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Monday, July 5th, 2010
Honestly. Blu's animated grafittis just keep getting better, more powerful, more beautiful. Today via The Wooster Collective I see he has (they have?) a new piece, Big Bang Big Boom — a "short unscientific story about evolution and his consequences":
  Update: Also, Blu's first book is in the stores (well, at least one store). You can get Blu 2004-2007 from Studiocromie, 24 €. (And of course the shipping -- outside of Europe you will pay 25 € to have the book sent to you. Inside Europe it is 19 €, still quite steep.) The World's Best Ever takes a look inside; and more photos at ekosystem.org.
posted afternoon of July 5th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, July second, 2010
 Michael Gakuran blogs his visit to Hashima Island, an abandoned coal mining town off the west coast of Japan. Lots of beautiful photography -- this picture reminds me very strongly of My Neighbor Totoro, for some reason.
posted morning of July second, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, July first, 2010
Thanks to a note at The Wooster Collective, I see that Hampton Beach, NH held its annual sand-castle competition last week; pictures of the winning sculptures are up at hamptonbeach.org. My favorite is Marielle Heesels' entry, "Drowning in Love": Bonus readin Family Album content below the fold.
 As it turns out, we were in Hampton Beach once, about 8 years back. In July, 2002 I took a chair-building class at Mike Dunbar's Windsor Institute, just down the road from there in Hampton. One of the earliest pictures from our family album, Sylvia on the beach mugging for the camera:
↻...done
posted afternoon of July first, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, June 20th, 2010
There is something special about Borges' stories which are set in Argentina and Uruguay, particularly I'm thinking of the stories like "The South", "The Dead Man", "Funes", and of the stories in Brodie's Report -- I get a similar feeling from reading these stories as from watching Westerns -- the same sort of longing for cultural identity, construction and description of a cultural identity. In "The Dead Man" we see Borges addressing the reader directly, it takes me by surprise every time I read it. BenjamÃn Otálora has fled a murder charge in Buenos Aires and is working as a gaucho in Tacuarembó:
Here began, for Otálora, a different life; a life of vast dawns, days smelling of horses. This life is new to him, sometimes harsh, but it is already in his blood; just as men of other nations worship and fear the sea, we (and also the man who is interweaving these symbols) long for the infinite pampas echoing with hoofbeats.
We! Also the man who is interweaving these symbols! I don't think Borges refers so clearly and unambiguously to himself in any of his other fictions (leaving aside those pieces like "Borges and I" and "The Other" which are specifically introspective) -- that parenthesis seems to me designed to clear away all the levels of confusion about who is saying "we".
posted morning of June 20th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, June 19th, 2010
To be immortal is banal -- except for man, every creature is immortal, not knowing of death. The divine, the terrible, the incomprehensible, is to know oneself to be immortal.
Bryan Nelson's post at Mother Nature Network on the 10 animals with the longest life spans has some beautiful photography, including this magnificently anthropomorphic* picture of turritopsis nutricula, believed to be the only animal with no natural limit to its lifespan. (Thanks for the link, John!)
 Related in only the very most tenuous and impressionistic manner, Katy Butler's piece in this mornings New York Times Magazine on dealing with her father's dementia and unnaturally prolonged death, and with a medical establishment devoted unreflectively to such prolongation, sent a chill down my spine. To be, like Ms. Butler's mother, "continent and lucid to [one's] end," seems to me a fine thing, a fate I will hope for for myself and those I love, a fate I will try to work for.
*(or "cyclopomorphic" I guess -- a grimacing Cyclops with a frizzy beard.)
posted morning of June 19th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, June 10th, 2010
At Shorpy today, Dave publishes an absolutely stunning view of the (as yet incomplete) Williamsburg bridge, shot circa 1902; the photographer is at the base of the bridge on the Brooklyn side looking west:
The bridge would open December of the following year. (And I got a nice shot of it in February of this year, not of course on anything like such a grand scale.)
posted evening of June 10th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, June 7th, 2010
Start your week off right: some hypnotic animation loops from Diana Magallón, at The New Post-Literate:
Update: Ooh, and butterflies! (via The Wooster Collective)
posted morning of June 7th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, June third, 2010
This picture (via The Wooster Collective) of a wheatpasted painting by Yz in Paris, is about the most soothing, beautiful image I can imagine right now: You can follow Yz's progress at her Facebook page, Vous Êtes Ici.
posted evening of June third, 2010: Respond
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Monday, May 31st, 2010
UNURTH has the latest work from Blu (thanks for the link, Todd!) -- it is a collaboration with São Paulo artists Os Gémeos, on Lisbon's Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo:
posted morning of May 31st, 2010: Respond
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Monday, May 17th, 2010
 National Geographic has developed a pretty cool technology called MyShot, which (among other things?) turns photos into infinite mosaics -- the photo is "infinite" because at every level of zoom a mosaic is constructed with a static set of component images. Neat! (Though I wish you could pan, and that the zooming was smoother/bidirectional.)
A doggy mosaic below the fold. (On some browsers anyway -- let me know if it does not show up on yours.)
posted evening of May 17th, 2010: Respond
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