Lots of goodness on the web today. Actually most of it has been there for a while, but today I was lucky enough to stumble across it. Quite a few of these come from growabrain, while others are from Neatorama, digg or reddit.

First of all and right away, you must check out this YouTube video mashup of Star Trek and the song "White Rabbit". Simply put, it is genius. And damn funny.

A more serious form of genius are these top 100 Photographs that Changed the World, from Life Magazine. The deeper you click, the more clear it becomes that they do, in fact, capture some truly powerful moments in history.

The photo above is not on that list. It's by Lulu, my wife, and it's of a beach in the Dominican Republic near the villa where we stayed. If you want to see the rest of them, go here.

I also really love finding art in usual places. For example, check out this stencil-story on the sidewalks of San Francisco.

And lastly, here's an inventive structure that I would definitely like for my kid to play on. And speaking of kid, yeah, it's true, I'm gonna be a dad. We're due on the 28th of September and I almost can't believe it. So happy, so excited, so freaked out. I know I can't prepare for this, so I'm just enjoying the luxuries I still have. Stuff like naps, popping off to a bar for a pint whenever I feel like it, reading the NYTimes cover to cover almost daily, and of course, that crazy little thing called 'time' that I hear you lose completely once there's a child in your life. This is something I've wanted for a long time and I'm so excited to see how it all rolls out.

WILCO streaming live is a great way to come back to reality. We missed their show in New Haven because we were vacating on sunny beaches in the Dominican Republic, but there were a few hours on Sunday night that my mind was back home. Still, there's no way to trade a few hours of awesome music for a whole week of reading, swimming, and feasting with friends. Pics and some video will be up soon!

And speaking of videos, here are 2 for you to enjoy. First is Bullfrogs Ballet and the second is how people count cash in various parts of the world. I had no idea there were that many styles, and that they had some kind of correspondence with where they lived. There must be some sort of socialogical reason for it, but that information I do not have. However, I have always known bullfrogs are awesome.

Here's a game called Bug Battle. It's easy flash fun, but it's exactly what you want. Simple to play and very addictive. Click on the speaker in the top right to turn off sound.

Last bit is a comic strip you know and probably hate, but I guarantee you will find it far funnier, weirder and so much more interesting once the title character is removed from every pane. Sounds odd, I know, but trust me and check it out.

Off to the Dominican Republic in mere moments, so posting will be light until next Wednesday.

No time to post tonight. Bro's over, we're hanging out in the neighborhood and there's no work tomorrow except selling some coffee and then packing for the DR.

So go ahead and funk out with WEFUNK. Ropeadope strikes again.

I'm gonna start right off today focusing on the negative. I can't help it. Reading through the paper today there was one article that I just absolutely loathed. "When There Is No 'We' in Marriage" is the title, and that's not even the worst part. The article is about two people who seem to care more about a) themselves and b) complaining, than just about anything else. It's horrible. Perhaps these people are just great in person, and maybe their arrangement makes sense for them, but the article makes their marriage sound awful. I suppose that should be a lesson to me about reading the Sunday Styles section of the paper. The rest of it really wasn't much better.

I always enjoy the Week in Review portion of the NYTimes, but in the last few weeks nothing has really stood out. This edition was a little better with a good article about the recent assassination of a Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyah and the complex and shadowy forces behind that event, another about the different primary processes of our two main political parties, and a third article about about art theft. The image in this post is from that article in Times and is of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where several pieces were taken from years ago. The crime has not been solved and the pieces, worth over $300 million, are still missing. The photo was taken by Keith Meyers.

There's some good news in the Sunday Biz Section. Silicon Valley companies and entrepreneurs have begun to turn their attention to solar power and their flair for innovation and miniaturization have helped to push the boundaries of this technology. There are also some new tools to help you learn languages, one using podcasts and the other harnessing the power of social networks, VoIP and instant messaging.

The last story I'm gonna talk about tonight is on the front page of the Connecticut section. It's a feel-good story with a bit of current events thrown in to give it a hook, and some depth. As soon as I started reading it, I thought of my friend Steve and the skating rink he builds every winter in his back yard. It is wonderful to think of all the fun he and his kids will have out there every year, provided the weather cooperates. As soon as I have good health insurance I'm gonna get out there and skate, too. I'm sure his oldest (now 3) can already skate circles around me.

Friday night and we are rocking it in New Haven. Having such a blast taking apart this town and putting it back together the way we want. Or maybe we just stayed in. Yup, that's it. Sokay, though, there's lots of fun to be had within these walls and on this computing machine.

Thom Yorke on NPR delivers some unusual music. Here's the site he mentions as a source for a lot of the music he listens to, beyond what's passed by his bandmates. And have a look at this video to go along with Videotape. Again, unusual would be one way to describe it. Since we're on the topic, let this serve as a reminder to check out their performance at 93 Feet East in London.

