Points For Creativity...

A Forest a Day

I've mentioned before that I truly love trees - everything from the majestic Redwoods on the California coast to the humble Maple growing on a suburban parkway. Trees make me happy.

Turns out I'm not imagining that good feeling - studies show scientific evidence that

Forests...can reduce stress, improve moods, reduce anger and aggressiveness and increase overall happiness.

~ Science Daily

They may not be Redwoods, but the trees in Chicago do their part to reduce my stress every day!   

Wild Wild West

Loved this stop-motion animation piece by Eleanor Stewart set to 'Hoedown' from the Rodeo Suite by Aaron Copland.

Be sure to have your sound on - yee haw!

Mad at Men

Image via Flavorwire. Double click to enlarge

I have a love-hate relationship with Mad Men. I love the cultural references to the 60's - easily the most exciting decade that I've lived in, even if I was too young to remember most of it.

But watching the portrayal and treatment of women and minorities during this period, both at home and in the workplace, makes me homicidal.  Just reading through the "Harsh Realities" block on the left was enough to raise my blood pressure.

Of course, I'm still watching...

I laughed

How fat is your food?

Question - What do these 3 food items have in common?

New York

Indiana

North Carolina

Answer - in addition to being something I can safely say I would never consider eating, they represent their State’s fattiest food.

I’m not sure how thorough the investigation was, but Health.com identified the food associated with each State that had the highest fat content.

The prize for Illinois went to deep dish pizza (40 – 55 grams of fat per serving depending on topping) while Louisiana’s Beignet came in at 11 grams (about the same as that found in a McDonald’s cheeseburger).

At least pizza and beignets are good to eat. Words cannot describe the level of ick I feel with these guys:

• the Garbage Plate from New York:  93 - 203 grams of fat per plate depending on the version
• the Fried Brain Sandwich from Indiana:  24 grams for beef,  only 18 for pork 
• the Livermush from North Carolina:  30 grams per serving

I would rather eat an entire deep dish pizza myself than even a forkful from one of these.

See the whole list at Health
Via SoGood

Month at the Museum

Image

Remember when you were a kid in grade school and your class took a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry?  You spent the day marching in a group from exhibit to exhibit, holding hands with your 'field trip buddy' so you wouldn't get lost, eating your smushed PB&J sammich and drinking your lukewarm can of pop downstairs in the museum cafeteria during lunch break?  You got to climb around in an old submarine, take a ride in a coal cart down a mine shaft, see some really gross anatomical stuff and explore Colleen Moore's Miniature Fairy Castle.  If your 'trip buddy' was a boy, you usually didn't get to spend much time looking at the fairy castle...

Was it just me or did every kid want to somehow get left behind (for at least one night) so you could explore the place completely on your own?  Well now's your chance.  The Museum of Science and Industry is looking for someone  

...to take on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment: spend a Month at the Museum, to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From October 20 to November 18, 2010, this person's mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here full-time and reporting your findings to the outside world.
~ Month at the Museum

This innovative experiment by the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere is a science lover's dream come true - plus, the person selected will walk away at the end of the month with some technical goodies and $10,000.

The selection process includes submittal of a 60-second video, a 5x7 photo, a 500-word essay; and a detailed application.  There are a number of requirements (including, for some reason, the ability to lift up to 40 lbs) and restrictions, like no smoking and no guests after the Museum is closed to the public. 

And they plan to put the winner to work - meeting and interacting with Museum visitors, performing science demonstrations and reporting daily (via some type of computer journal) on his/her experiences at the Museum.  Did I mention that the winner will also have access to his/her own 'home' within the Museum?  That woud be the glass cube up there, designed by CB2 for the 'chic science geek'.

At least the winner will have somewhere comfy to sleep once the novelty of sleeping on the Zephyr or in the U-Boat wears off.

Get your application going now - all entries must be submitted by August 11th.

A Better Travel Poster

Remember my disappointment over the lack of imagination and style in the travel posters you see today vs. those of yesteryear?

My concern may have been premature, it seems that the folks at Knack Weekend, a Belgian on-line lifestyle magazine has brought in graphic design studio KHUAN + KTRON to design a series of covers for it's travel section.

Now these are travel posters I would frame and hang alongside those in the Los Angeles Public Library collection.

