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Pit stop! Had an amazing day of NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway....

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:07:24 -0500

Pit stop! Had an amazing day of NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway. Met some drivers (Carl Edwards and David Ragan), stood on pit road for the Anthem and (as seen in this picture) got to sit on top of David Ragan’s pit box for about 40 laps including this stop. So cool.

Not too shabby of a way to watch a race (that’s pit row...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:17:40 -0500

Not too shabby of a way to watch a race (that’s pit row directly in front).

Saturday at the Races (via nbrier)

JAWS! What Were They Thinking?! - omg! photos on Yahoo!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:44:54 -0500

JAWS!

What Were They Thinking?! - omg! photos on Yahoo!

"Pouring hot liquids or metals, such as lead or gold, into the mouth of a victim was a practice used..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:20:08 -0500

“Pouring hot liquids or metals, such as lead or gold, into the mouth of a victim was a practice used on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, by the Romans and the Spanish.”

- Good to know.

NCBI ROFL: Molten gold was poured down his throat until his bowels burst.

"So far I’ve heard nothing out of Washington which says to me that the White House has a plan for..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:16:55 -0500

“So far I’ve heard nothing out of Washington which says to me that the White House has a plan for addressing long-term structural problems in terms of unemployment, capital flows, and interest rates. A lot of these problems have been around for many years, and most of them have been diagnosed sharply at one point or another by Larry Summers. So it’s not like Washington is oblivious to what’s going on. But we’re at the limits of what monetary policy is able to achieve, and the nation cannot afford to repeat the monster hit to the US fisc which we’ve seen over the past couple of years.”

- A very pessimistic view from Felix Salmon.

Felix Salmon » Blog Archive » A global problem with no solution | Blogs |

The Diversity of Sesame Street

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:16:14 -0500

The Diversity of Sesame Street:

My friend Charlton (a professor at NYU who specializes in race) has a nice piece about the diversity of Sesame Street:

Beyond being in sync with the racial realities of young children who have not yet been corrupted by their parents’ color-bound politics, Sesame Street modeled the kind of racial idealism we should continually strive for. In Sesame Street’s diverse neighborhood, characters always asked questions about why someone looked or acted differently than they did. Their questions were never returned with a north-directed middle finger or someone screaming, “ignorant!” The character was glad to answer the question and tell others about him or herself. I remember Oscar frequently being asked why he was green. Not complaining any more than usual, he was happy to point out that he’s not really green, but that he once took a dip in a muddy marsh and hadn’t taken a bath since.

Via: The Diversity of Sesame Street // NoahBrier.com

What Space Invaders Actually Look Like - Geekologie

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:20:30 -0500

What Space Invaders Actually Look Like - Geekologie

"This afternoon, the small, family-owned pretzel company, Synders of Hanover, Penn., said it was..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:10:12 -0500

“This afternoon, the small, family-owned pretzel company, Synders of Hanover, Penn., said it was scuttling its plans to acquire crosstown snack food maker Utz Quality Foods Inc. because it didn’t want to bare the cost of an escalating inquiry in into the deal by the Federal Trade Commission. According to Utz, the FTC had made a second request for information about its business.”

- Whoa whoa, this is big news. I had no idea that Snyders was considering acquiring Utz. I don’t know how I feel about that. As a pretzel aficionado, Utz makes a better pretzel than Snyders. But Snyders has national distribution and Utz is only regional. So many things to think about. This is big news.

Protecting the Public from a Pretzel Monopoly - Deal Journal - WSJ

Yes yes yes. Three Rowlf Moon [PIC]

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:52:51 -0500

Yes yes yes.

Three Rowlf Moon [PIC]

"The phrase tweet-up infuriates me."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:50:52 -0500

“The phrase tweet-up infuriates me.”

- Phew. Glad I got that off my chest.

"The 180 Bs and one of the 355 Bs are working to build the side structures of the skyscraper, while..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:33:50 -0500

“The 180 Bs and one of the 355 Bs are working to build the side structures of the skyscraper, while the other two 355 B models are constructing Tower 185. The 355 Bs can move 14t in single-reeve configuration, or 28t in doubled reeved operation. They have a jib length of 50m. The standard cable drum capacity of the hoisting system is adequate for tower heights up to 860m in single reeved operation or 400m in a double-reeve configuration.”

- Cranes Today - the independent magazine of the crane industry - Wolff pack loose in Frankfurt

I love running across random trade publications. It’s such a good reminder that there are great big worlds outside the internet.

