SNARKMARKET ALERT: Snarkstruct 2019

Robin says,

Here's the setup.

The challenge is to generate an avalanche of different visions of the future in a mere 19 hours. To do that, you would need a crew of creative, engaged people... ideally from many different backgrounds... ideally used to asking and answering interesting questions... ideally kinda nerdy... ideally reading this right now.

IF ONLY WE HAD SUCH A CREW.

I'll kick it off in the comments, but then it's your turn. Remember, it can just be a sentence or two. Let's see if we can hit 20.

I'm gonna focus on "the future of society" -- how do you share your feelings in 2019? -- and I invite you to do the same, but feel free to choose any of the five options listed in the link above.

Our Academic Rival

Robin says,

MIT is starting a Center for Future Storytelling. But it doesn't start 'til 2010, which means we have time here at Snarkmarket to completely dominate this nascent field.

Pls suggest immediate research projects in the comments.

Funding is available.

You Don't Get to Choose Your Nickname

Robin says,

Fancy new Chinese buildings with humble nicknames:

Many of the famous new buildings that have gone up in Beijing recently have been given their own tags by the people. The National Center for the Performing Arts is known as the "Duck Egg." The National Stadium is known as the "Bird's Nest." They're both humble yet fitting names for these grand edifices.

So... what's this one called?

You'll never guess.

Too Big

Robin says,

Robert Reich has a great (short!) new post: If they're too big to fail, they're too big, period.

(Cross-reference with Wired's old (but still classic) interview with Peter Drucker. Different argument, but complementary.)

(Via Ted R.)

Here is a Picture of a Tiny Animal

Robin says,

Apropos of nothing: What a wonderful little expression.

Slow Snarkmarket! I'll pick up the pace next week, promise.

Adventures in Dorm Food

Matt says,

Cake in a mug is the new omelette in a bag.

100

Robin says,

GOOD deploys a first-hundred-days mega-chart onto their aptly-named awesome.goodmagazine.com subdomain.

On Bill Clinton's third day in office, he lifted the global gag rule. On George Bush's third day in office, he reinstated it. Watch for Barack Obama to blow it away again.

Meta: I love GOOD's infographic work. Why isn't it more popular? The fact that it never really seems to break out calls into question some of my core beliefs about what people find cool and useful. Troubling. Any ideas?

(Via Rex.)

No Sleep 'Til Barack-lyn

Robin says,

Super-smart CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy just posted a piece with some nice details about Current's election stuff and even a quote or two from meee. "No rest for the Web's election-weary" indeed.

Kinda related: Al's talk at Web 2.0 was the best I've ever seen him give. Worth the time if you've got it.

Shantytown Simulacra

Matt says,

These simulated favelas created by Spanish artist Dionisio Gonzalez are magnificent. The simulations echo the ad hoc architecture of the shantytowns of Sao Paulo. As well as the pure imaginative chaos they evoke, I like that they come across as thoughtful without seeming either to exploit or glorify the real favelas.

(Metafilterrific.)

Control Browser Refreshing

Matt says,

After the ABC News site auto-reloaded the page three times while I was trying to watch an 18-minute segment from This Week, I went hunting for a way to make Firefox prevent this. Fortunately, it's wonderfully easy. Go to about:config, bypass the warning message, and look for "accessibility:blockautorefresh." By default, this is set to false. Set it to true, and Firefox will prompt you for approval whenever a site tries to refresh itself.

If you're wondering why so many sites auto-refresh these days, it's basically a cheap and easy way to inflate our pageview counts. What we tell you, of course, is that we want to make sure that if you keep the site open in a tab while you click away, we want to make sure you see the freshest content when you click back. I strongly suspect if that were really our primary motive, we'd find a way to update our pages with AJAX, thereby preventing a severely annoying disruption of the site experience.

Watching CNN Like Everybody Else

Robin says,

The Obama campaign's official photos from election night -- surreal in their normalcy.

Well, until they get up on stage.

The Politics of Grace

Robin says,

Rachel with a bit of comparative democracy. She calls what we've seen "the politics of grace" -- what a wonderful phrase.

I would say it's also the politics of revelation. We know things today that we didn't on Tuesday morning. You look around and think: Aha. This is the country I'm living in. I hadn't realized.

Current.com on Election Day

Robin says,

WOW. Sorry for the gratuitous Current link, but honestly, I can't even believe we're on this list. Pretty cool.

0.02% baby!

My President is Black / My Lambo's Blue

Robin says,

This is ridiculous, and awesome:

My President by Young Jeezy, feat. Nas.

I Was Born By the River

Matt says,

Obama shouted it out early in his speech. (Love this.) A splendid time to revisit the original:

Oh, and why the heck not taste it again for the first time:

'I Had Grown Too Comfortable in My Solitude'

Robin says,

Great, great post on Obsidian Wings:

Obama doesn't play the game the way it is usually played. He also seems to have an unusual personality for a politician: early on in Dreams From My Father, he writes: "I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew." Immediately afterwards, he tells the story of an elderly man who lives in his building, who he sees sometimes, helps with the groceries, but who has never said a word to him. He thinks of the man as a kindred spirit. Later, the man is found dead; his apartment is "neat, almost empty", with money squirreled away throughout. It's clear, from the way he tells the story, that this seems to him to be one of his possible fates, and though his description of the man is kind throughout, it's also clear that Obama thinks: his fate is to be avoided.