See more at SUT KUTUSU

Putting the sun to work

We don't have an electric car, in fact, we don't have a car of any kind. Nor, being city dwellers, do we have anywhere to put the nifty PHATPort 350. I wish we did - solar energy has gone from panels set on top of roofs to free standing structures.

The 350 will be capable of supporting a 2.5 kW solar array, which is more than what is needed to fuel an electric car, or make a significant difference in the power needs of a typical home.
~Phat Energy

The PHATPort can be used as a carport, a covered patio, a pool cabana, any residential structure that would normally be covered or shaded. Only instead of just getting a covered space, you're also harvesting the energy of the sun - doing your bit to reduce carbon emissions as well as your energy bill.

Our government is making alternative energy sources and energy efficiency attractive to the end user via tax credits and rebates.  The guys at Phat Energy are making solar power easier to install as well as good looking.  Put them together and there's no reason this kind of structure shouldn't be a part of every suburban home.

Hear, Hear (cont.)

TW: Matthews is exasparating and cloying frequently but here he is spot on:
"...Sen. David Vitter, R-La...was asked where he stands on whether President Obama should be sued for not being an American, and he said that such a suit would be "valid and possibly effective."

Question: Why would a United States Senator support a court case arguing that the President isn't one of us, isn't an American? Why would he say for all to hear that bringing such a case in U.S. courts could be an "effective" way of exposing the President of the United States as an undocumented alien, who not only doesn't have the right to be in the White House, but also, on the same legal basis, doesn't have the right to be among us in the United States? Why would he say that the president needs to be deported to some country where he, according to this brand of thinking, was born?

So, Vitter backs "Birthers." Well, that's bad enough... But there are a dozen other Republican members of Congress who've backed the Birther movement.

This no-nothing-ism is catchy. During the last presidential campaign, a trio of Republican candidates – Tancredo (No surprise there!), Huckabee (Join the club!), and Sam Brownback – all said that they didn't believe in evolution.

The beat goes on. No matter how much information is accumulated on climate change, it's okay in the Republican Party to simply deny it, this despite the fact that the Nixon Library just released a memorandum from Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1969 warning of the impact of climate change. Four decades of science is simply rejected. Not a single Republican Senator is now ready to take action on climate change.
Sarah Palin likes to talk about being a "common sense conservative."

Where's the common sense in all this refusing to use your brain?"

Tea-Infused BS

TW: I cannot take it anymore. All of this hypocritical BS from the tea-infused Republicans must be stopped.

From Barry Ritholz:
"Once upon a time, there was a President. He was elected in the middle of a recession, following an economic crisis and a decade long bear market. He came into office on high flying oratory, but was regarded by many as a lightweight.
Once in office, he passed a variety of legislation over the objections of a hostile opposing party. The pundits and the thinktanks derided his big spending, his tax cuts, and his reorganization of government. He had very different priorities than the prior president, and tried to put his stamp on government in a variety of reprioritizations.

The President had barely been in office for 18 months when the pushback to his agenda became fierce. The media and the opposing political party all focused on the budget deficit. Most of it had been accrued long before this President came into the office, but that did not stop him from getting the full blunt of the blame. “We must stop this fiscal profligacy, or it will be the end of us!” the critics all cried.
But the president ignored the critics, and put forth a deficit laden budget that contained a massive stimulus and tax cuts. He even joked about the debt issue: “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”
By the second year of his presidency, the stimulative effects of the deficit had their impact. Unemployment began to come down, incomes went up, and the stock market roared ahead.

By now, it should be obvious that we are not discussing President Barack Obama, but rather the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

Which raises an interesting question: We seem to be overrun with Austerians, newly minted deficit chickenhawks who recently have discovered the evils of deficit spending.

What would all of these deficit foes have said to Ronald Reagan during the first 2 years of his Presidency? Mr. President, we cannot spend more than we take in? Mr. President, we cannot afford those tax cuts — or to spend so much on the military?
The current president, who obviously has very different priorities than RR, is in many ways following his path: Huge deficits, tax cuts targeted to his electoral base, allowing policiies of his predecessor to expire.

