After Corbu

Sadly, today my hopes that public transit would be a panacea for anti-social behavior were, once again, dashed. PT: not a sufficient condition for people to develop enough affinity for their fellow man to avoid being mean to beggers.
Today, as I left the metro a woman was asking for money for food. […]

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Do you think if I named my charter school this, there’s enough diehard Simpsons fans out there to populate it with hilarious children?  Second question, could we still get the money if we fake-added the Fountainhead to our curriculuum?
Update: Someone is already doing this in The City.  Clever Hippies.

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While doing ‘research’ into computer gaming lore, I stumbled onto this map of Quake’s children:

Mostly, I don’t understand how there could possibly be so much variation  in the first-person shooter genre.  I mean, you’re basically (only?) holding a gun and shooting things; how different can electroquake be from ezquake?
All this to say, why not a […]

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If I were to spend $500 and the next two weeks of my life on this:

Would that be just awesome?
Or,
Would it be the most brilliantly awesome thing in the history of humanity?
I really just can’t decide…

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Seth at Posting and Toasting:
…if both sides got Thunder Stix, we bitter Knick fans would surely be compelled to attack our own players with noisy distraction as an indicator of our discontent. Limit it to one side, one half, and the opposing team is the only viable target. The Dolan regime is censoring you in […]

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In my former life as a high school debater, I once faced a guy who kept accusing me of possessing “audacious audacity” to forward some argument (presumably meaning the words in the pejorative sense).  I’ve long since forgot the matter in dispute — but not the ridiculous word choice! — and so it was hard […]

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Manufacturing Nostalgia:
Maybe Professor Rheingold momentarily forgot that democratizing media inherently diminishes the aura and authority of any so-called experts. Or maybe not even media democracy will stop academics from being pretentious tools.
That ‘media democracy’ was your last, best shot against the scourge of academic pretension should make it clear that you are doomed to lose […]

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The best modernist architecture ballet I’ve ever seen. (Update: the embed doesn’t work with this video for some reason, but here’s another clip, taken from the earlier frantic naked man portion of the performance:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjyJfOzadGo

Clearly, the Bauhaus transparency fetish is being parodied by the set designers cliche use of aligned screens to create a tenuous sense […]

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I know it’s fun to laugh at the Japanese, but if there was a candidate named Bakersfield, I would support them unconditionally.
What are the odds that the man visits the town on his first state visit to Japan (knock on wood)?  2-1?  There needs to be a place where I can place that bet.

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I find the Stuff White People Like site humorous and…annoying? The site’s a little subversive since whiteness is the privileged norm and thus not generally subject to stereotyping, which makes reading it somewhat jarring — “these are people things…not white people things…but Whole Foods is so white…arggg!” but there’s not really enough critique to […]

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Life w/out Buildings:
…the idea of Nissan building an enormous underground chamber for the explicit purpose of holding two giant robot arms completely amazes me and fills me with hope. I’ve had enough of commercial storefronts and residential remodels; its time to design some Nissan testing facilities or Gundam prototype bunkers, dammit.
If and when you form […]

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While my brother was being born, my Dad, the doctor, and I were watching the Lakers win the ‘87 championship in the waiting room (apparently, my mother was not amused at the time. Being 3 at the time, I don’t feel very guilty…) I feel that makes me a legitimate part of the […]

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I’m a big fan of scalable architecture — go ahead and throw ladders, spiral stairs, fireman poles, terraces, monkey bars, ropes, balconies, slides, whatever up your buildings (like La Meme!). It ‘tames’ steep vertical rises making them comprehensible to users and passer-bys….and it’s just fun for getting inside to involve Rube Goldberg like complexity.
Apparently, […]

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Because it’s cool!

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Bush:
Heh, how does Iron Man go to the bathroom?
With the cast of Superbad.

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Photo by Xispas. Thanks!
Today is the awesome Dias de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever Cemetery,and if you’re in LA, you really should go. Families line the pathways with altars to dead loved ones packed with pictures, favorite foodstuffs, stuffed animals, etc. (It’s something of a mindfuck regarding the ways we’re remembered after we’re […]

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