July 2, 2010

Orange (The Hiatus Continues…)

Busy busy…

June 22, 2010

Non Sequitur

June 15, 2010

The Creators Projection

Intel × Vice’s recently-launched Creators Project feels a bit contrived on premise—i.e., a tech titan’s attempt to co-opt the cool—but the production value and content is really quite good. In fact, it’s just as well that Vice/VBS.tv gets a shit-ton money from a corpulent corporation with cash to spare; hence, the (free) star-studded NYC launch party. (It’s already sold out, but I’m going out of town that weekend anyway… speaking of which, I’m going to be out of town this weekend as well, so let’s just say that June’s editorial calendar will be a little leaner than usual.)

James Powderly (above) may be an engineering whiz, but Brock Davis is pure pop fun:

June 13, 2010

Cities I've Called Home

Courtesy of Eric Fischer‘s amazing Geotagger’s World Atlas (Locals & Tourists version).

June 10, 2010

Obligatory World Cup Post

*If you can’t tell, the images are mostly unrelated to the text

Ridiculously amazing photos of WC2010 buildup on Boston.com's Big Picture

• (UPDATE) First things first: The World Cup, Translated into American.

• Slate has the scoop on the secret history of American soccer in the first quarter of the last century (i.e.,the Roaring Twenties), featuring the Boston Wonder Workers, the Brooklyn Wanderers, and, of course, the infamous Fall River Marksmen.

• Even the New Republic has a soccer blog, where you can find gems such as Tom Vanderbilt’s on-point “Meditation on Loyalty.”

I hope I encounter this in real life at some point in the next month...

May 28, 2010

Cartographic Design

It’s no secret that I love maps, though my ambivalence about the MTA applies to their newly revised NYC subway map—the first major update since 1998—set to launch in the next month. In any case, the New York Times has an interactive feature on old vs. new (only the new map is pictured above).

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Chinese Globe

The Daily Mail has a feature on ““Ten of the greatest: Maps that changed the world,” in conjunction with an eponymous exhibition at the British Library. (via Freakonomics Blog)

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In other geography-related news, GOOD has posted the submissions to their open call for ‘Neighborhood Flags‘; unsurprisingly, the majority of them represent the likes of Portland, New York, boroughs in the Golden State (Nor- and So-)… and Minneapolis? (via FreeWilliamsburg)

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Be On Guard! - also via Daily Mail

May 23, 2010

Photos

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker responds to Conor Friedersdorf’s critique of NYC narcissism for Atlantic. It’s a fairly accurate assessment all around to mark my upcoming two-year anniversary here.

Photos (click for full-size):

May 17, 2010

Philosophy in the Times

or, The Death of Book Philosophers?

What Is a Philosopher?

Critchley's Book of Dead Philosophers boasted one of my favorite book covers of 2009, though I have yet to read it... (via Amazon)

Many former (and some current) philosophy students sound off in the 600 750+ comments to moderator Simon Critchley’s introduction to the new column, the Stone. Let’s hope that Critchley and his colleagues can draw blood from it.

See also: (Highly) critical distance from Brian Leiter, also looking to draw blood (to completely butcher the metaphor).

May 14, 2010

Guilty As Charged

Look at this Fucking Hipster Edition

What Does Hipster Mean to Meme?

I appreciate the Sartre call-out (1:17); however, to her point(s), I just happened upon the latest installment of Nitsuh Abebe’s monthly column for Pitchfork, in which he addresses the concept of irony as the guiding tenet of indie (read: hipster) culture, citing LCD Soundsystem and Hipster Runoff (both of which I’ve written about in a similar context).

You can’t possibly navigate the Internet without being able to understand both arch, knowing irony and all-out earnestness– but no matter how good your ability to figure out which is which, you will eventually run into items where you have no earthly idea how serious the author is.

–Nitsuh Abebe, Why We Fight #3: A Brief History of Knowingness and Irony,
Pitchfork, May 7 2010

In Abebe’s inaugural essay, he draws parallels between Joanna Newsom and Lady Gaga; the former recently spoke about the latter in an interview with the Guardian. (I was less impressed with the extended analogy of musical evolution that marked his second effort, though I’d like to read the Calvino story he mentions.)

More to come soon…

May 12, 2010

Time Lapse (Eyjafjallajökull)

Another quick one to mark the six-month anniversary. More to come shortly…