Ask yourself when you last heard of a politician who had to warn himself away from solitude, or who saw dying alone, without friends or family, as among his possible fates. Imagine how unlikely it is that, say, Bill Clinton ever thought: I have grown too comfortable in my solitude. Politicians normally crave attention. Obama seems to me not to. That's probably one reason why he can afford to underplay his hand sometimes, and to hold back. And it's certainly part of what makes him so interesting.

(Yeah, I realize it's been blockquote-o-rama lately. Cut me some slack. I'll write more when Obama's president.)

TFE

Matt says,

I laughed, I cried, I read the whole thing.

The Ecstasy of Influence

Robin says,

What a sublime paragraph:

Artists who believe in the mystique of originality are often reluctant to reveal their inspirations. But the magpielike Mr. Desplechin revels in what the writer Jonathan Lethem has called the ecstasy of influence. "I didn't invent anything," he said. "Being a director is not such a grand thing. My job is just to show the audience what I love."

Mr. Desplechin's movie looks terrific.

The Possibility of Success

Robin says,

Wonderful piece by Joe Klein today:

What would happen if the cynicism that afflicted us--crippled us, really--since Watergate suddenly dissipated? I'm not saying that we should ever stop being critical or skeptical, but what if our first impulse weren't the debilitating assumption of bad intentions on the part of our public figures? What if we left open the possibility of nobility, the possibility of success?

IMs About This Recording

Robin says,

Was just chatting with Andrew about This Recording, which I find awesome and frustrating in equal measure. (Although sometimes frustration can loop back into awesomeness, of course.)

Then, this:

A: there was a mad men review of the episode with the rothko in it
A: that made me proud to be alive

R: ha!
R: wow
R: that's praise.

A: yeah
A: and not exaggeration
A: i got really excited about living in these times
A: in a world where people can have and share ideas like this etc etc
A: golden glowing moment
A: (i'd probably just finished a cup of coffee)

Here's the post in question.

Don't sit around wondering about the golden age, the renaissance, the where-it's-at -- you're in it!

Boy Eats Drum Machine

Robin says,

Wow, I liked this song a lot.

Current Diggs the Election

Robin says,

Election night, Current-style: all infographics and social media feeds and a live set from Diplo backing it all up.

(And how great is that promo?? Props to Meghan.)

Tune in on Tuesday.

The Art of Obama

Robin says,

The Art of Obama. This wire sculpture is gorgeous, but I'm not sure it's "correct" -- what about Obama is tense?

Dance of Democracy

Robin says,

I have to agree with Jason... this Obama/McCain dance-off is where it's at.

The Art of Participation

Robin says,

This sounds totally awesome:

The idea is that at the beginning of the exhibition there is literally nothing on the wall. With your collaboration, and with a lot of help from students and volunteers from around the Bay Area, The Gift will be produced over time. We'll use the photo studio to take portrait pictures of museum-goers which will then be printed, framed, exhibited, and stored all on the same floor, all on view.

And then...

...on closing day, we'll have a big communal event (a.k.a "a party!"), and the artist will hand out a picture to everyone who contributed theirs to the project. In other words, if you have given your portrait, you will then also own a part of the collection. You don't get your own photo, however; you get a picture of a stranger, and the condition of receiving a portrait is that it then gets exhibited elsewhere (BART station/your living room/your tropical vacation?).

So glad I (somewhat randomly) signed up for an SFMOMA membership a few months ago. See you at the opening!

White Walls

Robin says,

Love this simple demo video. It feels like it could be a metaphor for something.

Also, I think I want to play a full-blown first-person-shooter that's in stark black-and-white like this. Half-Life meets Sin City!

Mike Leigh

Robin says,

If you were to take every film director in the world and do a calculation something like this...

...I think Mike Leigh would end up with the highest score, and it would be something stratospheric, like nine hundred quadrillion. (The unit, of course, is snarkpoints.)

Here's the new Onion A.V. Club interview. I haven't seen Happy Go Lucky yet but I have seen Secrets and Lies, Topsy Turvy, Vera Drake, and more, and they're all sublime. Super-serious and sophisticated, but totally fun and watchable too.

Here's a taste of Leigh:

AVC: Happy-Go-Lucky also suggests that happiness is as much a matter of perspective as it is things going your way. It's likely that someone else who haves Poppy's life would pretty miserable with it.

ML: I don't agree with that. It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically. Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know you can also make choices and it's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too. This film is about somebody who is open and has a capacity not to be judgmental and to empathize and to love.

Leigh gives off the same vibe I always get from Philip Pullman -- somehow both large-spirited and tough, verging on ornery. I really like the combo.

A Phrase for Our Time

Robin says,

"[M]y [ad] rates are priced for small businesses and etsy shops."

Seriously, I love it. Cottage industry, artisanal content, the Fortune 5,000,000,000, etc.

The Last Words of David

Matt says,

A propos of nothing, I'm going to point you to the best song we performed in high school choir, Randall Thompson's "The Last Words of David," as interpreted by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Man, that's some great stuff.

Papers

Robin says,

A paean to newspapers, in a roundabout sort of way. At first it just seems like a funky video collage, but then you realize what the creator is up to.

