August 5, 2008
Why do we capitalize the word "I"?
Ouroussoff reviews Beijing's National Stadium
I didn't get a close up look at it when I was in Beijing, but it does look fantastic from all angles and in all lighting conditions. It even looks good in the Beijing haze. But I think what ultimately will be deemed the best building in Beijing will be Koolhaas' CCTV.
August 4, 2008
August 3, 2008
A nice essay on Mao and his place in today's China
July 27, 2008
So it looks like China is using underage girls in their quest for Olympic gold in gymnastics
I like China, the land and its people, but I absolutely detest the government and I wish the Chinese people would rise up against it.
July 26, 2008
Nice writeup on what caused the current Fannie Mae situation
July 23, 2008
The September 2008 issue of Esquire will feature an e-ink cover
July 21, 2008
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3
This is the first compact digicam that has intrigued me since I bought my Ricoh GX100 over a year ago.
July 16, 2008
In Paris, burgers turn chic
New York led the way on this one.
July 13, 2008
Ouroussoff has a nice write-up on Beijing and its new architecture
June 26, 2008
Laundry detergent maker mailed t-shirt wrapped boxes that contained product samples
The t-shirts arrive dirtied by their trip through the postal system. And if the recipients wanted their free t-shirts to look as good as new, all they had to do was wash it once with the product sample. How clever. That is, if the detergent can actually get out postal system gunk.
Renderings of the High Line's Phase Two designs
Phase One looks completely underwhelming.
June 24, 2008
Ricoh GX200 announced
12mp replacement for GX100. Nothing too exciting feature-wise, and the choice of a 12mp sensor, while expected, is disappointing. I would much rather have seen a lower-noise 10mp sensor. Official site here.
China's new visa restrictions are severely reducing tourism as the Olympics approaches
Tourism should be increasing, not decreasing. What's wrong with the Chinese government? Apparently, plenty of rooms are still available during the Games.
June 19, 2008
Confused about Chinese family relationship titles?
June 18, 2008
Stewart Butterfield's resignation letter to Yahoo!
Flickr co-founders join mass exodus from Yahoo!
June 15, 2008
NY Times has a story about the struggles between the landlords and tenants of a 15-unit five-story tenement which the landlords want to turn into an obscenely large 11,000 sq ft home for themselves
When I lived on East 9th, I've often daydreamed about having the entire building to myself and what I would do with all that space. But that was just some idle fantasy. This couple is actually doing it. Craziness. The tenants claim that the owners are only saying they will use it themselves to exploit a loophole in the law allowing landlords to displace rent-stabilized tenants if the landlords will use the space as their primary residence. First of all, that law is crazy if it has no reasonable limit on the size of the intended residence. And second of all, even if the landlords really are planning to live in an entire five-story building themselves, they should not be allowed to do it. I don't want to sound like a communist, but nobody should have that much space in Manhattan if it means displacing a bunch of poor people.
June 14, 2008
Islands of the world sorted by population
June 13, 2008
A mind-numbingly long, but convincing, argument that Tony Sopranos died in the final scene of The Sopranos
The last "shot" of the series (10 seconds of black and silence) is from Tony's POV. The implication being that Tony sees "blackness" and "nothingness."
Exposure for iPhone sounds amazing
This iPhone app shows you geo-tagged photos from Flickr based on your location. So you are standing somewhere, perhaps on a trip to a new city, and you can whip out your iPhone and browse all the photos taken at that location taken by other people. How awesome is that?
United and USAir joins American in charging $15 for 1st checked luggage
And $25 for second. I like this quote from a disgruntled passenger: "Pretty soon they'll be making us pay to go to the toilet on the plane."
June 12, 2008
A story about how an architect secretly built an elaborate scavenger hunt complete with ciphers and hidden compartments into a client's apartment
The hunt even comes with its own book and soundtrack.
June 11, 2008
BMW concept car that is covered in fabric
Watch the video. The headlights "blink" open. Very cool stuff.
June 10, 2008
More than one-fourth of adult New Yorkers are infected with the virus that causes genital herpes
June 7, 2008
Interactive map of what to eat and not to eat at all 30 Major League stadiums
Under U.S. Cellular Field where the White Sox plays: eat nothing, avoid everything. Ha. I'm surprised that is the only stadium with no edible food. I would think there would be more.
June 5, 2008
June 2, 2008
The geographic center of the United States
June 1, 2008
Yves Saint Laurent died on Sunday
May 29, 2008
Slideshow of photos from Columbia Records' archives
May 28, 2008
May 25, 2008
May 20, 2008
A U.S. federal appeals court upheld a decision by a lower court in 2006 that the U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills' varying values
I'm all for uniformity, but it makes no sense that a $100 bill should look nearly identical to a $1 one.
May 19, 2008
Condé Nast/Wired acquires Ars Technica for a reported $25 million
May 17, 2008
May 13, 2008
ESPN.com has a great story on 21-year-old Japanese phenom Yu Darvish
It's very long but well worth a read.
The New Yorker profiles Pascal Dangin, retoucher extraordinaire
May 12, 2008
National Geographic is featuring a gallery of work by George Steinmetz, who shot a series of aerial photos of China
Also see the video of the photographer talking about the shooting process (click on China Aerials).
May 7, 2008
Richard Serra's solo show in the Grand Palais opens this week
That's a fantastic space.