I find it terribly amusing that some conservatives have latched onto the deficit as their key issue, when they took the idea of deficit spending to great new heights! Whether you are looking at the economic policies of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, reining in the deficit was clearly of no concern. (Forget speechifying, I refer to actual policies).
~~~
I continue to see the Austerian movement in the United States as thinly disguised partisan politics. These are people who will say anything to keep the subsidies and tax benefits flowing to their electoral base. They will say anything –regardless of whether they actually believe these things — to thwart the opposing fellows priorities.

Anyone who believes the new deficit fighters care about deficits has not been paying attention. This is simply about power and money and legislative priorities and cash. With only a very few exceptions, it has nothing to do actual fiscal priorities and debt loads and deficits.

The vast majority of these new deficit chickenhawks — who voted for unfunded entitlement program (prescription drugs), who gave away trillions in unfunded tax cuts, who voted for a trillion dollar war of choice, are simply not to be believed. Their past actions speak far louder than anything they might say today."

Not so simple

When I first saw the image above from Joan Salo, I thought it was a sculpture, perhaps made with string or some other fiber.  It's actually a drawing - pen on canvas.  How amazing!

I also thought the evolution of this technique was pretty interesting as Salo goes from a fairly flat image in 2007 to something that looks 3D by 2009:

2007

2008

2009

via Booooooom

Sculpture Gardens

I love outdoor museums and sculpture gardens - I always try to walk through the Hirshhorn and the National Gallery of Art sculpture gardens when I'm in DC and the Rodin sculpture garden in Paris is not to be missed.

Something about gardens and scultpure together really appeals to me. I now have a good reason to go to Japan: the Hakone Open Air Museum.  This place looks incredible - amazing art that is both interesting to look at and meant to be interactive - either with the viewer or the environment.

Man and Pegasus

Wikimedia

Deep Maze

Wikimedia

Flickr user PSD

Giant Head

PSD on Flickr

See more amazing photos at Kuriositas

Aquascapes

I've never been a big fan of home aquariums.  The big ones like the Shedd in Chicago or Monterey Bay are pretty cool but unless you have room for a large tank at home, they just seemed to be smelly glass containers with sad little fish.

Of course, I never saw home aquariums like these

2008 IAPLC Grand Prize Work - Cheng Sui Wai

World Ranking #12 - Yee Kin Cheong, Living Art

These are award winning "aquascapes" from the 2009 International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest. The event, which has been held annually since 2001 now receives over 1,300 entries from underwater gardeners in more than 50 countries.

The competition has specific judging criteria based on artistic and technical points such as "do the color, size, swimming method and ecology of the fish match the layout?"
Swimming method??

A photo to give you some perspective on the size of both the tank and the plants used.

World Ranking #27 - Jamie Lin, Underwater Forest

See more photos at Twisted Sifter

Back in the day

We're in the process of planning a vacation and I've noticed that travel posters these days are kind of boring.

Not that the photos aren't beautiful or interesting,

but there's no style, nothing that says 'This is the place you want to go on your vacation!'  

These vintage posters, on the other hand, make me want to pack my bags:

From the Los Angeles Public Library (if you're trying to figure out how to get to the posters, click on the steamship in the right corner of the screen...took me several attempts to figure this out)

The Boston Public Library also has an exhibit of vintage travel posters, did you know that Chicago was "The Vacation City"?  Check out some of the items in the exhibit at Boston.com

Maps & Photos & Stories

Ponte Vecchio, Florence April 1905

Google Maps is one of my favorite tools - it makes being geographically challenged less of a disability. And they've done a great job adding functionality over time.

First it was the ability to search for businesses or cultural institutions near a particular address - useful for finding what you need in an unfamiliar location. We used it to identify a laundry service near the hotel on our trip to Istanbul (2 loads of laundry for $10 - well worth the cost of spending 3 hours in a self-serve laundry).

Then they added street view. I LOVE streetview (I'm useless with a map so I always do a street view of my final destination so I know when I get there...). 

Now there's HistoryPin. Not really part of Google Maps but definitely tied in.  In short, HistoryPin takes the Google Maps tool and allows user to "pin" old photos to specific spots on a map.  You can also add stories to go along with the photo.  The program is still in Beta phase but already has over 8,100 photos.



The photo at the top was pinned to Florence Italy by MirrorPix who also included an interesting writeup about the bridge. Don't forget to click on the Streetview icon at the bottom right of the photo - amzaing to see the photo pinned to the bridge today.

Hello Ladies

I seriously wish I was a man so I could wear Old Spice just because of this ad campaign...