The cruellest of ways to teach your children the alphabet: The Gashlycrumb Tinies from Amphigorey by Edward Gorey.

(Thanks Clay)

 
The New York Times looks at "Late Beethoven", a new book by Maynard Soloman about the great composer: All Those Beethovens Whose Facets Delight.

The wide-ranging and wildly varied essays here show in the first place how fluid any notion of late (or middle, or early) Beethoven must be. Still more broadly, Mr. Solomon, with immense erudition, shows how imprecise and elusive the most pertinent historical concepts of Classicism and Romanticism are.

The easy assumption has been that with, say, the "Eroica" Symphony (1803), Beethoven the Classicist crossed a threshold into his heroic middle period and a nascent musical Romanticism. Certainly, in his late period, from about 1813 to his death in 1827, he carried Romanticism to unimagined heights and even surpassed it with intimations of modernism. ...

Mr. Solomon strikes a judicious balance. "Romanticism may have given Beethoven license to represent the forbidden and the boundless," he writes, "but his will to form — his classicism, if you like — enabled him to set boundaries on the infinite, to portray disorder in the process of its metamorphosis into order."

Finding order amid disarray is in large part Mr. Solomon's own task here, for he is dealing extensively with stray or fragmentary utterances in this deaf composer's conversation books, letters and the like. As he cautiously writes in relation to Beethoven's aesthetic beliefs, "it may be possible to find some order in this enthusiastic mélange of unelaborated ideas and, perhaps, to locate an evolutionary pattern in his conceptions of art and the artist."

 
Here's a great New Yorker article by James Surowiecki on the the often-crazy patent-happy tendencies of modern "new economy" companies.

Americans have traditionally been chary about intellectual-property rights. Thomas Jefferson, who served on the nation’s first patent board, wrote, “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.” Although we have always had a vibrant patent system, we’ve managed to strike a balance between the need to encourage innovation and the need to foster competition. As Benjamin Day, Henry Ford, and Sam Walton might attest, American corporations have thrived on innovative ideas and new business methods, without owning them, for two centuries. In the past decade, the balance has been upset. The scope of patents has been expanded, copyrights have been extended, trademarks have been subjected to bizarre interpretations. Celebrities are even claiming exclusive ownership of their first names (consider Spike Lee’s objection to Viacom’s cable channel Spike TV). The new regime’s defenders insist that in today’s economy such vigilance is necessary: ideas are the source of our competitive strength. Fair enough. But you don’t compete by outlawing your competition.

(via droganbloggin)

 
Episode #307 (EABF11 - "Scuse me while I miss the sky") of The Simpsons included an amusing scene in which Lisa is derided by British documentary producer Declan Desmond (played by Monty Python's Eric Idle) for trying to learn a little about everything and for generally lacking focus in her academic and career pursuits. She panics and sets out to find her specialist calling, which in this episode at least is astronomy and a quest to stop light pollution.

 
An article about Rob Burnett, the former assistant to an assistant to an assistant Letterman intern and now, 23 years later, executive producer of The Late Show and president and CEO of Worldwide Pants.

The primary mission at Worldwide Pants is to make top-notch shows. "The company runs by a simple mantra," says Burnett. "Will Dave like it? If not, we won't do it. The world doesn't need another mediocre TV show."

The key to fostering quality? "Our philosophy is to find people we like, respect, and trust and protect them from idiots, who crop up everywhere in show business," Burnett says. That means knowing when to be hands-on and when to be hands-off. While he rarely calls the set of Raymond anymore, for example, Burnett still conducts Monday-morning meetings at The Late Show and talks to someone at the Ed Sullivan Theater, often Letterman himself, just about every day. He and Kilborn speak every other week, on average. Burnett, who TiVos the Kilborn show, passes along feedback as well as the occasional idea. "I know their type of humor, which is great, but mine's different, and Rob encourages that," says Kilborn. "I've worked at a lot of places, and he's one of my favorite people to work for."

