Saint Pauli - I need rhythm

(jh4v1)

produced and directed by Johannes Haverkamp and Tim Piotrowski

Saint Pauli

Life As We Know It

Little People - a tiny street art project
via FFFFOUND!

stray bullets

8 things Chinese people shouldn't ask Olympic tourists Posters displayed on bulletin boards in the neighborhood which includes tourist magnet the Forbidden City, and which will host Olympics boxing events, counsel locals against a wide range of potentially awkward conversation topics with foreigners. (via)

How to Frame the Internet: Attention and the New News Cycle The challenge is designing a news website that encourage immediate and full attention. The Washington Post’s web chats with authors and public figures is a good example of this. The opportunity to communicate directly with a person of prominence cannot be done later, nor can one participate in a chat with only half his attention. I would also point to the book readings and events staged in Second Life, if Second Life didn’t seem so pet rock to me. A smart website would start using video conferencing software to have its writers interact with readers. The trick is not to archive the footage immediately. Make viewers mark in their calendars for it. Make them miss it if they miss it. Some interesting points in this post. However, what often seems to be missing in the internet news cycle is the follow-up. Posts are archived and we can go back to what was missed, but as we all know, with the blivets of stories that keep popping up, we as the internet audience tend to drift off and not come back. I often hope for follow-ups to many items I find, but they rarely materialize. I think many bloggers fear being the one that beats a story to death and therefore don't give it the proper earthing out. I'm sure we could have learned more about George Carlin apart from the hundreds of YouTube videos and quotes from his comedy routines, but after a while, no one will touch the story because everyone has moved on. Our hyper-awareness seems to lead to hyper-abandonment.

Printer Toner and Contemplative Prayer: Interview with LaserMonks.com Monasteries all over the world have been self-supporting for centuries, and the practice of monks running a small business is nothing new. Most of them, however, don’t end up experiencing 700% annual sales growth, selling 30,000 products, and competing with Fortune 500 companies. Instead of baking fruitcakes for the occasional visitor, the monks from Our Lady of Spring Bank Cistercian Abbey sell laser toner and business supplies throughout the United States. They’ve creatively branded themselves as LaserMonks, but they offer more than just a great story. They also help businesses save an average of 40% off printer ink and toner, and in turn, the monks donate all of their profits to charity. Laser Monks website

also:
China Miéville's top 10 weird fiction books Telling.
How to Read a Book (via)
Literature Map Very interesting, but based on what readers read, rather than what writers write. (via)
Portuguese team makes first paper based transistor (via)
MoocherHunter - Detect & Track Rogue Wifi Users
Couple choose to live off the government grid Some things you might not have known about your SSN. (via)
Cyber Clean Sanitize your filthy keyboard and peripherals.
You Are Beautiful Spread the word. (via)

viddy:
Peter Gabriel Video on the state of the music industry Not completely boring, like this sort of stuff can be.
The future of knife crime A knife that is also a gun.
Flashback: The KLF Burn A Million Quid
Camera-equipped micro air vehicle weighs only three grams

the restless debt of third world beauty

South African based artist faith47 released this video as part of her the restless debt of third world beauty project. It was directed by Rowan Pybus with music by Fletcher.

I sat entranced while I watched this video a half-dozen times or so. The imagery and score seem to capture the vibe of the slums of Cape Town without being gratuitous or pretentious. Her art brings it all together beautifully. The whole thing feels real and accessible.

via Juxtapoz

I'm thinking Arby's

Specter
via LedgerGermane

well locked bike

random dude: Bike sculpture located outside MEC in Vancouver, Canada.

via vhudy6tx4dik9ol

milano 5

from blu blog
via Inspire me, now!

Fam by dran

dran
via who killed bambi?

Fake Bumps Used To Slow Down Philly Drivers

3-D street art makes it to the mainstream.

We'll see what happens after the first horrible accident. I can see the headline: Man swerves to avoid fake speed bump, panic, 37 car pileup ensues...

Story and video
via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Headless Corpses Found All Over London

The Decapitator
via Environmental Graffiti

Readings 5-29-08

I've been a bit lax on the readings lately. The weather has been unseasonably cool here in Savannah and it's just too beautiful to miss. It is going to be hot as hell real soon, so I'll have plenty of time and inclination to stay in and blog.

Nonetheless, some worthy items culled over the last few days:

A native Burmese account of the cyclone aftermath

I'm going to put it plainly, redneck stylee: The Burmese government are a bunch of pricks.

hat tip
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92.3% of all email in first quarter 2008 was spam

Great googly-moogly, that's a lot of spam!

I think there's something wrong with these people. Not just that they're greedy knuckleheads, but something deeper, more psychological. Perhaps a similar compulsion that motivates bloggers to spend endless hours on the internet seeking the holy grail of post material grips these enigmatic and insanely driven people; their muscles atrophying in a stew of caffeine and nicotine while the sun rises and sets repeatedly beyond brick walls they rarely pass. They need to be located, isolated, quarantined and probed. After that, they need to be taken out in public so that everyone that owns a computer can line up and punch them in the stomach.

via Advertising Is Good For You
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Forget the naysayers - America remains an inspiration to us all

Rumors of the demise of the U.S. have been greatly exaggerated.

The US economy is certainly in transition, made vastly more difficult by the spreading impact of the credit crunch. But the underlying story is much stronger. The country is developing the prototypical knowledge economy of the 21st century, an economy in which the division between manufacturing and services becomes less clear cut, in a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation.

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful.

The figures make your head spin. Of the world's top 100 universities, 37 are American. The country spends more proportionately on research and design, universities and software than any other, including Sweden and Japan. Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

As I've said before, it's about time the rest of the world caught up.

Even from a more pessimistic view, Bruce Sterling put it plainly:

There's a swarm of guys in there insisting that America is toast. Listen, fellas, be reasonable -- the USA might collapse as abjectly as the USSR did, but the continent and the population would still be there. I mean, Russia exists, right? It's not like North America is going to vaporize just because the world's gone "post-American."

Personally, I'd be happy to see the world get over whatever preoccupations with the USA and find their own identity in this new future of ours. Besides, nationalism is a zombie only kept going because it's more convenient than dismantling it. De facto or contrived, it's a wide open global playing field we find ourselves on. Time to act accordingly.

Europe found a way to end three thousand plus years of perpetual warfare and disruption. Asia found a way to bootstrap vital and vibrant economies, in the process lifting a billion plus people out of poverty. Maybe we could learn something from them, just as they might learn that the USA is not doomed to go the way of the Romans because of a few defaulted mortgages and expensive oil.
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How To Be A Renaissance Man

Good, solid, manly advice, but you gals out there can benefit, too. We need Renaissance women.
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Underground gallery

The city’s most intriguing art gallery lives under Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s dark and it’s dirty. There are no formal openings. No curator. No reviews. No selling of the works.

The artists slip in and out. They do their work, then disappear from the underground concrete corridors. Runoff water pours from pipes into these toxic storm drains. Debris is everywhere. You’re glad you have thick shoes as you walk through water and muck. Sun shines through a few of the grates, lighting some areas, but most of what you see is what your flashlight catches.

Out of options in the above-ground world, these graffiti artists do their thing in the underground tunnels of Las Vegas.

Spray paint graffiti art is not an easy thing to pull off. I guarantee that if any of us with no experience or talent tried, it would look like crap.

Excellent article with video and images.

via crazymonk.org
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ends

Found Images: Street Art

Nice selection of graffiti and street art