Sick Day

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I'm a bit under the weather, so just this one post today. I'll be back with you tomorrow. In the meantime, it's lots of bed rest and Monty Python for me, the archives and my splendid blogroll for you, if you need some.

But before I leave you, a few notes and some videos.

First of all, I was shamelessly pleased to discover that Uncertain Times was kindly and thoughtfully introduced by the esteemed Jahsonic. His weblog and Art and Popular Culture Wiki are required reading and reference.

some news:
Sad to say, an American Tourist Is Killed in Beijing
Babies born 8/8/08 at 8:08; 8 pounds, 8 ounces (thx)
Update: Fake-CNN spam mutates as attacks continue

some nugs:
Literary Voyeurism (enough to choke on)
Roald Dahl's “Taste” - Read by John Lithgow for Selected Shorts series on public radio. (don't miss it) (via)
Roadside Architecture is back on the road. (prev)
Darren Aronofsky updated his blog.

some video:

The Chambers Brothers - People Get Ready (via)




From The Last Waltz, The Band performs It Makes No Difference. I forgot how good they were. (via)




August 9th is Frank Zappa Day in Baltimore. Enjoy an excellent live version of Inca Roads.

And finally, Procrastination. (not the one that made the rounds a few months back)



See you tomorrow!

stray bullets

Everyone should (link)blog The best response I've read. This is quite funny. I'm not going to comment on this again. If you'd like to know my thoughts, look here and here and read the comments, though you're better off just reading the above posts. He says what I wish I had. (big thx)

Identity is That Which is Given On the mutability and transformation of culture, why we're all multi-culturalists, identity and decay, and just what does culture mean these days? A touch on the academic side, but a worthwhile read. (via)

Return of the ivory trade The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.... The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say. Tragic and stupid. A real head-shaker. (via)

Copper thieves take down Sainsbury’s This is only going to get worse, everywhere. Some day down the road, there will be paper thieves. (via) see also (via)

History's Weirdest Deaths We are a strange lot. History and legend, mind you. I'm sure you could expand this list a thousand-fold.

How To Work 52 Jobs in One Year: Interview with Sean Aiken Last year, Sean Aiken from Vancouver, Canada, graduated from college with a business degree and wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. Like a lot of us of all ages, Sean had a good work ethic, but was uncomfortable with being locked into a career that offered little variety. Sean was also a bit of an adventurer, so he decided to do something different for his first year of full-time employment.

also:
In Pictures: Eight Ways To Quit Mousing Around "touchless" tech (via)
Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta Photographs by Ed Kashi (via)
Totoro Forest Project (via)

Futility Closet (a favorite):

Owen Parfitt In June 1768, bedridden tailor Owen Parfitt was put into a chair at the door of his Somerset cottage while his sister made his bed. She emerged after 15 minutes to find only the empty chair. A search continued throughout the rural village through the night and all the following day. No trace of him was ever found.

curator

* A new type of artist arises: someone whose task is to gather together existing but overlooked pieces of amateur art, and, by directing attention onto them, to make them important. (This is part of a much larger theory of mine about the new role of curatorship, the big job of the next century.) -- Brian Eno

big ups Guy

Screw Warren Ellis

What the Web doesn't need is a snarky comic book writer dictating what the Web needs.

With the majority of the Web flow being spam, porn and other garbage, and the remainder a phenomenally huge amassment of virtually impenetrable data and information, this relatively small group of people scouting for interesting items provide a valuable service. (In their spare time, mind you, and likely not on a comic book writer's wages.)

There are a vast number of fascinating topics worth exploring. With most having so little time to dig through all the crap, Web curating is a niche that is being filled because it is needed and desired. Link blogs are there because the desire exists and the traffic demands.

The rest of the world is coming online and they want information. What they don't give a flip about is what a few people were doing back in "the good old days" and they can't rely exclusively on Boing Boing and Neatorama, fine institutions as they are, to find everything they want.

It is ridiculously absurd to assume that one, or even a small handful of weblogs could cover all of the news, topics and areas of interest that would occupy the Web surfing public. A billion is an enormous number* and there are growing billions of people scouring the Internet for what they want. On top of that, there are a seemingly infinite amount of things in this universe to draw our attention... an army of bloggers couldn't keep up with it all, though they're finding their way.

It's a new Web, reborn every day, and if you don't like where it's going, step off and leave us be, old man.

*a million seconds = 11 and a half days; a billion seconds = 31.7 years; a trillion seconds = 31,709 years.