Utilities directory of all Mac OS X systems, and set the aperture wide to average the color variations within each container color. For the first 30 container images (two rows), I manually copied the RGB color value and pasted it into a text file.
Then I wanted to sort the colors by color value, and make a montage. Four hours later, starting from scratch, I have wrestled my first Ruby/Rmagick/ImageMagick program to the mat. I haven't been able to sort the colors just yet, and it's far past bedtime, but here is a program that reads the text file of color values, makes a color square for each, and generates a montage of the squares.
require 'rubygems'
require 'RMagick'
include Magick
# Create an imagelist to hold the individual color blocks
colorSquare = Magick::ImageList.new
# Read the text file and get RGB hex color values into an array
colors = IO.readlines("colors.txt")
# Create scratch images, one per array value
colors.each { |c|
colorSquare.new_image(55, 55) { self.background_color = c }
}
# Simple sort does not group by colors. Maybe try getting the
# separate chromaticity or rgb values instead? Or changing the
# colorspace to HSL first?
colorSquare.sort!
# Positon scratch images on canvas
montage = colorSquare.montage {
self.geometry = "+2+2"
self.tile = "6x5"
self.background_color = "white"
}
# Write file to disk
montage.write("out.jpg")
Here's what it makes:
Update: "colorSquare.sort!" does a sort, but I can't seem to get the reds, greens, and blues, to group together. I think I'd have to separate out the RGB color values and sort by individual array elements.
Spare Cycles
May 9, 2007 | People & Society
In the next issue of Wired we've got a great story about a woman who cyberstalked the lead singer of Linkin Park. She correctly guessed the password to his cellphone account. The rest was easy. She was a technician at a secure military facility, the Sandia National Labs. When eventually confronted, she explained that her job only took her half an hour a day. The rest was spare cycles. She used them to stalk the lead singer of Linkin Park.
Web 2.0 is such a phenomena because we're underused elsewhere. Bored at work, bored at home. We've got spare cycles and they're finally finding an outlet. Tap that and you've tapped an energy source that rivals anything in human history.
The Internet is perfect for people who "have too much time on their hands." Or, for people who "don't have any time to spare." Two sides of the same coin. Even when people only need half an hour to do their jobs, they're still incredibly busy, talking on the cell phone while they nearly hit people in grocery store parking lots, and agitated at waiting a full three 3 minutes for their personally brewed double tall Guatemalan mocha espresso with cinnamon and whipped creme.
The only real surprise, still to be revealed, is what, exactly it will take for people to put those spare cycles to a positive global use. Corrupt governments, erosion of civil liberties, global warming, low educational achievement scores, high infant mortality, and middle-class economic decline haven't mattered, so it will be interesting to see what does.
Widespread Acknowledgment of the Magic
May 8, 2007 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Via David Gans:
Proclamation from the Mayor of the City of Ithaca, NY
Whereas, the Grateful Dead have been recognized by many highly credible organizations, individuals and entities including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as significantly important and integral to the musical and social fabric of our contemporary culture, and whereas, on May 8th, 1977 the Grateful Dead performed in Barton Hall on the campus of Cornell University in the city of Ithaca New York, a concert that is widely acknowledged and regarded as a defining and transcendent occasion and example of the art of contemporary musical improvisation, collaboration, musicianship, and performance, and whereas, many tens of thousands of individuals who were not in attendance that night in Barton Hall, have become knowledgeable & familiar with the extraordinary nature of the performance on May 8th 1977 through the trading and sharing of recordings of the show, and whereas, the cultural identity and perceptions of Ithaca as a community, have been informed and bolstered by the widespread acknowledgement of the magic of May 8th, 1977, and whereas, it has been said many times by many people that, “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.”
Now therefore, be it resolved that as Mayor of the City of Ithaca, and in heartfelt recognition of the thirtieth anniversary of the May 8th 1977 concert performance, I declare May 8th 2007 as Grateful Dead Day in the City of Ithaca.
University Chancellors praising Lou Reed, and Mayors cheering the "transcendent occasion" of a memorable Grateful Dead concert—is there something in the water?
Have a listen.
Turning Cosmic Litter Into Gold
May 7, 2007 | Arts & Culture
One good reason to be better connected with my alumni association (read: write big checks), is to get invited to events like this.
Lou Reed '64 Honored for Achievements in Music, Writing, and Artistic Expression
“We have an alchemist in our company tonight,” Bono announced to the crowd. “Lou Reed not only inhabits his chosen universe, but he also creates it. Lou has turned the cosmic litter of this city into gold.” Bono, U2's irrepressible front man, was among a parade of luminaries who had come to New York 's way-beyond-hip W hotel in Union Square on April 26 to fete the “Mad Monk of Rock” at Syracuse University 's Arents Award Celebration.
It was no stretch to call this party a star-studded bash. The presence of Reed, Bono, and David Bowie earned it that much. But the guest list did not quit: Marty Bandier '62, chair and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing; hotelier Ian Schrager '68, who later hosted a rooftop after-party at his fabulous Gramercy Park Hotel; and photographer/filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, whose 1998 biodoc, Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart, provided screen clips for the celebration. Entertainment mogul Rick Dobbis '70 emceed the festivities, which took place just blocks from Max's Kansas City , where Reed played with the Velvet Underground in the group's glory days, including the final gig, some 35 years ago.
“As a social psychologist, I can't resist thinking a bit about why this community of Lou's friends, fellow artists, and fellow alumni has come together tonight,” observed SU Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor. She praised Reed's courage, compassion, engagement, and honesty, characterizing him as a “timeless poet” and “muse for us all.” “Our mission is to instill the value of meaningful engagement to make things better … and to understand that it may take a ‘walk on the wild side' to do it,” she continued, quoting Reed's 1972 solo breakout hit.
It is a little known fact that Reed majored in English at SU, and less known still that he graduated with honors in 1964....
College presidents saluting hard-edge underground rock stars. Now that's my kind of party.
A Chat with Aaron Swartz
May 7, 2007 | People & Society
You may remember Aaron from when he was 12 or 13, and won a computer programming award (Wikipedia) from Philip Greenspun. Or you may have followed his weblog (archives) wherein he chronicled his arrival at Stanford, and the subsequent disillusionment and dropping out. Or maybe you knew he was a regular contributor to Wikipedia. Or you may have heard when Y Combinator funded his company, which then merged with another Y Combinator company, forming Reddit, which sold to Conde Nast (aftermath). Or, then, you might remember how working at an office sucked, so he went to Europe, returned home and was fired.
In any case, this IM chat interview captures a young man who is smart, idealistic, painfully shy, humanist, and not following the cultural programming paradigm. I wish for thousands more like him to continue to shape the world, in all fields of endeavor. People often look up to folks who are older; here's someone to look up to who's younger.