That stack of newsprint in the corner has a continuity to it.

I like this video a lot. Its speed and soundtrack make it feel like it should be about, you know, the! modern! world! -- but, surprise, it's actually a meditation on all the things that don't change day-to-day.

(Via Jean Snow.)

Learning Music

Robin says,

Um, yes pls:

Learning Music began as a collaborative album-a-month project, commencing in November 2006 and concluding in November of 2007. The series included an album recorded entirely on handheld cassette recorder, a collection of music videos filmed before the music was made, songs for an autobiographical musical written by a robot, and dozens of homemade electro-acoustic folk-pop anthems.

I'll be honest, it's a little uneven. But... "songs for an autobiographical musical written by a robot"? Come on.

Vanguard 2

Robin says,

New season of Vanguard starting soon. I still maintain: It's the best video journalism being done by anyone, anywhere, right now.

P.S. Robot nation!

'Bout damn time

Matt says,

Slate redesigns. Again. For the last year or so, I've debated doing a follow-up post on my snark-out of their 2006 redesign, just to verify that I never got over my initial awful reaction to the site. I've got some problems with the new design, but they're minor compared to my feelings on the former look.

I have this funny feeling that the separation between the "Today in Slate" and "Slate Blogs" tabs isn't going to last ...

Too Legit

Robin says,

Am I the only one that's been buying tons of music from the Amazon MP3 store?

It is actually now easier to buy music the legit way, via Amazon, than it is to pirate it. I mean, I guess it depends on your personal money/time mapping, but for me... a mere $9 for an album vs. a bunch of interminable torrenting? The choice is clear.

Maybe the travails of digital content have been overstated. Maybe the problem hasn't been paying for content, per se, but rather the lame, broken contexts in which that payment has, 'til now, been embedded.

Seriously curious, though: Is anybody else as sold on this as I am? Or are you still slurping your jams down from some darknet somewhere? Why? Feel free to comment anonymously!

Solo Spore

Robin says,

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has the first video of the procedurally-generated multiplayer game called Love. It's the solo project of a guy named Eskil Steenberg. One man making a procedurally-generated multiplayer game by himself is exactly as crazy (and awesome) as it sounds.

I remember seeing this frame from the game months ago and being totally struck by its artfulness.

(Via Eskil's blog.)

The Man With the Master Graph

Robin says,

Oh man, I cannot wait to read this: New York mag's profile of Nate Silver, the guy behind my favorite politics site. Clearest quantitative writing anywhere on the web, period.

Hmm, "quantitative writing." I like that.

(Waxmatic.)

Possible

Robin says,

New Obama poster by Jonathan Hoefler. All typography. I love it.

Minilogue

Robin says,

This video is quite twee but I still really like it. Like Death Star Over San Francisco, it's evidence that recorded reality is pretty ridiculously plastic these days.

The democratization of manipulation proceeds apace!

(Via Fubiz!)

VSL2

Robin says,

Follow-up: I feel like Very Short List is a proxy for The Daily Beast -- not because they're trying to do the same thing exactly, but because they're trying to do the same thing generally, are both good-enough ideas that seem fairly well-executed, are both weird web offshoots of the old-school Manhattan mediaplex, were both initiated by larger-than-life magazine editors, etc., etc.

(To be fair, VSL distinguishes itself by being a small, focused operation. Contrast to my main critique of The Daily Beast: What am I supposed to look at on this page??)

Sooo, is VSL actually doing well? Any clues? Do you subscribe? I used to, but found myself deleting the emails without opening them, so eventually gave up on it.

VSL

Robin says,

Bet you never thought you'd see a Venn diagram that featured Very Short List, the Wall Street Journal, and Snarkmarket! Matt's Money Meltdown gets a link from one of the pickiest filters around.

Organized

Matt says,

Marc Ambinder's right, this piece on the Obama campaign's organization in Ohio is fascinating.

A Little Less Ivy in the Bank

Robin says,

QUESTION: How has the stock market's precipitous plunge affected college endowments, especially the titanic ones, e.g. Harvard and Yale? Will it affect their scholarship programs -- many of which are generous and new?

Or did Harvard's legendary money managers somehow manage to beat the market again?

If I worked at a newspaper or financial news website I would assign this story right now. But I don't, so I'll just blog it here.

Candidate Analogies

Robin says,

A funny thread on Current.com.

Rise of the image fall of the word!

Hangul!

Robin says,

To my ever-increasing embarrassment, I am totally monolingual. Maybe that's why I am also increasingly fascinated with the typography of other languages: What's the Helvetica of Japanese? What's the Comic Sans of Hindi? Who's the hot young Arabic type designer?

This doesn't quite answer those questions, but it's pretty awesome: Jonathan Hoefler on the insanely logical and self-consistent Korean alphabet:

Typographically, I envy my Korean counterparts who get to work with Hangul, with its letterforms that always fit into a square, and can be read in any direction (horizontally or vertically.) And best of all: no kerning!

Any pointers to cool non-Roman-alphabet typography out there?

Go to Where the Party's Going, Not Where It's Been

Robin says,

Oh man, I love this. Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine with the metaphor for success in media today: "...figuring out where the party is at nowadays, and setting yourself to be the one who's over there hosting the party."

