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Sunday, December 7, 2003 |
Tom Cruise, Bob Dylan, Commodore Perry. This
year marks the 150th anniversary of Commodore Matthew Perry's fabled
"opening" of Japan. If you said, "Commodore who?" you wouldn't be alone. By Christopher Benfey. [New York Times: Opinion]
In "The Book of Tea," published in 1906, Kakuzo Okakura observed that
the average Westerner was accustomed "to regard Japan as barbarous
while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized
since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian
battlefields."
5:27:00 PM 
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[Wealth Bondage]: On Political Visuals and the Decay of Lying
Teach critical thinking, and teach with caricature, simple images,
paradox, soundbite-style aphorisms, kitschy images in the vocabulary of
popular culture, rely on disjunction, force thought into the tiniest
crevice in the closed mind. Force two disjunctive thoughts into the
Consumer Mind and watch the little machine tear itself to pieces. Two
slighty disjunctive images are how three dimensions are created from
flat pictures. A third dimension is one two many for most Americans.
Is it any wonder that 'critical thinking' in education has long been under attack?
12:01:40 PM
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[Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]: Nobody
really knows why Stradivarius and other violins designed in the late
17th and early 18th centuries still sound so good compared to modern
ones. Is it because of secret techniques, use of special wood or
something else? Now, two researchers think the cold climate, a mini ice
age which ruled over Europe during this period, is responsible for the
quality of musical instrument making.
Another factor to add to the cost/benefit analyses.
OTOH, our "what? me worry?" administration probably doesn't need no
steenkin' Strads, and in any case is boyed by Putin alegedly musing that
a few degrees of temperature rise would be just fine for Mother Russia.
10:09:49 AM
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[Better Living Through Software]: one gets more tolerant of suckage in software when one has spent enough time actually trying to do software
Unfortunately, it's everywhere
9:56:21 AM
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Photos from the legend
[Thanks to 101-365 for the link.)
9:53:50 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Gil Friend.
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