"To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond." - Hypatia of Alexandria

Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician -- celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation.

i love everything because it is my mother.

Le Blogue De Jour

"If a bullet should go through my head let that bullet go through every closet door." - Harvey Milk

Youtube | The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)

Transforms a grumpy look into a smiling face

Deadline


Making of Deadline

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Abraham Lincoln

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them.

La Jetée (English: The Jetty and The Pier) (1962) is a 28-minute black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.

"I love not man the less, but Nature more..." - Lord Byron

Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature)

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol

If the bondage business seems an unlikely pursuit for two button-down, slightly awkward, decidedly deadpan lower-class Pakistanis, it is. But then, discretion has been their byword. The brothers have taken extreme measures to conceal a business that in this deeply conservative Muslim country is as risky as it is risqué.

It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.

Today, they sell their products to online and brick-and-mortar shops, and to individuals via eBay. Their market research, they said, showed that 70 percent of their customers were middle- to upper-class Americans, and a majority of them Democrats. The Netherlands and Germany account for the bulk of their European sales.[...]

“I go to Sin City every year,” said Rizwan, referring to Las Vegas in a sheepish laugh. It’s all business, he said. “Clients know our country and culture, and they don’t invite us to participate. We’re a little bit shy.”

NYT | Lacy Threads and Leather Straps Bind a Business (With Video)

"Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good." - Kierkegaard

The Wow! signal was a strong, narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of the Ohio State University. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for 72 seconds, the full duration Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. It has been the focus of attention in the mainstream media when talking about SETI results.
Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

Wikipedia | Wow! Signal

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange." – Vincent Van Gogh

Although it does not actually mention the word "qualia", Thomas Nagel's paper What Is it Like to Be a Bat? is often cited in debates over qualia. Nagel argues that consciousness has an essentially subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect. He states that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism — something it is like for the organism." Nagel also suggests that the subjective aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science. He claims that "[i]f we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done." Furthermore, he states that "it seems unlikely that any physical theory of mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to the general problem of subjective and objective."

Qualia

Image: Geoff Barrenger, Ports 1961 Spring/Summer 2007

"Few people have the imagination for reality. – Goethe

As many contemporary graphic designers, myself included, don't know what it was like to have been a designer in the pre-computer era, could you talk a bit about the process of taking a job such as a logo design project from start to finish without the aid of Adobe Illustrator?

I don’t think there’s much difference in the “head work” of designing an identity even if the “hand work” has changed. I still need to do research about the client, immerse myself in understanding the nature of their business, and work cooperatively to create an effective solution. The hand work is somewhat different, but not as much as one might think. I have always spent a lot of time sketching and drawing a wide variety of approaches to a mark; often employing a semiotic analysis to find the best approach: word, image, or combination. Only after I’ve got a fairly good idea of what it will look like do I go to the Mac. Before the computer, everything would be drawn out in black and white paint Now I trace my sketches and refine in Illustrator.

Feature Interview: Richard Stanley

"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent," -Napoleon Bonaparte

Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself

Quote: Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

it is our duty to interact with the city

Related: Discussion on smuggery.