It makes a lot more sense if you watch his whole video. Which you should.

Improving the debates

Matt says,

Last Thursday's Presidential debate was widely panned for its ridiculous format. Seriously? Two-minute responses and one-minute followups? And this is supposed to transcend talking points?

The Lehrer debate felt much meatier to me. It clearly showcased two men who had very different (but both quite substantial) views on foreign policy, and allowed them to contrast those views at length. Still, any amount of time spent paying attention to the moderator in a Presidential debate is wasted time, and Lehrer had to do a fair amount of refereeing to keep the candidates in line.

CJR's got some excellent ideas for shaking up the debate format. I've got one more:

What if we allotted to each of the candidates a block of time — say 40 minutes — and allow them to apportion it however they'd like? Engage a moderator merely to pause the debate and send the candidates in another direction if they get stuck on a particular topic, but mostly allow them to steer the debate where they'd like. Each candidate could be wired with a mic that detects when he's speaking and winds down the clock, and both the candidates and the viewers can see how much time each one has left.

You could even take this a little further by employing a team of fact-checkers who work furiously during the debate to spot misstatements of fact. If a candidate is discovered to have fudged the truth, the misstatement is revealed during the course of the debate and the candidate is docked a minute. (This would be difficult to enforce and cause a lot of partisan sniping, so the plan might be better without, but I offer it as a possibility.)

What say you, Snarkmind?

THE MEDIA

Matt says,

I love this. Ironic Sans posts a video of the CNN Election Center, left momentarily unattended. It's like an outtake from a dystopian '80s movie about the future.

60 Seconds in the Life of the Election Center from Ironic Sans on Vimeo.

Conflict in the Middle East

Matt says,

Infosthetics points to this well-done short about the standoff in the Middle East. Being five minutes long, of course it dispenses with a lot of the actual geopolitics of the matter (leaving the prophetic religious elements of the conflict entirely unmentioned, even), but it's pretty.

Lego + NRA =

Matt says,

BrickArms. Nefarious. From Things.

Political Landscapes

Matt says,

Cf. my post on "America in speeches": BLDGBLOG has a thoughtful essay on the geography of political rhetoric. (Via CJR.)

Blackwater Yard Sale!

Robin says,

Oh man, this is why you have got to sign up for the Blackwater email list:

Is this a sign of the times? How will the credit bust affect mercenary armies?? THINK OF THE CORPORATE MILITIAS, PEOPLE.

Daily Delight

Robin says,

Can't believe I haven't linked to this yet, as I've been enjoying it for weeks: Kyle T. Webster's Daily Figure. Gestural figure drawing was always my favorite part of art classes -- though I could never do it this well.

FYI, this satisfies your FDA daily recommended allowance of line art.

From Above

Robin says,

Earth from above at The Big Picture. Hint: It's not the above-ness that's so great. It's the eye for pattern and geometry. For some reason, this one really gets me.

(Also on Kottke. But I got it from the Big Picture RSS feed. Lest you think me a link-poacher.)

Musical Mario Paint

Robin says,

Hmm I feel that my links have been sub-par lately. I'll write about my current project soon... and remember there's always this (email it to your grandma!)... but in the meantime I am in love with these Mario Paint masterpieces. In no small part because I myself was a Mario Paint maestro back in the day. Man, do you remember the SNES mouse? What a weird contraption.

The Art of the Panda

Robin says,

By now you know I like title sequences better than movies themselves. The latestgreatest example is Kung-Fu Panda, which was actually fairly sweet and clever... but was also completely bested by its own title sequence. Watch it in HD here.

The Money Meltdown

Matt says,

Robin and Tim made me do it.

'I Will Have as My Student Only Mademoiselle Camille Claudel'

Robin says,

Wow. Read the tragic tale of Rodin and Camille. (Yes, that Rodin.) Intense. Why isn't this a movie yet?

P.S. Lots more artists in love!

The Global Economy

Robin says,

It's not just the U.S. markets; now the Nikkei-225 is down 5%, the Hang Seng is down 5.5%, Brazil's index is down 10%, etc., etc. For some reason, this creeps me out in a way the Dow, etc., did not.

What's the best source for smart reporting on this crisis -- from a global perspective? The Economist seems to be posting at magazine-pace... FT seems okay. What else is out there?

Elements in the Basement

Robin says,

This video:

1. dramatizes basic chemistry as interludes at a dance party
2. is crazy
3. was produced for the European Union's YouTube channel!

To all these things I say: YES.

Behold, the Maltese Falcon

Robin says,

WHOAH. Telstar Logistics has a couple of great shots of the coolest boat in the world. It sort of barely fits under the Golden Gate Bridge. I wish it belonged to an evil genius super-villain instead of a VC.

Edward Hopper on Salvia

Matt says,

The eerie art of Gregory Crewdson. (via)

Trompe L'Oeil

Matt says,

Julian Beever's three-dimensional sidewalk drawings are the new salvia. (Via.)

Orchestra of One (Age Four)

Robin says,

Video of the day: Cutest kid ever = sound machine. Give it 'til 0:50 at least! And then you won't be able to stop.

It's like that video of the crazy-haired kid (which I cannot find, because all I can think of to search for is "video crazy hair kid") except cuter.