The Letterman endorsement is good enough for Chris Albrecht, head of HBO, Worldwide Pants' development partner on The High Life and Raymond . "I've always been impressed with the creativity and imagination of the people who work for Dave," Albrecht says. "They're not only uniquely talented, but they're also able to produce the same tone and quality as Dave. When you're looking for somebody to be in business with, you look for somebody who gets it. And they get it."

Creating something that's worthy of a cultural and television icon such as Letterman is a "gigantic responsibility" fraught with "an enormous amount of pressure," admits Burnett. Like a lot of creative people, he has absolute confidence in his artistic vision yet a gnawing insecurity that he's forever coming up short. Rather than being counterproductive, though, his fear -- of embarrassing Letterman, embarrassing himself, embarrassing anyone on staff -- is a constant source of motivation. A kick in the pants, if you will.

 
The ultimate in high-performance live-action team-sport ping-pong.

(Thanks Jason!)

 
"They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white... Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently."

The above is by Ms. Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Alabama, the winner of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory if not the reputation of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), who has just enjoyed his bicentennial. The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has attracted thousands of annual entries from all over the world.

(via Kottke.org)

 
Here's a page that shows off six of the clever e-fashion concepts that came from a 2001 IDEO workshop program in Japan. Their goal was to imagine the convergence of electronic functionality with the emotional expression of fashion design. Results include a necklace that reacts to body pulses; a camera and LCD display that shows a hollow chest; a purse with interior lights; and swanky high heels complete with a tachometer.

 
When you get to the end, go back to the beginning and start all over again.

 
Mitch Fatel. This guy is super funny! He just brought the house down tonight at one of the big Just for Laughs comedy festival galas. If the network scouts in attendance have any sense of humour you'll be seeing this guy soon with his own TV show.

Is that a sparkle in his eye or is he just confused? One of the few comedians to appear on "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist" twice, Mitch is quickly establishing himself as a comedic star. With his innocence and friendly demeanor he quickly engages the audience and then catches them off guard with his mixture of mischievous dialog and off color comments. While laughing at observations only Mitch can get away with we are left wondering if he truly understands what he just said. We never really know.

 
In Search of Serendipity: Bridging the Gap That Separates Technologies and New Markets

Why is serendipity such a rare commodity? “The fundamental problem is that technologists know nothing about markets, and markets know nothing about the technologies,” says MacMillan. “It is like a black hole. It is very hard to see behind your experience space.” ...

Although an unprecedented amount of information about technology is now available online, Ranieri notes that “everything is set up to look for exactly what you are looking for” rather than to assist in the process of finding crossover, innovative applications. In addition, information “is stored in silos” that are hard for non-specialists to penetrate. Until now, there has been no way to search for attributes like “lighter, faster or quicker” with technology categories, he says.

(via Pure Content)

 
I found this interesting thought in one of the local alt-weeklies here. It's from a letter responding to an earlier article in the paper about the effects of divorce on kids.

Our society today has instant gratification as its crux. As a recent graduate, my only concern is that I have too many options. I can see 20 countries in six months, I can feasibly attain any career goals I may set myself and I have the right to accept nothing less than true love. In short, I have been brought up to believe that the only thing I cannot do is "settle." In this way, if I were to embark upon a relationship that was to prove to be unhappy, under no circumstances would I stay in it. And under no circumstances would I fear being past it or left on the shelf.

 
Beautifully intricate and no two alike: snowflakes.

 
Accompanied by one of the most striking images you've probably already seen - that of the artificially-lit earth photographed from space - is this Discover article that takes a closer look at light pollution and the peculiar differences in various light bulbs. Turn Down the Lights.

 
Does design have to resist being disciplined? It's an important question; one that is examined more in depth by Athens-based university design instructor Artemis Yagou in a short academic paper she wrote on design as network of identities. In the paper Yagou pieces together numerous researched quotes on "...how setting up a network of identities may contribute to fighting the prevailing departmentalization of actions and people...".