Bruni reviews Momofuku Ko
"Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely intrigue along with others that utterly enrapture. It also falls prey to some inconsistency."
May 6, 2008
Rain-Colbert dance-off from last night's Colbert Report
May 5, 2008
The New Yorker profiles Alinea chef Grant Achatz
Wall-E robot toy
I want one.
May 1, 2008
Interview with Matthew Dent, the designer of the rather cool new UK coinage
April 30, 2008
The NYT Magazine has an article about the art of the "Flickr photograph"
Rebekka Guoleifsdottir's rise on Flickr and her evolution as a photographer is examined in detail but when it got to the more risque Merkley, the article started to talk about him and then just abruptly stopped. Why mention him at all if he's not going to get the same treatment?
April 26, 2008
Jean Nouvel is the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner
He looks eerily like Dr. Evil, doesn't he? Also see my photos of his Guthrie Theater.
April 23, 2008
April 21, 2008
April 20, 2008
Without the ever falling dollar, Google would not have beaten Wall Street estimates
NYT Op-Ed piece on the nationalism of China's educated youth
This page collects the links to Nicholas Kristof's recent posts and a column related to the upheavals in Tibet
They're worth a read, particularly the comments to the blog posts.
Greenmarket produce scans
Scanning food! That's a great idea.
NYT looks at how the new European noise-at-work law is impacting classical orchestras
April 16, 2008
This week's New Yorker has an interesting piece on elevators
Interspersed in the article is the story of someone who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Be sure to check out the rather disturbing time-lapse security camera video of his ordeal. I was kind of bothered that they made it into a clone of Noah Kalina's "Everyday" video by using a similar sounding soundtrack.
April 14, 2008
I didn't know that the Hawaiian state flag features the Union Jack of the U.K.
April 13, 2008
April 11, 2008
Lost may get a 14th episode this season
April 10, 2008
Wikipedia entry on the Great Cornholio
April 8, 2008
You can now upload videos to Flickr
March 20, 2008
Ouroussoff urges Gehry to walk away from the Atlantic Yards project
March 19, 2008
March 18, 2008
March 11, 2008
Ricoh GX100's firmware has been updated to version 1.18
I love how Ricoh continues to produce firmware updates that provide feature refinements for a camera released a year ago (an eternity for a digital P&S). The GX100 is without a doubt the best P&S I've owned.
March 9, 2008
FreeRice.com
Played it for about 30 minutes and the highest level I could get was 46.
March 7, 2008
New York has been eclipsed by Moscow as the billionaire capital of the world
March 6, 2008
Germany has more Michelin three-star restaurants than any other European country except France
I was definitely surprised by the food when I visited a few years ago.
March 5, 2008
Shake Shack is set to open a branch at 77th and Columbus
The new indoor location will be open year-round. I think a major part of Shake Shack's charm is its location outdoors in Madison Square Park so I'm curious to see how the move indoors will impact its appeal.
February 28, 2008
Krens is resigning as director of the Guggenheim
February 27, 2008
GOOG is off nearly $300 per share in a little over three months
Garfield, Minus Garfield
When Garfield is removed from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder and the empty desperation of modern life.
February 26, 2008
Clarence Thomas hasn't asked a question during Supreme Court oral arguments in two years
February 24, 2008
Amazing optical illusion
Trick your brain into seeing a grayscale image in full color.
NY Times has a funky graph charting the ebb and flow of box office receipts from the past 20 years
February 23, 2008
Photojojo's Photo Time Capsule
Every couple weeks, the Time Capsule looks at your Flickr account for photos you took a year ago. It picks the ones that are most interesting—the ones that got viewed the most, favorited the most, and commented on the most—and sends them to you in email.
February 19, 2008
Amazing 25 meters high cylindrical aquarium in the atrium of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin
February 16, 2008
BusinessWeek recounts the story of the development of Lenovo's X300
By nearly all measures other than looks, this is a significantly cooler laptop than the Macbook Air.
February 15, 2008
The first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Perhaps I was expecting too much, but it looks underwhelming.
February 13, 2008
Will Ferrell and Heidi Klum in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition
Part of the Semi-Pro marketing campaign.
How Google got its colorful logo
Now that the strike is over, Carlton Cuse, Lost's showrunner, talks about what's happening with the remainder of Season 4
I've absolutely loved the first two episodes.
February 8, 2008
Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business completely
Medal designs of the Beijing Olympics
A look at the origins of a few tech companies' logos and how they evolved over time
February 6, 2008
Holy cow look at the size of this fisheye lens
February 4, 2008
February 1, 2008
Microsoft makes $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!
January 29, 2008
Nikon introduces a 24mm tilt/shift lens
I want one.
January 24, 2008
Ouroussoff reviews Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW Welt
So many interesting buildings have been built in Germany since my trip there in 2004 that it seems like it might be time to go again.
January 23, 2008
Recent tests found dangerous levels of mercury in tuna sold by Manhattan stores and restaurants
Among the restaurants tested are such high-profile places as: Nobu Next Door, Sushi of Gari and Blue Ribbon Sushi. These findings reinforce results in other studies showing that more expensive tuna usually contains more mercury because it is more likely to come from a larger species, which accumulates mercury from the fish it eats.
January 16, 2008
January 8, 2008
Video of the parody celebrity send-off of Bill Gates from CES
Cool shower design
But probably unrealistic since I don't see how it can remain even reasonably perpendicular to the wall.