Tweeting the Debates on Current

Robin says,

Been working on this. Get your #current hashtags ready!

Update: Neat-o video promo!

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Robin says,

I'm going to just go ahead and put a post here with nothing in it, because I know I'm going to find something cool on Monday and want to blog it -- but will feel weird about bumping down DFW.

So now I'll just be bumping down this empty post. Which is not sad or serious at all.

An Irresistible Entertainment

Matt says,

The Howling Fantods has concluded its David Foster Wallace motivational poster contest. (via)

Gasp. DFW killed himself yesterday. How awful.

This MetaFilter thread collects some of his inimitable work:

• Incarnations of burned children, Esquire
• Good People, The New Yorker
• Host, The Atlantic
• Roger Federer as religious experience, The New York Times
• Tense present, Harper's (and, to be fair, languagehat's takedown of same)
• His interview with Charlie Rose
• A good description of that fascinating interview

Another Laptop Audio Auteur

Robin says,

This is my favorite genre, apparently. Shugo Tokumaru should do the soundtrack for the next Studio Ghibli movie. Check out his track Parachute. Does it sound like "I Saw Three Ships" to anybody else?

Close-Up

Robin says,

How much do you love this? The title sequence from To Kill a Mockingbird. Totally beautiful.

The Annotated Shampoo Aisle

Robin says,

GoodGuide looks great -- it's a database of products (mostly bathroom and kitchen stuff for now, but presumably expanding over time) connected to a deep well of information about supply chains and environmental impact. Products all get a score, 0-10. I love the idea of being able to instantly query this site from the grocery store via, say, an iPhone app.

And yo, this is the kind of project a news organization could/should have done. It's all about context!

Alexis Madrigal has the scoop at Wired.com.

House of Pancakes

Matt says,

Hee. I loved House of Leaves, too. (Via Bookslut.)

First Index

Robin says,

I know this is ridiculous, but c'mon... I'm proud of it! My first appearance in a work of Popular Non-Fiction. Big thanks to Jeff Howe for including Current, and both my colleague Ezra and I by extension.

Clearly, you should buy the book, Crowdsourcing, immediately, so as to send an unmistakable message to publishers: Snarkmaster citations mean big money!

Walker Gone Wild

Matt says,

Mpls wonder-blogger Max Sparber offers a peek at some of the most fascinating esoterica in the permanent collection of my beloved Walker Arts Center. Sample:

The Walker has dozens of pieces by Pettibon; this particular one is an ink-spattered sketch of the most self-reflective character in the history of comics, Batman, facing a woman with a gun while disconnected passaged from his endless internal monologues crowd his head. Most of the quotes a vaguely sexual, or explicit, such as a comment from Robin saying, "I have studied the bats trying to understand Batman's complex psycho-sexuality." This actually seems intended as a retort to Batman's first quote. "Robin," he says, "you came too soon."

Hard-Hitting RNC Commentary

Matt says,

Random Twitterer is right, yo. Sarah Palin's suit is the surprise hit of the night. I'm the guy that has long hated coverage of female candidates that insisted on mentioning their clothing choices, but seriously, I want that suit. Even my potential appearance in Steve Schmidt's talking points about male blogger misogyny cannot prevent me from complimenting that fierce piece of gun-metal grey hottness.

Meta-Magazine

Robin says,

Wired is running a blog that chronicles the behind-the-scenes process of "assigning, writing, editing and designing" a feature.

The feature is about Charlie Kaufman.

Meta-meta-meta-meta!

It looks great so far: videos, story pitches, emails, etc. You have to be a pretty giant nerd to enjoy this level of meta-media, but I assume you are, so check it out.

(Via Alexis Madrigal.)

Ratatatatatatat

Robin says,

MP3 of the day: Ratatat remix over on Gorilla vs. Bear.

Also: This track from High Places is lovely. But I'm a sucker for clicky-clacky music.

Understanding Googlechromazon

Robin says,

Can't decide what's cooler -- Google Chrome or the fact that they had Scott MccCloud make an explainer comic book for it.

Yeah, probably the comic book.

Update: Whoops, no, it's Chrome. This thing is beautiful.

Marshall/Biden

Matt says,

If you haven't already, definitely check out Josh Marshall's recently [re?]posted interview with Joe Biden from summer '04. Fascinating. A snippet, from when Biden describes meeting Qaddafi shortly after the announcement of the dismantlement deal:

I said, "Yeah, why, why the change of heart?" And he says, "The real question is" -- through an interpreter -- "The real question is, why did we get off this way, why did you sanction me in the first place?"

I looked at him and said, "That's easy. You're a terrorist." I didn't mince, I said, "You are a terrorist." I said, you know I leaned to him and said, "You've engaged in supporting terrorists. Matter of fact, you blew up 35 of the kids who went to my alma mater along with another hundred or so people. You're a terrorist, that's why."

He sits there and he goes like this, he goes, "That's logical." (laughs) I mean the guy was great! And I said, "So, Okay. Tell me why." And he went, Well -- I'm paraphrasing -- "Nuclear weapons didn't help you very much in Vietnam, they didn't help you in Iraq and if I ever used them you'd blow me away."

Numa Numa Rihanna

Robin says,

Well, I got my first story onto Current:News. I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed of the fact that it was about Rihanna covering the Numa Numa song. (Click the pink "play this story" bar to check out the TV version!)