In his call for this book project, Jonas presents himself in the paradoxical endeavour to design foundations for a groundless field, to discover the foundations for design. In my contribution to the project, I will begin by temporarily reversing the question and ask instead "What can be founded on design itself?" According to Simon, "everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." Given this definition, design may be considered as the original constructive human activity. Many researchers have applied this idea to specific contexts, such as the professional and the educational. In their study of professional attitudes, Boutin and Davis speak about designers as specialists of a creative generalist approach, which enables design to become a new and attractive professional model. Furthermore, design is considered to be appropriate as a model for education in general. Buchanan proposes design as a liberal art of contemporary culture, as it "provides a powerful connective link with many bodies of knowledge" as well as "integrates knowledge from many other disciplines and makes that knowledge effective in practical life". Another supporter of the idea claims that "design is at an intellectual crossroads where anthropology meets communication studies, art meets marketing, and cognitive psychology meets business. It is in the position to become an integrative educational field, a liberal art for the next century."

 
Chaos Theory applied to creativity = creative chaos.

If you are inside of something, say an atom, you only see electrons whirling chaotically around you. If you moved outside the atom you would see those electrons moving with a pattern around the atom. If you rise further above you see that atoms are actually the building blocks of larger structures called molecules. And so it goes, on up the scale, ad infinitum. The ever familiar 'forest from the trees' syndrome. It's all a matter of perspective. True creativity is allowing yourself to gain the loftiest perspective you can in relation to the object of your quandary or inquiry.

(via Unbound Spiral)

 
Goodbye, New World Order. This is a thoughtful and balanced foreign relations essay on the notion of an international community. Is it still there? Was it ever there?

As far as the international system is concerned, what are the most striking aspects of the current situation? There is the United Nations sunk in irrelevancy, except as the world's leading humanitarian relief organization. There is a landscape of international relations that seems far more to resemble the bellicose world of pre-1914 Europe than the interdependent, responsible world imagined by the framers of the U.N. Charter. There is an entire continent, sub-Saharan Africa, mired in an economic calamity largely not of its own making. There is a Europe that pays lip service to human rights, but remains intransigent where its own real interests -- such as farm subsidies that effectively condemn sub-Saharan Africa to grinding poverty by limiting its agricultural exports -- are concerned. And then there is the United States, seemingly bent on empire.

 
Seeing the world, degree by degree. Described by its founder, Massachussetts programmer Alex Jarrett, as "an alternative means of tourism, a way to explore the world using arbitrary destinations rather than the usual, planned vacation spots", the Degree Confluence Project is an inviting non-profit initiative that simply sets out to catalogue the world by applying randomness to a system of strict order. It does this by trekking to the 12,000 or so land-based parts of the globe where degrees of latitude intersect with degrees of longitude. Roughly 20% have been recorded. Photos are taken, stories are shared and an amazing collage of the world is created.

Some confluences are located near a city (New Orleans, for example) but the remote locations of most confluences underscore humanity's erratic habits as we spread across the land, or perhaps simply remind us that an orderly system for subdividing the world has little to do with where we actually live. Most locations serve as proof of how much remote terrain still exists, and a reminder that what may be geographically notable could also just be someone's rice paddy or fence. Confluences recorded on the site include stunning locales from the Yukon to Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter and everywhere in between -- northern Mongolia, Amazonian Brazil, even Antarctica.

The real gems on the site, though, may be the stories that volunteers tell of their treks. Because the confluences are based on geographic math rather than any natural boundaries, they are merely a random sampling of locales, a methodical way to document the Earth. The stories behind that sampling have become an informal history of travel through countries and cultures. As Jarrett puts it: "Not only do you get to see what the confluence was like, but you get to see the interaction between the person and the confluence."

 
Stumbled upon this, a rating system by Dr. Karl Wolf to more appropriately assign tasks for experts and generalists, at the always-enlightening Global Ideas Bank. Seems more interested in categorizing people than anything but then again, as they say, if it can't be measured it can't be managed...

 
"Our generation is a different breed, intellectually," says Jeff Chang, author of "Can't Stop, Won't Stop," a political history of hip-hop due out from St. Martin's Press in 2004. "We've grown up with multiculturalism, grown up in a world where pop culture has always mediated how we analyze the world. We're not afraid of the media anymore; there's a constant dialogue in hip-hop about the gaps between our reality and the ways we're represented. We're naturally interdisciplinary; we mix signifiers, we break everything down to bits and bytes and rebuild something new."

