Archive for November, 2008

The New York Times profiles members of Obama's administration.

"With the watercolor, in the quickest way, I could shape a volume, cast a shadow, indicate the direction of the sun in a very small format. And I could carry these things around because I was always traveling.”

"How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?"

"This time of year, I have to visit the hives every two or three weeks. I have the help of Antoine, who is a taxi cab driver, who stops every day that I'm in the market to talk about bees and he takes me around to my locations. I teach him everything I know about bees, and so he doesn't charge me."

so you've erected the enormous towers on each side of the deep valley, deeper than any valley previously bridged. how do you get a pilot cable from one tower to the next? previous solutions have included: attaching the cable to a kite and flying it over (e.g. niagara falls suspension bridge), carrying one end by helicopter (e.g. akashi kaikyo bridge) and floating one end on a boat (e.g. brooklyn bridge). the brains behind the siduhe bridge decided to ignore all those options and break another record instead. they attached the 3200ft cables to rockets and accurately fired them over the valley, becoming the first people to do so.

"There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."

Žižek on the presidential election and what the election of Obama means.

"It turns out that virtually every tree that was alive starting in 1954 has a "spike" — an atomic bomb souvenir."

This would be a good substitute for flying cars, Science.

Yes. Yes. Clearly there should be more radio plays, and the Coen Brothers should be directing most of them.

I'll find a use for this pretty soon, I'll wager.

Video commentary for the New York Times.

Spirit photography courtesy of the UK's National Media Museum.

Shot by Moriah.

as shot by Moriah