Archive for January, 2007
For a Limited Time
Both of these things will expire soon:
1) You’ve got a month to check out the Harvard Business Review’s list of breakthrough ideas for 2007 before it goes into the paid archive. Full of counterintuitive goodness, although the articles are of uneven quality. All-in-all, provocative.
2) Copy, Right? has posted a mammoth dump of cover songs, including a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Good Enough,” from The Goonies. I loved that song because it sounded obnoxiously good as the MIDI track to the NES game Goonies II. I actually remember Goonies II being a surprisingly creepy and atmospheric game; it had these maze sequences scored by a brooding arpeggio that just freaked me out.
Unhappy Meals
Michael Pollan, whose Omnivore’s Dilemma may have been my favorite book of last year, has an excellent essay in today’s New York Times Magazine.
Afghanistan 1997–2007
My Current colleague Mitch Koss has some amazing notes on Afghanistan up over on the Current blog.
P.S. An updated Current home page launched today — it’s dope.
The Same Sun
TIME.com slideshow of Mars Rover photos.
The last image is the stunner.
Help Me Decide Which Movie to See
So there is this film noir festival going on this weekend in San Francisco, which seems like a totally awesome thing to check out, except that I have never heard of any of the movies.
So… help me out here. Take a look at the program and let me know if anything rings a bell — or just looks interesting. I can’t see any of the Friday movies, but Saturday and Sunday are both fair game.
Everything That Can Be Remixed… Will Be Remixed
Step one: Transcribe iPhone ringtone.
Step two: Issue iPhone ringtone remix challenge.
Step three: Holy crap… these are actually really good!
YouTube for Nerds
A new site called FORA is aggregating smarty-pants lectures and talks from the likes of C-SPAN, the Long Now Foundation, New America, various World Affairs Councils — you get the idea.
Expect bad suits… bad hair… bad lighting…
AND AWESOME IDEAS.
Orville Schell on the future of China, whaaa? (Ring a bell?)
You’ve heard Will Wright jam with Brian Eno; now see it.
Who better to talk about Iran than Reza Aslan, author of the transcendently good book “Not god but God”?
This is so dope.
P.S. Except that it’s kinda hard to link to videos and the pop-up player is lame-o. And they have no RSS feeds. Give them time.
I’m Pretty Sure This is a Tiny Glimpse of 2017
Check out the trailer for We Are The Strange: “Monsters Inc meets The Nightmare before Christmas inside of a retro Japanese videogame.” I am pretty sure this is the first movie accepted into Sundance that was scored entirely with a Gameboy. (Roundabout via Rex.)
A World of Endless Fascination
Yo, I’m back in action over at the Current blog. I’m going to post every Monday — probably something web-nerd-related.
I actually think the question I pose at the bottom of the post is a pretty good one.
Sample-Boxing
Ratchet Up points to a video demo-ing software that let’s DJs rapidly remix music videos on the fly. The technique is a mix between fast sampling and beatboxing, and I’d be psyched to see it done live. Especially if the source video was this.