Wikipedia Takes Manhattan

clipped from www.freeculturenyu.org

Looks like great fun, if you can get into the city (and really, there's only one "the city") on Friday. I'd go.

Link via Boing Boing

Channeling Hitch

clipped from community.livejournal.com

The March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair has a spread on Hitchcock, and various current stars (of varying brilliance) photographed in vignettes from Hitch's films. LiveJournal user Deeda Blair has scanned in every glorious page.

Above is the recreation of Lifeboat (one of my favorite films). Also look for Jodie Foster's near-perfect Tippi Hedren, Charlize Theron's "If Marilyn Monroe starred in Dial M for Murder," and more. Watch and enjoy. I'm off to buy the issue.

Link

Book review: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, Alan Alda

I picked this up because I was looking for something light to listen to on my commute. Alan Alda reads the book himself, which is really the way to go. I usually enjoy a book much more when the author reads it. They get the inflection and tone exactly as they intended.

Alda has a charming delivery, sounding enthusiastic and instructive. The book mostly concerns talks he's given at various events, from graduations to grand rounds. It's not a recitation of what he said so much as an explanation of how he came to decide what to talk about.

His interests are varied, which has led him to speak at many different kinds of venues. He's known lots of different people, and speaks fondly and warmly about them.

The book was enjoyable. Alda conveys his enthusiasm for many subjects without being heavy-handed. He shares joys and sadness. His dedication to his family is obvious.

Recommended.

Book review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver

I'm nearly done listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life on CD. I'm enjoying the "year in the life" part, and learning a lot about subsistence farming. I have to admit that I find Barbara Kingsolver's hyperannunciation and syllable-by-syllable cadence to be somewhat irritating, but that's fairly easily overlooked in favor of her interesting stories. This is one book that I'd certainly recommend reading over listening to, but I'd still recommend it.

Bivvy pants

clipped from www.stabo.co.uk

Button-fly pants made of WWII English army tent material, available in dark brown, tan, dark green or faded green. Beating swords into streetwear, one tent at a time.

I want me a pair of these.

Link via Boing Boing

Birthdays March 21

Chico Marx


Bill Shatner

Milestones: March 21

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Anne Hutchinson, outspoken dissenter of the Puritan church in Massachusetts Bay colony, is expelled from the colony for heresy. She subsequently moved to Rhode Island.

Broken heart pendant

clipped from tjep.com

This is kind of cool. The necklace starts out as a small titanium hammer and an intact porcelain heart. The heart can be cracked, but retains its shape due to a layer of rubber underneath.

Designed by Phillippe Malouin.

Photomosaic of Star Wars Last Supper

clipped from eden.rutgers.edu

Call it sacrilege, you'll probably be right. It's also ozzum, and Avinash Arora, an engineering student at Rutgers, deserves crazy amounts of credit for a project of this scope.

Arora took Eric Deschamp's Star Wars Last Supper and converted it to a photomosaic (where each tile is a photo).

Link

A year in Antarctica

The skies above Antarctica are dramatic all year, as this time-lapse video by Antarctic resident Anthony Powell.

Via Mental Floss

Good Friday

clipped from listverse.com

Today is Good Friday, the day marking the execution of Jesus Christ.

Catholic tradition holds that the faithful should remember the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus on this day. St. Francis of Assisi created a list of 14 "Stations of the Cross," to help his students remember the chronology of events.

I wasn't raised in a Catholic household, but a good many of my friends in school were Catholic. I knew of the stations of the cross, and I've seen the pictures, statues and carvings in various churches, but I didn't really know the stations themselves.

List Universe has thoughtfully listed the stations, fully illustrated. Timely and helpful.

Link

Book review: Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, Matthew Reinhart

Speaking of pop-up books, here's a review I wrote a few months ago, of one of my favorites.

Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, photo courtesy of Amazon.com

I giggled like a kid when I first pulled the shrink-wrap off Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy. It combines two of my great loves, Star Wars and pop-up books, neither of which can I get enough.

It's a trove of factoids about ships, characters, weapons and creatures, with a bit of canon history thrown in to keep it going. But the very best part is the paper engineering. Each page features a large pop-up (be still my heart, an extended Millennium Falcon!), with additional fold-out wings that hold even more pop-ups, sometimes layered three deep.

All your favorites are there, including a Luke and Darth face-off on the final page that had my jaw dropping with glee. Make sure to look closely at the oversized Vader helmet as it unfolds and forms. Great detail work.

