Category Archives: Uncategorized

Benjamin Bratton’s We Need To Talk About TED is such an important read, and written like punch-in-the-face poetry: So I ask the question: does TED epitomize a situation where if a scientist’s work (or an artist’s or philosopher’s or activist’s or whoever) is told that their work is not worthy of support, because the public doesn’tContinue reading “FORTY”

I (favourite things: maps, collages) am totally blown away by Matthew Cusick’s map collages. Look!

I’m working on a contract at Concordia for the next week or so that basically requires me to be here from 8am to 8pm every day. I have other projects our organization needs me working on throughout the day, and I was really hating the little white windowless basement room we got assigned—I couldn’t focusContinue reading “THIRTY SIX”

I spent some time this morning going through Daniel Egnéus’ strange and beautiful illustration portfolio:  

So it seems like we’ll be in Peru sometime in the next six months, and it only occurred to me now that we’ll have time to go sandboarding at Cerro Blanco. We had initially planned to do Everest Base Camp this summer, but decided to start with the Inca Trail because our work schedules are a bitContinue reading “THIRTY THREE”

I’ve had this incredibly vivid dream several times now where I’m standing in a warmly-lit room, like a yoga studio, and I have a sort of three dimensional screen in front of me. I have tight blue gloves on, and I’m using the gloves inside the screen space to sculpt a massive slab of clay.Continue reading “THIRTY TWO”

Bradbury on science fiction: “INTERVIEWERWhy do you write science fiction?  RAY BRADBURYScience fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the headContinue reading “THIRTY”

I really love the artwork of Chia-Chi Yu: a lot of it has a sort of mythical feel. Check out her Flickr gallery here (she also really likes cats).

From a Paris Review interview with Sybille Bedford: “INTERVIEWER Then you wrote another book on law: The Faces of Justice. When did you become interested in law? BEDFORD When I was twelve and lived in London with a family who let me do pretty well as I wished, I used to go to the law courtsContinue reading “TWENTY EIGHT”

Thanks to Radiolab I’ve started listening to the work of William Basinski, a classically trained composer who experiments with all kinds of strange loops. Here’s his last.fm player: you won’t regret putting on the big headphones and spending the afternoon giving it a listen.

Asimov visits the World Fair in 2014: “Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will makeContinue reading “TWENTY SIX”

The Radiolab episode on BLAME is really worth a listen.

I’ve been in love with the portraits done by Miss Led for ages, and I think this one is my favourite.

“The people who were interesting told good stories. They were also inquisitive: willing to work to expand their social and intellectual range. Most important, interesting people were also the best listeners. They knew when to ask questions. This was the set of people whose shows I would subscribe to, whose writing I would seek out,Continue reading “EIGHTEEN”