January 2012
3 posts
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Bicycle Beauty
An idea: what would happen if you stacked hundreds of bicycles on top of one another?
In the hands of some people this would be a mess.
In the hands of Chinese artist (and political dissident) Ai Weiwei: it’s a masterpiece.
December 2011
3 posts
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November 2011
1 post
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Let the Countdown Begin
“Book four, “The Passage of Power,” comes out in May, publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced Tuesday.”
OH YES.
October 2011
1 post
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September 2011
1 post
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August 2011
5 posts
2 tags
Hurricane Irene Thoughts
It just occurred to me: Travis Bickle must be really psyched about this hurricane. #HisDreamComeTrue
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Leonardo DiCaprio Needs a Tax Cut →
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July 2011
3 posts
“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate...”
– Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers giving his take on the Winklevoss twins. (via officialssay)
“Cities that are vibrant, cities that are innovative, are slightly uncomfortable....”
– Dr. Robin Boyle, Wayne State University Professor of Urban Planning paraphrasing urbanist Sir Peter Hall (via mypropheticsoul)
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Tilda Swinton: Alien Glamazon →
W Magazine features this month an amazing fashion photo shoot with actress Tilda Swinton.
June 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Meanwhile in Mississippi...
Mississippi political observer Bill Minor concludes, accurately, that the Magnolia State is effectively a one-party state, again. This time, however, the Republican Party holds the monopoly.
Is this the year of the Great Realignment of the state’s political power, the conversion of Mississippi from a one-party Democratic state to a one-party Republican state? Based on Mississippi’s political...
May 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Cornell Days - Thomas Pynchon remembers Richard... →
poniesofyesteryear:
In a dim way, I had been aware of Richard Farina before I actually met him. It was the winter of 1958, toward the end of the school semester, and I was a junior editor on the Cornell Writer, which was the campus literary magazine. At some point these stories and poems began to arrive. It was a radically different voice, one that seemed to come from the world outside, surer,...
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The Most Well-Read Cities in America →
Go Alexandria, Va!! In true nerd-style, we took second place.
Listen Up, Lorne Michaels.
Long-time Saturday Night Live Executive Producer Lorne Michaels was recently interviewed on where he believes current SNL cast member Kristen Wiig ranks among SNL’s storied ranks of cast alums. Michaels replied:
“Top three or four,” he says.
It’s hard to say whether Michaels was being totally serious in his reply or whether he was just exploiting the opportunity like a seasoned...
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Wiig echoes Chaplin: Thoughts about 'Bridesmaids'
So I saw “Bridesmaids” this weekend in what was a more-or-less packed theater. By all appearances it killed. Rounds of audience laughter came heavy and often. “Bridesmaids” has attracted much attention from the film press as a paradigm-shifting attempt to apply the Judd Apatow comedic formula to a largely female cast. Some of the most effusive...
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Word Art, By Type →
Famous authors and their typewriters.
April 2011
1 post
February 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Oscars Predix
UPDATE: The New York Daily News concurs on the Anglo-philia in Hollywood.
Of course the greatest problem with the Academy Awards is the Academy itself. No one really knows why they select the nominees they do, or actual award-giving trends as it does. Most of the working theories about the Academy’s voting habits hold as dispositive the fact that the average...
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“One virtue of this generation is that it was not afraid to waste time.”
– Rem Koolhaas, at the Strelka Institute in 2010, reflecting on his own Baby Boom generation.
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Microsoft Buys Nokia for $0B →
Smart thinking about last week’s huge, but strangely quiet, news from the mobile phone industry.
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January 2011
1 post
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“Cornell in 2010 was like Nineties-era Robert Downey Jr., fluctuating between...”
– IvyGate’s Year in Review: 2010 > Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, year in review | IvyGate (via 4907)
December 2010
8 posts
3 tags
Year's Best
Some day I will be better remembered.
- President Grover Cleveland
2010 was an odd and embittering year. Was it a good year? No, too much plain dysfunction lay about for this to be a truly good year. However, the year’s events fell short of the dire expectations that I entertained at the end of 2009. It seems much of the world, both Left and Right, has opted for the black flag and...
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“No one could get to her. Crown Heights was not plowed, and no medical aid came...”
– Mother of a 22-year-old student mother whose newly born baby had died by the time local EMTs arrived ten hours late due to snow-clogged streets in NYC.
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Woody Allen on why an iPhone isn't a computer
MTV: Do you use a computer for anything?
Woody Allen: No. I don't own a computer. I write in longhand, and then I type it up on my Olympia portable typewriter, which I've used since I was 16 years old. It's the same typewriter, and I've typed every single thing I've ever written on it. It works just fine. You wouldn't know that I didn't buy it yesterday.
MTV: So no iPhone or iPod?
Woody Allen: I have an iPhone. Someone put in all my New Orleans jazz music on it so when I go away on a trip I don't have to carry a lot of stuff with me and I can still sit in my hotel room with earphones and practice.
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“In 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then the president, announced plans to bolster higher...”
– The New York Times
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Youth, Race, and Ambition in Georgia Politics
If the 2010 elections stand as a political earthquake then the ground is still shaking in Georgia.
Democrats were routed in elections for federal and state offices in Georgia and since the election seven state legislators have switched affiliation from the Democratic to the Republican party to maintain relevance, influence, and political viability going into 2012.
The latest switcher? Ashley...
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WatchA neat promo video for Rotterdam - an emerging mecca for architecture and design.
November 2010
3 posts
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WatchRed America, Blue America - since 1920.
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October 2010
3 posts
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The Social Network: some brief thoughts
There was a point, only a short time distance into “The Social Network,” that I realized the effect that Aaron Sorkin’s writing has on a film. Sorkin’s dialogue, like that of David Mamet or old-time Hollywood screenwriting great Herman J. Mankiewicz, snaps and crackles and seizes center-stage by sprinting forward with the audience’s...
One Last Job: The Heist Movie in Focus at Film...
bbook:
There are few movie options in New York at the moment more thrilling than the Heist series at Film Forum. What’s great about the series is its dogged insistence on the heist’s dynamic, old-school moralism. Unlike the new Ocean’s era, in which cool and charming heistmeisters succeed in their plots and walk away with the goods, the traditional heist film is ruled by bad luck and...