I have a small but satisfying collection of pop-up books, but I count this among the most impressive, particularly given its price: $19.97 at Amazon. Definitely worth it for geeks of the Star Wars or pop-up book persuasion.

Pop-up books!

Here's a video I saw on Laughing Squid; a mock-up presentation for the new pop-up, ABC3D, by Marion Bataille that will be streeting later this year. It's really all about motion, and I can't wait to see the real thing.

A quick spin through YouTube also brought me an interview with Robert Clark Sabuda, one of the great paper engineers in the pop-up book resurgence. It's very interesting to see and hear him describe the process for the books.

Providence Open Market

A place I want to check out after the move. I love these markets.

Fred Rogers' legacy lives on

On what would have been Fred Rogers' 80th birthday, Mr. McFeeley has requested that we wear a sweater in his honor. Do it for the people in your neighborhood.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in LEGO

clipped from www.brothers-brick.com

Now this is cool... LEGO Master Builder Kazuyoshi Naoe created six of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in LEGO. They're on display in a shopping mall near Tokyo.

Link

I certainly can't be human

You are a dog

Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can't be human. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

Perhaps you've heard about the ultrasonic ring tones that teens are downloading. Supposedly, adults lose the ability to hear these higher-pitched tones after about age 20 or so. You can check out where you land with the hearing test above.

Look familiar? Stuff that looks like the Death Star

clipped from www.mentalfloss.com

From hotels in Dubai to a once-ubiquitous radio to Mimas, an inner moon of Saturn (above), Miss Celliana of Mental Floss compiles six items that look like the Death Star.

Link

Happy St. Patrick's Day

A traditional song to start the day right.

What do the flowers you pick say about you?

What An Iris Says About You

You are incredibly hopeful and courageous. Even when you've been challenged in life, you have faith that everything will work out. Your feelings run deep, and you are a very grateful person.

What Do The Flowers You Pick Say About You?

Unconscious Mutterings: Week 267

1. Paranormal :: handbook
2. Alarm :: clock
3. Operative :: covert
4. Changing :: times
5. Framed :: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
6. Beer :: hall
7. Referral :: 800 number
8. Unmasked :: revealed
9. Movie star :: and the rest...are here on Gilligan's Isle!
10. Handbook :: employee
    

see more mutterings here.

Pretty cool lollies

clipped from www.lollyphile.com

You won't find these just everywhere: absinthe and maple bacon lollypops from San Francisco-based Lollyphile. More new and exciting flavors expected any time now.

Link

MSNBC pic of the week: "Look at Me"

peacock-MSNBC-NigelRodis-Reuters

My favorite (no surprise) of this week's crop of The Week in Pictures from MSNBC. This one is called "Look at Me" by Nigel Roddis. There are other excellent shots here.

What your shamrock says about you

What Your Shamrock Says About You

You are charming, witty, and larger than life. At times, you can be a bit impatient and inflexible. You don't like to be distracted. You don't really consider yourself a lucky person. In your view, people create their own luck. You are stylish, in a classic sort of way. You are particular about how you like things.

The Shamrock Personality Test

Swan Lake like you've never seen

I've seen Swan Lake... this is much more evocative.

Improv Everywhere in: Food Court Musical

Vatican releases new sins

A new list from the Vatican that addresses modern issues, as well as a few old ones.

1. "Bioethical" violations such as birth control

2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

I really have to wonder about the Church's continuing opposition to birth control. Certainly it's preferable to abortion. The earth is staggeringly overpopulated. High birthrates lead to poverty and higher levels of pollution, two of the seven sins on the list.

Unconscious Mutterings: Week 266

1. Homicide :: detective
2. Divisive :: breaking
3. Flash :: dance
4. Steaming :: clams
5. Crunch :: 'n munch
6. Look out! :: Below!
7. Anticipating :: waiting
8. Slim :: Jim
9. Navel :: orange
10. Help :: me
    

see more mutterings here.

123 Meme

from Kwizgiver:

Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

Reading The Moving Survival Guide by Martha Poage

Request a new telephone number before you cancel your old number. You may ask that your new telephone number be givn on the recorded message that announces that your old number has been disconnected. Remember to ask the phone company to list (or not to list) your new address and phone number in the local telephone directory.

Earth and moon as seen from Mars

clipped from hirise.lpl.arizona.edu

So now we know what Marvin the Martian saw when he looked through the telescope.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Star Wars vs. Saul Bass

For those who don't know who Saul Bass is, he did the title sequences for films like "Anatomy of a Murder" and "Man with the Golden Arm," among others.

The classic version:



The special edition:



via Boing Boing