Collage, as Chang suggests, is fundamental to hip-hop, and has been since the beginning. The DJ was the central figure in the culture's early days; his job (at least early on, DJs were all male) was to rock the crowd with whatever worked, which meant digging for sonic snippets anywhere and everywhere and recontextualizing them with seamless spontaneity into a danceable mix. The very sound system on which he played was a pastiche of homemade, self-modified and repurposed equipment. The DJ was a circuit board, receiving, reviewing and cataloging information and retransmitting only the best of the best.

Hip-Hop Intellectuals: A radical generation comes of age

 
Yet another interesting mix of musical influences definitely worth checking out when they swing by your part of the globe is the Gotan Project. This Franco-Argentinian septet has mastered a beautiful blend of traditional Tango-flavoured instrumental music with groovy heavy bass electronica. Their first album, La Revancha del Tango, has sold over 500,000 copies in Europe and their current tour is, as their website describes, taking them to some of the world's most prestigious stages and influential clubs.

 
Smokey Hormel and Miho Hatori come from very different worlds. Hormel sowed his oats playing all-American roots rock with the Blasters and X in the mid-80s LA music scene and has recorded with Beck and Tom Waits, as well as scored for films by David Lynch (The Straight Story) and Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck). The Japanese-born Hatori hip-hopped in '90s NYC as one half of the critically revered, Beastie Boys-endorsed duo Cibo Matto and more recently her vocals have graced tracks by the Baldwin Brothers, Handsome Boy Modeling School and Gorillaz. What they both share is a love of music of all twangs and beats, and together make beautiful sounds as Smokey & Miho.

Hormel and Hatori met during the Beck/Cibo Matto tour in 1996 and bonded over their mutual passion for music, specifically '60s Brazilian samba and bossa nova; from there began a friendship that launched into an ongoing and delightful experiment. "After playing a lot of loud shows on tour with different bands, this music was soothing to my nervous system," explains Hormel. "I found myself listening to it as a refuge and it felt like the right thing to do at the time. After 9/11, these songs were what I needed. The soft guitar. The drum like a heartbeat. This music is sensual...like a warm summer rain." In 2002, Smokey & Miho released the stunning, eponymous EP that featured mostly originals and one Angolan cover, and included "Ocean in Your Eyes" which appeared on the soundtrack to Y Tu Mam? También. Hatori makes an impeccable sambista, singing in three languages - Japanese, English and Portuguese -- and in a voice that's lovely and emotional, so contrary to the rap-style performances for which she's best known. As Smokey & Miho, they both shine, and their love of the music is undeniable.

 
Cross-Pollination: When business apples and oranges collaborate, the fruits of their labors increase. A well-titled article about corporate collaboration.

A growing number of small and mid-sized businesses are discovering they can improve innovation and boost revenue and profitability by collaborating with key suppliers and other parties closely tied to their operation. A recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 56 percent of the nation's fastest-growing companies have worked collaboratively with others over the past three years.

 
Creative Generalist is apparently an exercise in "randomity", at least by Flemming Funch's description.

You can often get the picture of something much faster by throwing in some randomity than by examining it "systematically". If you're playing minesweeper, it is a bad strategy to start at one corner and move up one cell at a time. Better to try some random cells and see what picture forms. If you were trying to make out the topography of a piece of land, you might get the picture much faster by choosing a bunch of scattered random points to check than if you start at one end and go through it.

It is an intelligence or investigation technique as well. You might often find out more about a person or group if you pick some random or incidental channel of communication and see what goes through it, or some random source of information. Looking through somebody's trashcan would tell you a whole lot about them. Possibly more than if you just listened to them. ...

The idea is that life leaves traces and clues, and if one holds the view that everything in the world is inherently connected at a deeper level, it is quite natural to assume that the application of a little randomity might bring out some of the clues.

(via Focused Performance)