I followed some links off of the Radiohead webpage and it led me Luther Blissett. That identity has since morphed into the Wu Ming Foundation, and I do believe I'm going to give their book Q a read. I'm still finishing up the looong Neal Stephenson article I mentioned a while back, but don't let the length deter you. It is really good. He is managing to make telecom history riveting.

There's a new type of plant in the ocean. It is called fireweed and it sounds absolutely horrible. But the natural world is full of dangers. Some of the worst creatures appear innocuous, like these 6 cute critters that, in fact, you really want nothing to do with. The shocker for me, though was Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Who the hell knew that the platypus was venomous? It truly is the leftover pieces of every other type of creature.

Then again, there are times when even the most deadly of creatures are nothing but gentle. As examples I give you a trainer being hugged by the king of the jungle, and then a crazy-person called Sharkman who puts great whites into a catatonic state just by touching them. My buddy Chris told me about that guy and I almost didn't believe him. Even watching that clip I wondered if it was at all possible that it was fake. But I do trust the Discovery Channel so it just must be some crazy ability this guy has.

GreenDrinks in Westport was good. Met some cool people and made some great connections. One company I found interesting was Greinvoice which allows you send invoices and receive payments online. This reduces paper use and time, but why do I have the feeling people are going to print the things anyway? Still, it's a step in the right direction.

There are some great farmer's market further down the coast which will mean a Saturday in the spring there will be a farmer's market crawl that will invariably end with lobsters and other fresh, delicious food. Also, the new AllGreen magazine is out for this month so check it out.

Alright let's rock a little music and then I gotta bolt cause the writers are back the writers are back! So happy the strike is over. So happy they got what they deserved. Anyway, music. Ropeadope is Droppin' Science. Then here's Talking Heads all Crosseyed and Painless found by my buddy Matt in SF. Apparently it's spring out there again. Here we are cold and drenched. But it's okay cause we earn our springs here in the northeast.

Spent most of the evening working on a new blog for Bean & Leaf and I'm excited to start writing about coffee. We're heading to GreenDrinks tomorrow evening for lots of networking with people and organizations that Lu and I want to know more about. I'm hoping that some of them will want freshly roasted coffee in their offices. And if one of them has a job for me, too, all the better.

These images by Lori Nix are very cool. They are photographs of miniatures and each group pertains to a particular theme. The image to the left is called Nevada, and it's from the Lost series, which I was immediately drawn to. But that's probably because I have LOST on the brain. Only one disc away from the end of Season 3 and soon we'll be up to real-time viewing. That'll be fun for discussion with friends, but terrible for our patience.

There was a posting from NASA that I read the other day and it stuck with me. Since I'm fascinated with space, I love the way it captured an aspect of that vast vacuum you rarely hear about.

I keep going back to the Project Song site hoping for another installment, and when I do I invariably listen to the the tune "Man of A Million Faces" that Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields created for the show. Turns out they are playing up the road tonight. I would have liked to go, but it's definitely not a good night for a 2 hour road trip. Lots of icy snow out there. But poking around the NPR site I stumbled on the Discover Songs page and the Song of the Day. Gotta remember to keep checking back.

Last offering is some new web-tech, with Twitter as the foundation. It's for fast and easy file-sharing, as if there's not enough ways to do that now.

Labels: music, NPR, photos, space

MASS MoCA was great. I really enjoyed the exhibit by John Finch called "What Time is It on the Sun?" The piece in the photo to the right was my favorite. Finch took light readings one afternoon as the clouds passed overhead, casting shadows. Using that information he set up a bank of colored florescent lights and then that tangled mass of colored cellophane. To recreate the effect of the cloud moving by overhead, you walk in a circle around the bluish mass towards the bright florescent lights, and then all the way back around into the colored, shadowed light. The art captured and altered that specific natural experience in a very interesting way.

The Times was interesting this weekend, too. One small story immediately made me think of the start of a sci-fi film about the first alien encounter or maybe a space borne virus that wipes out humanity. But hopefully the astronaut just has the flu and will be better soon for walking in space.

New information is coming to light about the Société Générale scandal. Text messages between Kerviel and another person prove he was definitely not working alone, or at the very least that others knew what he was up to.

There were a lot of good political stories in the paper today. Obama's sweep, the tough choice for Republicans to use W as a campaign prop, and a nice piece on how just how much W likes earmarks, too.

Remember the paperless office dreams of the 90s? Still not here, because an email still isn't 'real' until it's printed on paper, for some people. But that perception is false, as anyone will tell you who has been convicted of a crime because of a purely digital missive. Digital is the master-copy now, and people are beginning to embrace that in their homes. I don't know if I can give up the sheer joy of holding a book in my hand just yet, but our photos are already digitally archived and perhaps next year we can do the same with receipts and other documents.

