Tuesday, November 4, 2008
One Word Nation
This little page is so cute! After you've put in your response and checked it out, be sure to click the McCain button for a bit of a telling shock.
Read More......
The New Yorker is filled with excellent and inspiring writings on the election. Check out their website if the regular election coverage rabble isn't to your taste.
From The Choice, the editors' very thoughtful and powerful endorsement of Obama:
On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.
or from David Sedaris' Undecided:
I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”
From The Choice, the editors' very thoughtful and powerful endorsement of Obama:
On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.
or from David Sedaris' Undecided:
I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”
Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.
I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?
Read More......Sunday, November 2, 2008
Opo Terser takes amazing macro pictures of spiders and insects on flickr. They look like CG, very unreal.He also writes in-depth descriptions for each one, including information on the bugs and his methods. Click on any of the photos to see full size shots.
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Tag Galaxy
I love interactive Flickr toys!
First you put in your search:
Then you select your choice from the cloud of related results:
Then you choose your image!
Try it out!
Thanks to Zed from saltcycle Read More......
First you put in your search:
Then you select your choice from the cloud of related results:
Then you choose your image!
Try it out!
Thanks to Zed from saltcycle Read More......
Oh snap! Poor Governer Palin...
Two canadian radio jockeys prank call Palin, pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy. I feel kinda bad for her, but the whole thing is such a mookish move that you'd have to be pretty naive to fall for it. She probably thinks Presidents call each other all the time just to have a little chit-chat.
Read More......
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Saturday, November 1, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Back to winter.
Casey and I built this bike a year ago, we both rode our single speeds fanatically all through the cold months. This winter I'll be biking for work, and I look forward to sliding around and feeling the bite of frost on my face in the cold morning air. But I'm a little scared, I won't have the youthful enthusiasm of that first single speed season to keep my spirits up. Read More......
Friday, October 24, 2008
Palais de Tokyo Massacre
click on any of the pics for larger versions
I took these shots 2 years ago and they still startle me. In Paris the world boils over, the commodified contradictions of street and art match up and leave a wrecked plaza and a ghost of a party in their wake.
Splashes of color, dregs of beer bleed into puddles and mix heavily with the ennui of an overcast lonely day. In the best nights the Parisian youth come together and turn this plaza into an anarchist circus, with wild haired girls spinning fire and knotting together over jokes and canteens and shared histories of focused moments. The morning is left to sift through their debris.
But I guess things got a little out of hand this day. The saddened walls know they'll be scrubbed, and other painters with hangovers more slight will take out their revelry on stoic history, on buildings that speak of permanence and wisdom and statues that speak of glory and reason. Neither the institution nor the burning will of the radical triumphs.
Truth is I'm lonely, thats why I'm looking over old photos, anyway. Read More......
I took these shots 2 years ago and they still startle me. In Paris the world boils over, the commodified contradictions of street and art match up and leave a wrecked plaza and a ghost of a party in their wake.
Splashes of color, dregs of beer bleed into puddles and mix heavily with the ennui of an overcast lonely day. In the best nights the Parisian youth come together and turn this plaza into an anarchist circus, with wild haired girls spinning fire and knotting together over jokes and canteens and shared histories of focused moments. The morning is left to sift through their debris.
But I guess things got a little out of hand this day. The saddened walls know they'll be scrubbed, and other painters with hangovers more slight will take out their revelry on stoic history, on buildings that speak of permanence and wisdom and statues that speak of glory and reason. Neither the institution nor the burning will of the radical triumphs.
Truth is I'm lonely, thats why I'm looking over old photos, anyway. Read More......
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Miss Kittin
Catbats? Check
Psychedelics? Check
Creepy houses? Check
Rad music? Doublecheck.
Halloween music video found!
Psychedelics? Check
Creepy houses? Check
Rad music? Doublecheck.
Halloween music video found!
Read More......
Friday, October 17, 2008
Fixie the Loop!
In some kind of Quixotic delusion I decided to try to ride my fixie over the alpine loop yesterday. I've been meaning to do it all summer, and figured it was now or never. Lindsey accompanied me on her geared bike to act as a counterpoint to my stupidity and to carry the bulk of the tools.
The way we decided to go spanned only 49 miles, and we set off late on wednesday night, sleeping in Sandy. So the actual ride was short, but included two summits: the alpine loop, and the connection into the Highland area that skips the point of the mountain. It looked doable on paper, and we'd done Emigration canyon with the fixie and figured this path was a reasonable goal. I had my normal 46x15 gearing.
It was stupid hard. The first hill was like a joke:
See that brown strip pointing up and out of the right side of the picture? That's the same bloody hill, and it took its sweet time zigging up to the top. Somehow I made it, and rewarded myself with a plummet down the other side into Utah Valley, where an appropriately placed Wendy's supplied me with a delicious delicious frosty.
After a lazy lunch by the mouth of the canyon we headed up. The road got much narrower and more beautiful, with the chilly canyon air making us look forward to the patches of sun. It was the best day for a long ride ever; cloudless, sunny, but cold like ski-sun, keeping you moving. I still stopped, a lot, and grew fairly useless and delirious. My whole body was trying to push that impossible gear, and it just wasn't sustainable for long periods of time. That's about when we saw something a little like this:
And the going got pretty damn slow. My magic phone map stopped getting service, so we just kind of... pedaled. Every 200 yards I would stop, and every mile or so I'd stop and take a nap, it seemed. Lindsey of course was bored as hell, because she's a badass and could have cheerily continued along at that pace for the rest of the weekend. I was dying, but eventually...
We made it! But I really, really don't suggest it more than once. Gears are great, people, I promise. All told, it took us from 9 am to 5:30 pm to go about 30 miles. But it was fun. I didn't have an ounce of energy left, and after the race course down the other side of the loop and dinner with my Dad in Sundance I crashed out at 8:00 for about 12 hours.
Read More......
The way we decided to go spanned only 49 miles, and we set off late on wednesday night, sleeping in Sandy. So the actual ride was short, but included two summits: the alpine loop, and the connection into the Highland area that skips the point of the mountain. It looked doable on paper, and we'd done Emigration canyon with the fixie and figured this path was a reasonable goal. I had my normal 46x15 gearing.
It was stupid hard. The first hill was like a joke:
See that brown strip pointing up and out of the right side of the picture? That's the same bloody hill, and it took its sweet time zigging up to the top. Somehow I made it, and rewarded myself with a plummet down the other side into Utah Valley, where an appropriately placed Wendy's supplied me with a delicious delicious frosty.
After a lazy lunch by the mouth of the canyon we headed up. The road got much narrower and more beautiful, with the chilly canyon air making us look forward to the patches of sun. It was the best day for a long ride ever; cloudless, sunny, but cold like ski-sun, keeping you moving. I still stopped, a lot, and grew fairly useless and delirious. My whole body was trying to push that impossible gear, and it just wasn't sustainable for long periods of time. That's about when we saw something a little like this:
And the going got pretty damn slow. My magic phone map stopped getting service, so we just kind of... pedaled. Every 200 yards I would stop, and every mile or so I'd stop and take a nap, it seemed. Lindsey of course was bored as hell, because she's a badass and could have cheerily continued along at that pace for the rest of the weekend. I was dying, but eventually...
We made it! But I really, really don't suggest it more than once. Gears are great, people, I promise. All told, it took us from 9 am to 5:30 pm to go about 30 miles. But it was fun. I didn't have an ounce of energy left, and after the race course down the other side of the loop and dinner with my Dad in Sundance I crashed out at 8:00 for about 12 hours.
Read More......
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