1. Brown Clark Nonfiction Search Engine
What do Toronto blogger Joe Clark, Suicide Food, Nonfiction, and the new CBC Radio 1 show/podcast Search Engine have in common?
2. The President of 9/11 and the 9/11 of Britney
On the sixth anniversary everyone was talking about Britney Spear’s disastrous performance at the MTV Video awards. But the occasion also brings to mind Rudolph Giuliani’s exploitation of the events.
1. No Shit Sherlock
Like, who would have guessed that Leibeskind’s crystal would be hard to mount exhbitions within, and would raise the window-cleaning budget of the museum? In addition, who would have thought that all those windows, sloping at those angles, wouldn’t leak? Nor that kids would try to mount the ramps? And, to top it all off, this gem of elitist disdain: ‘One of our major bugbears was that William wanted everything open and accessible,’ says Janet Waddington, assistant curator of paleontology. ‘But you can’t do that – the Toronto public is extraordinarily destructive.’
2. One Laptop Per Child
The NY Time’s David Pogue reviews Negroponte’s ‘$100 Laptop’ designed to bring computation to the world’s masses.
3. A googolplex of megabytes Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered twenty years ago; this from the official magazine details both that world, and in some ways, our present one.
4. The Creation of Life
The present has caught up with a Dutch novelist’s rather good book.
5. Stupid to the last drop
A review of a book with that title critical of Alberta’s oil industry.
6. As Filmed, As Shown
Two YouTube videos from Jimmy Kimmel Live of Mute Math’s peformance of their song ‘Typical’. It was filmed in reverse and shown forward.
2. More ‘art-world is too rich for its own good’ bitching.
The first half of this decade saw stories in the MSM complaining that art was too theoretical, and in this latter half, we are seeing stories complaining that the art world is too rich.
Goodreads |2007 week 41 number 2 (More ‘art-world is too rich for its own good’ bitching)
The first half of this decade saw stories in the MSM complaining that art was too theoretical, and in this latter half, we are seeing stories complaining that the art world is too rich.
Has Money Ruined Art? | Jerry Saltz http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
“Meanwhile, do we think less of an artist whose art sells for less or doesn’t sell at all? After all, more than 99 percent of all artists fit into the Lifestyles of the Not Rich and Not Famous category. Can the general public look at contemporary art without thinking about money? Will young artists having 30-month careers be able to also have 30-year careers, or are we simply eating our young? And if money is mainly what people are thinking about, does that mean art’s audience will turn cynical or hostile toward it?”
Soaring Prices Turn Art Into a Commodity… | Farah Nayeri Link
Goodreads |2007 week 40 number 5 (Stupid to the last drop)
Stupid to the last drop by William Marsden; Reviewed by Andrew Nikiforuk http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/theglobeandmail/stupidalberta/
“Marsden really finds his mark while recording the tales of ordinary Davids facing powerful yet stupid Goliaths. Francis Gardner, one fine rancher, gets the better of Shell Oil in a brazen, Russian-like encounter on New Year’s Eve. Jessica Ernst, a courageous oil-patch consultant, tells how EnCana carelessly drilled into a local aquifer and gave her groundwater a shocking advantage: She can light it on fire. Dr. John O’Connor, a physician with a moral heart, explains how both federal and provincial bureaucrats tried to silence his disturbing documentation of cancer deaths downstream from the tar sands. In these inspiring tales, at least, Marsden proves that moral intelligence has not disappeared from Alberta; it just doesn’t appear to exist in government circles any more. The biggest stupidities that Marsden discovers could and probably should shock any Canadian. A government that gives away its oil for a 1-per-cent royalty is not only stupid but politically bankrupt. A regulator (“eight mulish, white male suits”) that rubber-stamps projects and then spies on citizens who question their rubber-stamping is a Soviet-style disgrace. A former environment minister who rants not about the destruction of rivers and forests, but about his Harvard education, is pure Mark Twain territory. Welcome to Saudi Alberta.” [emp mine]
I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer | Ed Pilkington http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/co/venter/
“Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth”.
The Procedure | Harry Mulisch http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/amazon/theprocedure/ “The central events in the life of Dutch microbiologist Viktor Werner are that he has created a life a living organism made from clay in the laboratory and experienced a death, with the loss of his unborn daughter. The genetic and scientific details of the creation are convincingly rendered, and Viktor’s attempts to come to grips with his lost daughter and to resurrect a relationship with her mother form the emotional core of the novel. Operating on many levels, the book also recounts the tale of a rabbi in 16th-century Prague who creates a golem, the legendary automaton of occult Judaism. Recurring motifs of occultism, parallels between sacred systems and scientific formulas, a woman’s fertilization cycle, and the DNA code all intertwine into a mystery with a surprise ending. Here, Dutch novelist Mulisch continues some of the scientific and philosophical themes of his previous novel, The Discovery of Heaven, with thought-provoking results. Recommended for academic and larger public”
Goodreads |2007 week 40 number 3(A googolplex of megabytes)
The World of Star Trek: The Next Generation | Patrick Daniel O’Neill http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/stng/
“Perhaps the biggest change on the Enterprise is the sophistication of its computer. It has access to the entire library of recorded human knowledge (probably a googolplex of megabytes) and can present any desired information almost instantly upon request.” [emp mine]
Goodreads |2007 week 40 number 2 (One Laptop Per Child)
Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience | David Pogue http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/olpc/
“There are also three programming environments of different degrees of sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.) There’s real brilliance in this emphasis on understanding the computer itself.”
Goodreads |2007 week 40 number 1 (No Shit Sherlock)
Leaks, woes a smudge on Crystal’s sparkle | Val Ross http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/theglobeandmail/ROM/
As winter approaches, fingers are crossed that there will be no more puddles, and that the Crystal’s cladding, designed to prevent it from turning into an avalanche-maker, will function as well in cold reality as it does in theory. But it’s clear, four months into the Crystal’s life, the new spaces pose huge challenges, and leaks are the least of them. An unveiling concert in June shows the Crystal in Toronto. Its new spaces pose huge challenges, and leaks are the least of them. Far more daunting are the problems of mounting exhibits in the strange new spaces, ensuring public safety and budgeting for the new reality. There are rumours that the Crystal’s oddly shaped, difficult-to-access windows have increased window-cleaning costs by $200,000, a figure ROM’s executive director of capital development and facilities, Al Shaikoli, disputes. “But it is considerable,” he admitted. “In the old days, our window-cleaning budget was next to nothing.”
