Is it just me, or is this dude rocking some Batman?
(Uilke)
Killing the hive mind
The New York Times reviews Jaron Lanier’s You are not a gadget, declaring it “necessary reading for anyone interested in how the Web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace.”
I’m intrigued by Lanier’s comments about books in particular (“If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book”) and find myself in sympathetic agreement with his suggestion (hardly unique to him, of course) that pop culture has “entered into a nostalgic malaise”.
Found object: 1:31pm, 18 January 2010
Norman Hetherington’s copyright registration application for Mr Squiggle.
I really have no idea why I posted this.
My micro life: 9:02pm, 17 January 2010
“Hi, I am sad and dreary one.”
Least enticing opening line of a spam email ever.
Found object: 12:03pm, 17 January 2010
The City of Westminster website is serialising the diary of a mid-nineteenth century wharf clerk named Nathaniel Bryceson.
Highlights include visits to the gallows to watch executions, the purchasing of cheese, and Bryceson’s meetings with his romantic interest Ann Fox (it is noted in the introduction that some of these episodes are written in “surprisingly explicit language”, though the nearest I’ve found so far is an entry from 2 January 1846 in which he ‘tastes her puddings’).
Found object: 1:02am, 16 January 2010
This graph, recently released by the good people at OpenLibrary.org, suggests that the publication of books relating to fondue reached its apex in the period from 1970 to 1971.
Few sensible people will be surprised by this. But something else this graph shows is that people were still publishing books about fondue as late as 2005, which beggars both belief and good sense.
Found object: 5:05pm, 9 January 2010
A decade on from the fabled year 1999, and the public transport in my town has yet to achieve anything close to this kind of splendour. Here in Melbourne the ‘El’ would be shorthand for “extremely late”.
My micro life: 9:27am, 5 January 2010
Apparently the optimum number of times for a melody-playing child’s potty to repeat the tune ‘It’s A Small World’ is forty-nine.
Found object: 1:06pm, 1 January 2010
My resolution for 2010 is to end the year looking like this. Shouldn’t be too difficult, provided I can find somewhere that sells monocles.
My micro life: 6:46pm, 29 December 2009
According to Google Analytics, someone visited my website immediately after typing the search phrase “where to buy flatulence underwear melbourne australia”.
There’s nowhere I can go from there.
Found object: 8:47am, 25 December 2009
For a moment I thought this looked like the most miserable Christmas morning ever, but then I counted not one, not two but three dolls she’s managed to wrangle from Santa. Oh, and a model airplane if you don’t mind.
I hope your Christmas was just as bountiful, but less monochrome.
Found object: 7:00am, 23 December 2009
It’s like an alternate universe Catweazle.
(Frighteningly, it’s probably not that far removed from our actual universe Catweazle.)
(adski_kaferti, via Black and WTF)
My micro life: 6:03pm, 22 December 2009
Can’t help feeling my life would be richer and fuller if I wasn’t so dismayed by the sight of dirty dishes.
Or if we had a dishwasher.
Found object: 8:58am, 15 December 2009
Dutch edition of H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (or, Honey, I Blew Up The Invisible Man).
My micro life: 4:16pm, 14 December 2009
Sporty car in our neighbourhood with numberplate ‘D6GURU’. I admire any motorist so proud of their D&D attribute rolling ability.
My micro life: 5:11pm, 12 December 2009
Off to hear songs about Jesus, miserly inn proprietors and genius savants who travel in threes.
My micro life: 10:41am, 11 December 2009
Six day old bacon: safe or unsafe? For convenience I am going with safe.
My micro life: 10:28am, 10 December 2009
I’m not sure The Wiggles have much to offer from an educational perspective if they still haven’t figured out how to wake up Jeff.
Found object: 9:25am, 9 December 2009
Artist Carl Warner on his fruit and vegetable recreation of iconic London landmarks: “It’s important to me that people look at this and go ‘London’, instantly.”
I love that that’s important to anyone. I love that anyone would want to spend three weeks striving to become the Christopher Wren of the fruit and veg world. I love that in the video accompanying the original article there’s at least one half-empty bottle of lager lying around the studio.
(newslite.tv, via Dark Roasted Blend )
Found object: 7:45pm, 5 December 2009
From a US patent for a flatulence deodorising pad that sits in your underwear (in, the patent helpfully informs us, “the anal area”).
The background notes make for compelling reading (the charcoal cloth of which the pad is made was originally developed to defend soldiers against chemical warfare), but I particularly like the idea that somewhere there’s an illustrator whose specialty is the infographics of the fart.
(Google Patents, via Amy and Aaron Edgar)