Shockwave Traffic Jams

Robin says,

Here's the setup:

• You're one of 20 or so cars driving around in a perfect circle.
• No seriously, it's a perfect circle.
• So your only job is to follow the car in front of you.
• And keep your speed at around 20 miles per hour.

The result? You guessed it: traffic jams!

Check out the video evidence.

And apparently this experiment corresponds to real-world observation in at least one important way: In both cases, the "shockwave" of slow-down propagates back through cars at around 12 miles per hour. It's pretty mesmerizing to watch.

Thanks, Mathematical Society of Traffic Flow!

An Evening with Rthrtha

Robin says,

Check out this fun, cut-and-paste-y music video. Give it a bit to warm up; it gets exponentially better as it goes.

I love the bats.

The song is from a group called Octopus Project -- sort of Ratatat times Pinback minus vocals. Actually, never mind, that makes no sense. I'm going to stop trying to describe music.

Bonus: Behind-the-scenes stills! Oh man that looks fun.

(Via Ted R.)

Matt Bai Talks Up The Argument

Matt says,

The Believer interviews Matt Bai. (Oh, and speaking of the NYT Magazine, I highly recommend David Leonhardt's cover story on Obamanomics if you haven't read it.)

Never Again?

Matt says,

Richard Just's lengthy explanation of why Darfur is still engulfed in genocide five years after it caught the world's attention is the most spellbinding, heartrending thing I've read in quite a bit. A surprising brew of circumstances have paralyzed us from stopping this tragedy, departing from the Problem from Hell template in a few key particulars. Do take a look.

NYT Discovers Linkblogging

Matt says,

... and it's good. (Don't miss the running tally of good reads in the sidebar.) Keep it up, Mr. Kuntz.

Buildings and Their Not-So-Secret Identities

Matt says,

The Walker Art Center recently concluded a spectacular exhibit called "Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes" (they've helpfully catalogued the whole exhibit in a wiki; oh Walker, how I love you). Among the highlights of the exhibit was this photo collection by Paho Mann, images of former Circle K convenience stores that have been transformed into other types of businesses -- tattoo parlors, Mexican restaurants, tuxedo rental places -- all taken from the same distance in similar light, all bearing the Circle K's suprisingly distinct form. (Also available as a Google Maps mashup, natch.)

I mentioned this to an architect friend, and he pointed me to the delightful NotFoolingAnybody.com: "a chronicle of bad conversions and storefronts past" -- photos of former chain restaurants lightly altered to house new businesses. (Such as "China Hut," the bastard offspring of -- what else? -- Pizza Hut.)

OMG I love the Web sometimes.

Dirty Talk

Matt says,

A MeFi commenter describes sex talk:

Q: You like sex? You are a person who likes the sex acts that we are currently engaged in?
A: Yes! I am! I like sex!
Q: You like sex! In fact, you are a person who likes sex as much as a prostitute likes sex!
A: YES I LIKE SEXY SEX AS IF IT WERE MY PROFESSION!! TELL ME MORE ABOUT IT
Q: YOU ENJOY THIS ACT YOU SEXY SEX PERSON etc.

Back to the Pleasant Peninsula

Robin says,

On vacation in Michigan for the next five day. You know what I'm gonna do? Not blog.

I hear there's another guy who hangs around here... maybe you can lure him out in the comments.

See you on Monday!

Socratic Dialogue as Journalistic Format

Robin says,

You know what we need more of? Socratic dialogues! Totally not kidding. It's such a natural, effective way to explore an argument. (This one's about the Obama campaign, by Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder.)

How Is YouTube Not the Greatest Art Project Ever?

Robin says,

The question just occurred to me: How is YouTube not the greatest art project ever?

Imagine a slightly parallel dimension where Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim aren't web engineers from Silicon Valley but instead art scenesters from New York. They know the language of the art world; they know how to present work in that context.

But they also have tech chops -- NYU ITP grads, say -- so their project isn't a painting or an avante-garde video but a web app. It's a platform, a system.

And that project grows into YouTube -- one of the craziest, most kaleidoscopic reflections of humanity we've ever seen. It's beautiful. It totally encapsulates and embodies the spirit of the age. And, in our parallel dimension, as the YouTube guys struggle with servers and scalability, they're also submitting it to juried shows and, I don't know, biennials or whatever. They are framing it.

Isn't that high art? Isn't that incredibly successful, important art?

Now, forget the commercial objection, because for years YouTube didn't run a single ad. And let's push our parallel dimension even further and say that Google signs on not as the project's acquirer but as its patron. The Medici of Mountain View!

Am I missing some foundational idea or definition here? I don't actually know anything about art (though I will admit I am in this frame of mind b/c I just strolled through SFMOMA yesterday) -- what would the knee-jerk art-scholar reaction be?

And what do you think?

Imperial Fleet Week

Robin says,

Oh, and if you're in San Francisco this weekend, don't forget to check out Imperial Fleet Week. Last year's was awesome. Even though the AT-ATs always trip over the MUNI lines...

The Dark Knight, Age Nine

Robin says,

Meta-media is the new media! This swede of the Dark Knight trailer acted out by kids is both a funny, charming homage and some sort of biting commentary. (Or maybe I just want it to be biting commentary?)