Those receipts are on my mind because it is tax time, and as much as taxes do suck, this article makes some points that are essential to remember and to appreciate. That money does a lot of good. Without it our society would certainly fail.

Okay, last 2 articles that struck me today. First one is from the Sports section, about the guy that first hired Eli Manning for the Giants. Although I'm not a big football fan, or a Giants fan at all, this is a well-written article that's just a great story and a lot of fun to read. Final article for tonight is from the Metro Section, about a building called 475 Kent. This one doesn't have a happy ending yet, but its got a better shot at it than most artist collectives.

Oh and just to keep you updated, my Mom is not going into surgery tomorrow. She needs some additional testing because of a few extra beats in her EKG results, so the surgery has been pushed till March. But she is feeling good and gettin' psyched for Bruce Springsteen later on this month.

The upcoming weekend is looking good, starting with tomorrow night. Gonna begin the evening with a meal at Zinc to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. Which is the Leather Anniversary, which my vegetarian wife is absolutely thrilled about. After that we're heading up to Hartford for a performance of Zerline's Tale at the Hartford Stage.

For Saturday it's a trip to MASS MoCA, and then some disco-fun in the evening.

Next week is a one big for my Mom. She'll be going into surgery to have the lump removed on Monday. I'm sure she's going to do just fine, and it feels good that specific action is being taken to fix this situation.

These kids are ridiculous. Parkour soccer? What does that even mean, I thought. Then I watched the video. Wow.

So that's was the light bit of today's post. What I'm really interested in is the situation developing in the cold waters down at the bottom of the ocean in and around the Persian Gulf. Undersea Internet cables are going down, one after the other. So far 5 cables have been cut or damaged, two today and the first one on January 23rd. A map is above, via I Love Bonnie.net. There are links there you can follow for more details.

A source that I found especially interesting was this one, about the warship the USS Carter. There's something so insidious and evil about naming a spy submarine after President Carter that it has to be a cruel joke on that elder diplomat.

Here's a Metafilter thread on the cut/damaged cables with far more insight than I have to offer. Tons of great links in there. And make sure to have a look at Bruce Sterling's blog on Wired. He's more of the opinion that this could all just be an odd coincidence. And it might be. In fact I'd be surprised if we ever hear much more about this.

If you have the time and like reading, let Neal Stephenson take you on the path of one of these vital cables, but back in 1996. And because you've come this far, I gotta deliver.

Just found some good Super Tuesday online resources. These will also come in useful during future primaries, and for the election itself.

Here's are the primaries via Twitter and googlemaps. And check out Twittervision if you like that interface. I've been using Twitter a little bit lately, but I still haven't quite delved all the way in yet. If you felt like it, you could 'follow' me here.

Another great source of info for tonight, and for news in general is the NPR News blog. And here's the map of their coverage.

You can also take a photographic tour of today's events. Or if you prefer, live video coverage via Current TV.

Tonight is going to be very interesting. Obama has taken Georgia, and in twenty minutes many more states will end voting and counting will begin. I intend to stay up till CA has been called.

Labels: election08, news, NPR

Sunday was a late one down in Jersey so I never really got the chance to settle in with the Times this weekend. Had lots of fun, though. Got to see our friends who are only about 7 weeks away from having their kid. They seem really excited and happy and it was awesome to hang with them only a few weeks before their lives change completely.

The Superbowl was fun, too. I don't really follow football, but as a Boston resident for 11 years, I do tend to prefer the Pats. Sitting in a room full of Giants fans in the middle of Jersey City was very interesting, to say the least. But it was a good game. And speaking of games, give this one a try. So fun. I had to drag myself away from the puzzles to finish this post. Oh and I promise no scary faces this time. This is a legit game for real so don't get nervous.

I've talked about Improv Everywhere before. Their latest action was for everyone involved to freeze at the exact same moment in the middle of Grand Central Station. Over 200 people participated. The YouTube of the event is here. The reactions are awesome.

Last bit is another video, but this one is serious in nature. Today is Super Tuesday, which means that a lot of you are voting. I will be, and it has taken me a long time to make up my mind. I'm almost there, but I won't truly commit until I'm in the booth. Discussions with friends online have helped, as did a chance to talk to a buddy who works in politics for one of the candidates. If you are still deciding, or just want to hear the perspective of a great thinker of our time, watch this. Lawrence Lessig is the guru of the Free Culture movement and he makes some very interesting points on why he is supporting Obama. In the end I think that is who I will go with, too. But to do that I have fully banish the cynical, distrustful and angry mindset that W, Rove and team have infused in me.

I'm looking forward to see how all of this plays out. I am very excited to vote tomorrow. It is one small step closer to evicting W from the house he has so thoroughly soiled and that makes me happy indeed.