One of the great pleasures of my lazy Sundays back in Massachusetts was always kicking back with the Ideas Section of the Sunday Boston Globe. I’ve rediscovered this lately through the power of RSS feeds, and it completely holds up.
Check out last week alone, in which there was a great thoughtful piece on Audubon’s bird drawings and their information density vs. that of photographs, and also an interesting piece on non-profit oriented architecture. This is great stuff.
As a man who still has a bag in his closet containing a white suit and a pointy electrified stick, I enjoy the sport of fencing (and not just for the drug scandals). As such, I really enjoy the Olympic pictures of Women’s fencing posted over at The Big Picture. Quoth Alan Taylor:
Spectators at the fencing competition at the Olympics are often treated to some dramatic, emotional scenes - played out by passionate competitors dressed all in white, hi-tech gear, meeting inside a large darkened stadium. It also makes for some dramatic imagery
He’s not kidding. The moves and poses made, combined with the bright white/shiny metal suits definitely gives the whole thing an air of astronaut ballet.
My one ex-fencer gripe, where are the epee photos?
Here’s a fantastic post Civil War letter from an ex slave declining his former master’s offer to come work at the ol’ plantation. (via yourmonkeycalled)
Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly- - and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future.
May we all be able to say “fuck you” to our enemies with such grace and eloquence.
So, my last site redesign had, as all these things do, gone from me really loving how it came out, to me noticing its small flaws, to me finding it generally intolerable, so I’ve redesigned Culturizer.
Hopefully this version is cleaner and more readable. I plan on cleaning up the sidebar also, so look for that to change soon.
I also plan to, y’know, actually write things that are worth reading.
Any comments on the design are of course, appreciated.
Disney, in addition to their incessant and unpleasant tween marketing, is trying to get Disneyfied cell phones to infants.
Disney hopes some of its customers will literally cut their teeth on its mobile products: Inspired by the success of multimedia toys from companies like Baby Einstein, Disney is considering making mobile applications for preschoolers. Shapiro notes that young children love to play with cell phones and busy parents may want a mobile “digital pacifier” to entertain them while on the go.
Seriously, infants are not in need of digital entertainment devices, and anyone who buys one is barely one step up from the dog cell phone people. Sure, digital devices will entertain an infant, but so will basically everything else in the world, because it’s an infant, and the entire universe is new and exciting. I feel like a luddite here, maybe, but babies need mobile digital entertainment the way they need tattoos, or giant bowls of Crème fraîche. I feel like disengaging with the physical world in favor of digital entertainment is not really that bad if done in moderation and as a deliberate choice, but infants aren’t really good at either of those things; they’re barely even cognizant of Aristotelian virtues of moderation and they don’t even really understand the world.
In conclusion, to all my readers with infants (if such creatures exist), do not give them movies on a fucking telephone.
Also, while I am on a baby soapbox, don’t give your baby a website where you pretend the baby is actually in any way updating the website. Put up pictures, video, blog about the baby, whatever, but the baby is not running its own website. It is a baby.