Video Madness

Robin says,

Wow wow wow. Check out this demo of some crazy video algorithms. I can't even quite find words for what this team is up to... but it's pretty astounding. Watch all the way through, because there are a bunch of different techniques demoed, and they get better and better.

(Via kd.to_tumblr.)

Bat-Manga!

Robin says,

Ah, the mythic confluence of all things nerdy: Random House is publishing a book called Bat-Manga, edited by Chip Kidd (of course). Here's the story:

[T]he book features Batman and Robin as you've never seen them before -- in original Japanese stories from 1966 and 1967, written and drawn by Manga master Jiro Kuwata, creator of 8-Man! -- collected and translated for the very first time, over forty years after they originally appeared.

UnbeLIEVable. Why was I not told of this sooner?

Coming Soon: coolness.snarkmarket.com

Robin says,

I like this map of famous trips throughout history from GOOD magazine... but what I like even better is their subdomain for special projects: awesome.goodmagazine.com!

Sigur Ros @ MOMA

Robin says,

I've been remiss in not posting this 'til now: Sigur Ros performs live at MOMA, on Current. Honestly, I didn't realize they could create those sounds outside of a studio. Beautiful.

The Sexiest Equation Ever

Robin says,

Er-hem.

Designing Neighborhoods

Robin says,

Ahh, the eternal lure of architecture and planning, if only because you get to make little models like this. At first I was turned off -- all those houses look the same! Blech! -- but then I started to think about how it would actually get implemented, and how it would actually feel. And then the geometry of the streets really caught me -- totally regular, but not just a boring grid. I'm into it. You?

(Via City of Sound's links.)

Flip-Flop, Schmip-Flop

Matt says,

MPR's Midmorning show today was about politicians flip-flopping. A tired subject, and nothing non-trite can be said about it. Still, I had to let this out:

What the news media often neglect in their coverage of the candidates is attention to their underlying governing philosophies. I think these provide a much more accurate guide to their behavior in office than their tendency to make shifts on small-bore, particular issues.

For all the media hullabaloo around "flip-flopping" in the Bush/Kerry election, we would have had a much keener idea of President Bush's flavor of governance had the media focused our attention on the core philosophies animating his team of advisers. Bush's reliance on and deference to those advisers, their belief in the unitary executive, their dogged insistence on loyalty über alles, their neoconservative interventionism -- all of these things could have been foreseen from what we knew in the run-up to the 2000 election. And it's those facts that would have given us a much, much clearer picture of how the Bush administration would administer its departments, how it would respond to events such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, a housing bust, etc.

Just take a look at one of Bush's most-cited statements since 2001, presaged in this January 2000 profile of Karl Rove by Frank Bruni: "'Anybody who gets in the way of his ambitions for the governor gets run off,' said Tom Pauken, a former chairman of the Republican Party in Texas. 'And if you're not with Karl 100 percent, you're an enemy.'"

I want to hear much, much less about flip-flops. Off-shore drilling, for all the ink given to it in the past two weeks, is an infinitesimal mote in the array of decisions and compromises #44 will have to navigate. Don't tell me what minor issues a candidate has shifted positions on, tell me what core philosophies the candidate has been consistent about, what common threads of thought weave through his speeches, his actions, and the minds of his advisers. That will give me a much clearer sense of how he'll govern.

This Wednesday

Robin says,

Attention San Francisco snarkmatrix:

Come to this Creative Commons Salon on Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. I'll be talking about Current and the fuuuture of video!

VVFS

Robin says,

Whoah! Collision of three things I'm a fan of: Nick Douglas posts about Viral Video Film School on Buzzfeed.

"This Article Documents Ongoing Warfare"

Robin says,

Holy jeez. The Wikipedia 2008 South Ossetia War entry is nuts! Look at that table on the right!

The Power of Naaature

Robin says,

Slow-motion video of lightning: YA-ZOW!!

Funny how lightning -- the real deal, the big stroke, the mighty discharge -- doesn't actually go from the sky to the ground; instead it's our earthly assault on the heavens above!

Current HQ Tour

Robin says,

Ever wonder what my office is like?

No?

Too bad. Watch this anyway.

Tales of the Gulag Archipelago

Robin says,

Wow. Thanks to the way technology and communications have changed, this is an experience no one will really ever be able to have again:

Although more than three decades have now passed since the winter of 1974, when unbound, hand-typed, samizdat manuscripts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago first began circulating around what used to be the Soviet Union, the emotions they stirred remain today. Usually, readers were given only 24 hours to finish the lengthy manuscript -- the first historical account of the Soviet concentration camp system -- before it had to be passed on to the next person. That meant spending an entire day and a whole night absorbed in Solzhenitsyn's sometimes eloquent, sometimes angry prose -- not an experience anyone was likely to forget.

Amazing. Gotta quote the next graf too:

Members of that first generation of readers remember who gave the book to them, who else knew about it, and to whom they passed it on. They remember the stories that affected them most -- the tales of small children in the camps, or of informers, or of camp guards. They remember what the book felt like -- the blurry, mimeographed text, the dog-eared paper, the dim glow of the lamp switched on late at night -- and with whom they later discussed it.

Now that is social media. Reading those two grafs alone just gave me shivers.

