Archive for August, 2007
links for 2007-08-30
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list of online math courses
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there’s a ton of african hip-hop these days. haven’t heard this one yet
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to poor for workman’s hostels, living out of manga kissas, young, etc.
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it’s an academic paper. via improbably research
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one of the better grime blogs. prancehall mix is fucking awesome
links for 2007-08-29
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while the waiting list for creatures to get on the endangered species grows, the interior secretary continues to delay on granting them protection. he has now beaten Reagen’s old secretary for longest delay in approving a new endangered species. apparentl
links for 2007-08-28
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it’s actually not that impressive. if it’s going to take over 1 trillion to even get 30% of the US’ power from renewables, but then again 30% is way more than even the “greenest” countries have so…
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it’s global voices. some stanford student wrote about lesbian and gay communities in Uganda and people are upset.
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on the politics of city gardens that grow food from using them as art pieces to salazer era portugeuse gardens that are considered tacky in their utiltarianism
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looks ok, nothing terribly fancy
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rewind to see the different effects you could have
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has an interesting experiment that only 20% of people get.
links for 2007-08-27
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magnetic waves via WeMakeMoneyNotArt
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South African artist working in photo and video. the videos section is pretty cool and worth looking at.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Experience and America, What the fuck is this god damn literature thing?, and why fucking walruses is wrong… in this context.
I once had an English teacher who made the mysterious claim that was no such thing as American literature. At the time it didn’t make sense to me, after all Faulkner, Twain, Pynchon, etc were all literature, right? But the more I think about it, the more I’m not so sure. At the moment I’m going through Blanchot’s The Most High (Les Tres Haute), and getting a good amount out of it, but Americans have always been antithetical to the idea of hitting you over the head with meaning, and American Author Michael Chabon’s greatest gift might be the ability to craft the rollercoasters of pop entertainment into forms that at time remind of high cultural theory as if the batman ride at sixflags were to suddenly remind you a passage from Sophocles or something, and that is fitting with the idea of experience of over meaning that Susan Sontag proposed awhile back and perhaps codified a peculairly American stance to the humanities, that it’s better to feel than to think, a thought later argued by Malcom Gladwell in his books. But getting back to my teacher, literature might very well be the form of a book, but a book that’s meaning is so pervasive and it’s experience so strong, that it beats the form of an essay, a logical arguement, it gives us a world that in turn our imagination fills, and in the end the author has managed to emerssed us in a fictional world that will consistently confront us with the points his book is about, art can be a better vechile for expression than say an op-ed in The New York Times if we manage to fall for the author’s hook.
I am trading in The Yiddish Policeman’s Union as Dasa books on Sukuhmvit when the owner asks me how was it, it was great I reply, but it didn’t mean anything. I finished the book with a sense of the imagination that Chabon implies, but not with my views particularly twisted, with my opinions tangled in emotions I didn’t know, I walked out of Sitka, Alaska eager to return, but strangely left with the haunting sense that I didn’t pick up much of it, I could feel the story somewhere in the back of my mind, the way it’s snowy aesthetics and carefully crafted cultural rivalry chew at the edges of the mind, and I’m sure Chabon is up to something back there, he is more than clever enough to realize the imprint his imagination can leave in us, but Sitka mearly clarified my world of jews and made their honor perhaps more apparent, in a weird way The Yiddish Policemen’s Union might be every zionists’ dream, to have an aethetist do your work for you, while you can sit there and merely pretend your implications have been cut.
links for 2007-08-24
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another glowing review from wired. I think it will beat 3 million units, but might be a “sleeper” hit as the saying goes
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small qoute from Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika via bldgblog.
links for 2007-08-23
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700k immigrants to England every here, this is a map of where Brits immigrate to
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it’s all theory about video games etc. ludic shows up a lot.
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google books presents most of it for free including some interesting stuff on interactive story telling.
links for 2007-08-21
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on korean-japanese that moved to North Korea in the sixties
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on selling, designing, security underwear, backstreet sex shops, and other topics related to producing products for the 3rd world.
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the usual incredibly likely explination missed by expert geussers and a good monologue on anticipation and bayesian stats
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“Creating a game, in contrast, is like a combination of architecture — constructing environments that influence the behavior of people inside them — and designing a new sport. Gamemakers have to devise a system of rules and equipment that gives player
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when EU pollution markets and ecological economics collide
links for 2007-08-18
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new Wes Anderson film. release september 29th
links for 2007-08-17
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hints of ann ryan and a video game that apparently makes u think. games a form are changing and 2k Boston is definitely one of the better. This review from 1up though shows just how much new media can make u think though.
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in their letters to investors in failed hedge funds
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via liberty and power blog
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it’s in production, the reviews are good. i want one now.
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even more on the unfortunately belated Susan Sontag. it’s a little revealing.
