Visual Poetry and the online magazine

The first time that I saw Born Magazine I felt that we had reached milestone in the development of new media. To the uninitiated, Born Magazine features Flash and Quicktime movies used to give visual form to poetry. The results are often challenging, entertaining, thoughful, and, I might add, beautiful.

There have been a number of other similar magazines but not none really have the reputation or the quality of Born. Although Born has been around for a while the site is updated quarterly and always fresh.

Another online magazine that covers similar ground is Splotch. It is a beautifully constructed with well design visuals accompanying very interesting writing.

The Kids are alright

Hillary vs. the Xbox

Tuesday Lovin': Safe Sex is cute...

Japanese Condom Packaging reveals how embedded the culture of cute is in all facets of Japanese society.

Note: I don't think I will ever be able to eat a Kit Kat again.

Tuesday Tira Mi Su: World's Ugliest Dog

I kind of like him. Kind of...

The Trouble with Ordinariness

It has been difficult to think of something to say about the London bombings. One thing that sticks in my mind is the fact that London is under constant super surveillance. What results, then, is not the elimination of terrorists acts or any violence for that matter but instead an exposure of a sort of wicked dialectic of normalcy (even mundanity) and, well, death.

The image above is supposedly of the suicide bombers. There is nothing there to indicate that they will kill themselves and others. It is that fact alone that makes it an interesting image. We can look at it and say at that moment nothing had happened and life was going on as usual.

Terrorism works on this priniciple: take that ordinariness and shatter it. The irrational act then eliminates the ordinary.

Ok, but what about the death of the Brazilian electrician? With our definition could it not be argued that he experienced (at the hand of London Metro Police - who were in plain clothes, I might add) a similar sort of terror?

The dialectic then becomes one more about the illusion of order and the fragility of life when we start believing in the irrationality instilled by fear.

Launch Time

CNN's current cover story (10 am pst July 26, 2005) is the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

By now videos of shuttle launches are sort of ho hum. I remember as kid being herded into the gym at school to watch the shuttle launch and landing. It has become so routine (Mom used to say, "Did you clean your room? Brush your teeth? Watch the shuttle launch?") that the only thing to remind us of the spacecraft is something like its disintegration over Texas two years ago.

Well, for no apparent reason, I watched the launch online and noticed something different. Nasa now has something like over 120 cameras trained on the shuttle (some literally attached to the rocket boosters) to watch for any leaks, cracks, missing ceramic tiles, explosions, stowaways, whatever.

If you happen to get the NASA channel then I am sure they had even more spectacular coverage.

Update: NASA's launch video on their website is the same as CNN's. But you can view the NASA channel with live feed of astronauts doing exciting things like brushing their teeth here

The Best Blog, er, Website Ever!?!

Today, in Gregland, this is now officially the best website ever in the history of humankind.

(I love the losingest kittens.)

How Broadband Changed My Life...

In the past three or four months we've had cable and have become, basically, HGTV zombies. Barring the Daily Show we've found nothing worth watching except the 'your home is ugly and we'll redecorate it'™® channel. We have redecorated everything it seems and the only thing left to do is add window treatments to the cat. So, we've decided it is time to say good bye to our cable.

In its place we've finally installed broadband.

It is not that I hope to replace TV with passive, mind-numbing TV-ish internet entertainment. But the thought did cross my mind. My efforts to see what video is available has turned up this gem: TV4All

It provides links to hundreds of video streams from all over the world. This is a great resource especially for those of you out there that have missed those Belarussian Cooking Programs!

update: hey, european music video channels actually play music videos!

Framing and what it means to you!

Last Sunday's NYTimes magazine ran an article about the battle to control language in political discussions.

The article focuses on the cognitive linguistic work of George Lakoff. Some democrats are focusing on Lakoff's notion of Framing that simplifies concepts as keywords or metaphorical mental imagery as a better way of getting their ideas across to broader public.

It is an interesting discussion - one that merits reading the whole article - as it highlights two salient points:

- people are not really all that rational
- mental imagery is important when trying to get your point across

So, here is my attempt at framing: Read the article or your brain will shrivel up and blow away!

Tuesday Lovin': How it works...

Take a stroll through this book. I like page 26 of the 1971 edition. note about illustration: I think the woman is planning the man's demise.

It is a fun bit of 'biblioarcheology'.

Friday Lovin': Giant Table

Check it out.

Reasons for the decline of moviegoing

I don't often go out to the movies. Part of the reason is that I have wiggly kids. Also, to take the whole brood means putting my home in escrow (and if we buy treats, it means holding up the bank next to the theater). And in all honesty the experience really isn't that great. At home, we can really take our time, rewind the film, and, most importantly, we can watch foreign films that never, ever come to this dinky town.

Another reason for the sagging moviegoing numbers, I contend, is that we are quickly becoming a production-savvy society. We not only like good stories and captivating imagery but also we also look how the movie is made. All those DVD special features and our own experimentation with dv cameras and sophisticated imagemaking software has made us very picky consumers.

There are a gazillon reasons as to why we hate going to the movies. Here is a rant I found today.

One last idea: maybe when we deck ourselves out in gadgets (Ipods, in particular) and carry so much media around with us, we start to see our lives as movies.

INT. CAFE - DAY.

MED. SHOT of GREG as he sits at his laptop. He sighs and sits back looking off into space. He sips his coffee.

C.U. as he stares blankly.

FADE OUT.