McCain Green Screen Challenge

Robin says,

Man, I always wondered: Who actually enters these Colbert Report green-screen challenges? Who are the special effects ninjas walking secretly among us?

Now I know -- it's my friend Scot!

Hee hee. It's really good.

Embarrassment Manifest

Matt says,

One of the reasons I love Ask MetaFilter is that I often come across questions that I'm very curious about, but would never have thought to articulate. This question is one of those:

When I think of / remember something embarrassing from my life, I compulsively make some kind of noise. It seems to happen unconsciously, before my censor can catch it and stop myself (it even happens when I am in a quiet or inappropriate place). It's not especially loud, in fact it's often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. ... It usually only happens when I'm remembering something palpably embarrassing or humiliating from my life -- not for mild everyday kind of stuff. ... So what is this, do I have some kind of low-grade tourette's syndrome? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Does it happen to others or is it unique to me?

Megascience

Robin says,

Obvs the Large Hadron Collider as depicted on The Big Picture is mind-blowing, but don't miss the Heliotron, either.

What Startups Can Learn from Haruki Murakami

Robin says,

I want more posts like this on tech blogs!

(Okay okay, so it's not actually that mind-blowing a post... I just liked the unexpected reference. Not a lot of modern literary fiction on TechCrunch, ya know?)

Boring Boring Boring Glorious Boring Boring

Robin says,

Ugh. Enjoyed this long NYT piece on the swimmer Michael Phelps, but man, every time I read about Olympic training -- or any super-high-level athletic training -- it makes me pity the Olympians. What a monotonous routine. It's like prison -- except maybe you get a gold medal at the end.

Donkey Kong As Symbol of Modern Oligarchy

Matt says,

Kottke's plug for the Independent Documentary Association's list of the 25 best documentaries reminds me to recommend one that was underhyped last year -- The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I like Keith Phipps' perceptive review best; he calls it "a film about what it takes to make it in America." It's hilarious, a bit sad, and enormously revealing.

Life: Rich with Metaphor

Matt says,

Via Reddit:

Some anglerfishes of the superfamily Ceratiidae employ an unusual mating method. Because individuals are presumably locally rare and encounters doubly so, finding a mate is problematic. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were the remains of male ceratioids.

At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

The Night They Clubbed the Deer

Matt says,

I'm not sure why this Texas Monthly story is so unsettling. The story itself is simple -- four high-school football stars, out goofing off one Friday night, capture and brutally slaughter two deer.

The characters are (for the most part) sympathetic, and aside from a possibly-superfluous Lord of the Flies reference, the author doesn't really stoke the drama at all. It might be the notion that four decent kids can do some completely inexplicable, violent thing, just out-of-the-blue. Or it might be the sensation of looking in on a place usually so far removed from the gaze of the world.

Ticket to Ride

Robin says,

Snarkpal Chris Fong writes up some excellent board games on SFGate. If you haven't tried "Ticket to Ride," you're missing out; it's fun for nerds, jocks, and burnouts alike.

In Search of Shadows

Robin says,

Over in The American Scholar, William Deresiewicz writes about the disadvantages of the elite education as commonly experienced today:

What happens when busyness and sociability leave no room for solitude? The ability to engage in introspection, I put it to my students that day, is the essential precondition for living an intellectual life, and the essential precondition for introspection is solitude.

It's a nicely-written piece, especially in the beginning.

One of Michigan State's signature songs goes, "MSU, we love thy shadows" -- and what a wonderful (if counterintuitive) thing to celebrate about a school: the shadows, the quiet spaces, the free afternoons, the empty paths.

(Via Jane.)

Powerful Picture

Robin says,

Wow -- just look at this image. (Via Alexis Madrigal.)

Kevin Kelly

Robin says,

I had no idea that Kevin Kelly told the first story ever on This American Life. (Read about it in this article.) Probs shouldn't be a surprise. All good things in the world are linked, you know -- it's a massive spiderweb of coolness.

'Basically an Intelligence-Gathering Operation'

Robin says,

I am a huge fan of Amanda Michel and Off the Bus. Nice to see her (and it) get written up in the NYT!

Physical Theories as Women

Robin says,

Ah, here's McSweeney's with a piece for the xkcd crowd:

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.

Et cetera.

What I want to know is... which girl is the theory of luminiferous ether?

This is Officially the Opposite of Mortal Kombat

Robin says,

The new game from the team behind flOw is... um... okay so listen you control a bunch of flower petals using the breeze.

Speak of this to no one.

Jenova Chen and company get credit for their simple, intuitive gameplay mechanics -- but honestly, to me it's all about the audio. Their games simply sound better than anything else out there.

The New Yorker Can Be Funny!

Matt says,

For some of you, this week's Shouts & Murmurs is the typical bland gimmick repeated ad nauseam. If you're like me, however, it will crack you up.

Location Scout

Robin says,

Quick. Let's come up with a dystopian sci-fi film concept so we can shoot it here.

Illuminated Manuscripts

Robin says,

Franke James has a terrific cross-media comic book style.

Via the Pop!Tech blog.

You Owe The Beatles Your Brain

Robin says,

Super-fun inter-disciplinary trivia: If it weren't for The Beatles, we might not have CAT scans.

Via Rex.