"Tired of media saying that the internet is isolating people. Try being a geek before the internet."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:27:49 -0500

“Tired of media saying that the internet is isolating people. Try being a geek before the internet.”

- Marco Arment (via travors & toldorknown) (via inky)

Mileage Runs

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:13:00 -0500

Mileage Runs:

So I travel a lot and have become fairly obsessed with accruing airline miles and getting status. When you’re in airports constantly you aren’t left with that many other things to think about. With that said, I’ve never done a milage run, where you take a trip just to bump your milage up for a status reward. Take, for instance, this story from a guy on his 8,000 mile run:

Mileage runs are a blast. They really are. They’re relaxing, they’re a way to get disconnected, and ultimately they’re “profitable.” But, if you’re like me and do hardcore, eight segment, 36 hour, 8,000 mile domestic mileage runs, only half the journey is fun. Typically I’ll start out on a flight out of Tampa at 6AM on a Saturday morning. Can someone remind me why the hell I’d actually want to get up (as opposed to go to bed) at 3:30AM on a Saturday morning?

The scary part is that I’ve considered it …

Via: Milage Runs // NoahBrier.com

"But this kid…Christ alive. Planning to him seemed to be about drawing Powerpoint charts that..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:21:29 -0500

“But this kid…Christ alive. Planning to him seemed to be about drawing Powerpoint charts that literally blew my mind. Some of them looked like a spider had fucked a Venn diagram in a fireworks factory.”

- I AM THE CLIENT!: What the fuck is planning?

slavin: LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY A. This is insane. B. This...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:14:21 -0500

slavin:

LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY

A. This is insane.

B. This site is awesome. How did I not see it yet?

"In my day, we didn’t have armies of ants directing traffic like they do now. All combustible..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:07:14 -0500

“In my day, we didn’t have armies of ants directing traffic like they do now. All combustible vehicles ran on roads that converged into town where my gal Madge was the traffictress. And she did a darn good job too, except for her occasionally getting flattened by a wooden steamroller. But by gum I’d fluff her back up to regular size, and she was as good as new!”

- A comment I just got on my site for a post I wrote back in March. I assume it’s spam, but I don’t have the heart to delete it.

Ants, Traffic and the Lack of Individuality // NoahBrier.com

aceterrier: tomewing: “If you imitate a person you admire, the best you can possibly hope for is...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:16:29 -0500

aceterrier:

tomewing:

“If you imitate a person you admire, the best you can possibly hope for is to become a bad imitation of the person you admire. What you need to do instead is to locate the same level of inventiveness as the person you admire, and apply it to a new domain.”

Nice quote from Donald Judd via the Jonathan Harris lecture that’s floating around.

Jonathan Harris . World Building in a Crazy World . Imitation

(via heyitsnoah)

And what’s the best way of “locating the inventiveness”? - almost certainly through the trial and error of imitation. There’s a reason guitarists, say, mostly learn by playing other people’s songs or playing along to records.

(I love Harris’ web work, as a creator he’s magnificent, but as a thinker this whole lecture was disappointingly weak: that whole tangle of contradiction around simplicity, homogenity, ‘special effects’ etc. Of course he put the obligatory “boo sucks to cynicism” bit at the end too.)

Artists (in the generic sense of “creative people”) are so frequently the worst-informed people about any creative process other than their own that I automatically ignore any general principles they draw, correctly or not, from their individual experience.

Very fair bit of feedback.

This is very necessary. swissmiss | FingerFood Ring

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:09:42 -0500

This is very necessary.

swissmiss | FingerFood Ring

"If you imitate a person you admire, the best you can possibly hope for is to become a bad imitation..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:01:43 -0500

“If you imitate a person you admire, the best you can possibly hope for is to become a bad imitation of the person you admire. What you need to do instead is to locate the same level of inventiveness as the person you admire, and apply it to a new domain.”

- Nice quote from Donald Judd via the Jonathan Harris lecture that’s floating around.

Jonathan Harris . World Building in a Crazy World . Imitation

COME TO OUR BIG BUSINESS BREAKFAST 2ND TUESDAYS 9AM AT KATZS (.COM)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:23:10 -0500

COME TO OUR BIG BUSINESS BREAKFAST 2ND TUESDAYS 9AM AT KATZS (.COM):

benjaminpalmer:

next tuesday, nov. 10 !

It’s been entirely too long since we ate pastrami and eggs together, people!