ideometric

This is slightly genius. Above piece carved out of Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Massage by Robert The.

Book art is intimate, fascinating, and transgressive. When we talk about books, we are usually talking about what’s inside, but there is a lot more to a book than reading it. Book art makes those other aspects its domain: the way books look; the way that, with their bent spines and marginalia, they record the history of our own reading lives; the way that these mass-produced objects can seem to hold not just letters but knowledge.

DO WANT. Shelby Daytona coupe reproduction.

Osocio.org - a blog cataloging “social advertising and non-profit campaigns from around the globe.”

Good resource for anyone trying to integrate art and social movement activism.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. Came across him while looking up the term “affordance.” Sounds interesting.

“This book is part polemic, part science, part serious and part fun. It examines the effect of poor design and equipment failure on human behavior. Intended for a general audience, it covers user-centered design, the psychopathology of everyday things and the psychology of everyday actions.”

“We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects. Here is a book at last that strikes back both at the objects and at the designers, manufacturers, and assorted human beings who originate and maintain this perversity. It will do your heart good and may even point the way to correcting matters.”
— Isaac Asimov

NYT article on higher oil prices un-doing, or at least threatening, the globalization of production and trade.

The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.

The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”

NYT

Exxon’s profits were nearly $90,000 a minute over the quarter, but it was less than Wall Street had expected. Exxon’s shares fell 4.6 percent, to close at $80.43. (The company calculates that it pays $274,000 a minute in taxes and spends $884,000 a minute to run the business.)

NYT

Recent research also supports the hypothesis that health can be passed down through generations […]

A long-term study that included more than 100 years of birth, death, health and genealogical records for 300 Swedish families in an isolated village showed that an individual’s risk for diabetes and early death increased if his or her paternal grandparents grew up in times of food abundance rather than food shortage.

“Evidence indicates that what you eat can affect your grandchildren’s brain molecules and synapses,” Gómez-Pinilla said. “We are trying to find the molecular basis to explain this.”

Source

So, what does that bode for our obese, diabetes ridden, genetically modified food-eating, hormone and antibiotic fed meat-consuming, cheap corn-obsessed food culture? We’re already dooming ourselves with unsustainable energy, environmental, and industrial food/farming policies (etc). Are we in the process of creating deeper problems embedded in the genetic make-up of future generations as well?

Random shot in the Fashion District, downtown LA.

Aesthetics and security. Form and function. What’s the difference between a nice looking security gate and a utilitarian one? Who does it avoid offending (who is the audience)? Does it change the perception of the surrounding area? What’s the point? (Alternatively, why not? Why shouldn’t it look good?)

I don’t think enough thought (creativity, culture, wit/humor/irony, style, humanity, whatever) is put into design, especially for mundane things. What if we lived in a culture that could incorporate a sense of humor into the design of security gates as a matter of course? Like, perhaps, Japan and their all-encompassing emphasis on kawaii (see the Japanese defense ministry’s annual report, published as a manga).

Maybe this hints at a deeper critique of industrialized production, monopolization, and/or the cooptation of the aforementioned design aesthetic (and material culture more generally) by a production process that makes it all subservient to marketing, efficiency, and profit.

I think that computers and the ‘net put some of that creativity back into the hands of individuals, atleast for certain things.

[unfinished thought]

http://www.myspace.com/hamatsu

I can’t read Japanese, so I don’t know what it says. But I really like the bass emphasis, electronic elements, and blend of styles. The retro 80s cheesiness is also a plus.

http://ffffound.com/

This is the best time waster ever. (And occasionally inspiring).

“Glenda Kinzer, 41, from rural Ohio, believes the end of the world is about to occur. “A lot of people are talking about how Obama fits the description” of the Antichrist.”

Sigh.

Source

French electronica, pop, with Japanese noise/collage, psychedelia influence. Nice!

More here:

http://www.olamm.tk/
http://www.myspace.com/olamm

I thought about making a ‘cyberculture’ category for my postings, but is there really any point to distinguishing online from offline culture now that ‘cyberculture’ is mainstream? Is the line between the two, to the extent that it exists, largely irrelevant?

Vanity Fair maps the blogosphere. Part of it, anyway.